Lev. x. 3. Job xl. 4, 5. Ps. xxxviii. 13. b 2 Sam. Ari, 10. Job ii. 10. Job ix. 34. xiii. 21.d Heb. conflict.- Heb. that which is to be desired in him to melt acay. Job iv. 19. xiii. 28. Isai. 1. 9. Hos. v. 12. is life, that he knows not who shall gather them into the granary!

Verse 7. And now, Lord, what wait I for?] Have any object of pursuit in life, but to regain thy ferour and thine image.

Verse 8. Deliver me from all my transgressions] I seek the pardon of my sins; I expect it from thy merry. Grant it, "that I be not the reproach of the foolish" (the godless and the profane), who deride my expectation, and say no such blessings can be ad. Let them know, by thy saving me, that there sa God who heareth prayer, and giveth his Holy Spirit to all them that ask him.

Verse 10. Remove thy stroke away from me] This seems to be a figure taken from gladiators, or persons contending in single combat. One is wounded so as to be able to maintain the fight no longer: he therefre gives in, and prays his adversary to spare his . I am conquered; I can hold the contest no nger: thou art too powerful for me. He cries what ar ancestors used to term craven; the word spoken him who was conquered in the battle ordeal, or trial by combat.

Verse 11. When thou with rebukes dost correct En tochachoth signifies a vindication of proedings in a court of law, a legal defence. When God comes to maintain the credit and authority of his law against a sinner, he "causes his beauty to consume away:" a metaphor taken from the case of a culprit, ab, by the arguments of counsel, and the unimPachable evidence of witnesses, has the facts all oved against him, grows pale, looks terrified; his titude forsakes him, and he faints in court. Surely every man is vanity.] He is incapable of sistance; he falls before his Maker; and none can ver him but his Sovereign and Judge, against Vom he has offended.

Selah.] This is a true saying, an everlasting truth. Verse 12. Hear my prayer] Therefore, O Lord, w that mercy upon me which I so much need, and without which I must perish everlastingly.

I am a stranger with thee] I have not made this earth my home; I have not trusted in any arm but thine. Though I have sinned, I have never denied thee, and never cast thy words behind my back. I knew that here I had no continuing city. Like my fathers, I looked for a city that has permanent foundations, in a better state of being.

effects of sin.

A. M. cir. 2970.
B. C. cir. 1034.
Davidis, Regis
Israelitarum,
cir, annum 22.

every man is vanity. Selah. 12 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: "for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, i as all my fathers were.

13 O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.

g Ver. 5.-h Lev. xxv. 23. 1 Chron. xxix. 15. Ps. cxix. 19. 2 Cor. v. 6. Hebr. xi, 13. 1 Pet. i. 17. ii. 11. Gen. xlvii. 9.- - Job x. 20, 21. xiv. 5, 6.— Job xiv. 10, 11, 12.

Verse 13. O spare me] Take me not from this state of probation till I have a thorough preparation for a state of blessedness. This he terms recovering his strength-being restored to the favour and image of God, from which he had fallen. This should be the daily cry of every human spirit: Restore me to thine image, guide me by thy counsel, and then receive me to thy glory!

ANALYSIS OF THE THIRTY-NINTH PSALM.

This psalm was apparently written on the same occasion as the preceding. The Psalmist is still suffering as before, yet is silent and patient; but the suffering at last becoming very sharp, he could hold his peace no longer: then he spoke. And we have reason to be thankful that he broke silence, as whoever considers the weighty truths which he spoke must allow.

There are three parts in this psalm:

I. His own account of his resolution to keep silence, ver. 1, and the consequences of it, ver. 2, 3. II. His expostulation with God on the shortness, uncertainty, and frailty of life, ver. 4, 5, 6.

III. His petition to have his sin pardoned, ver. 8; to be saved from punishment, ver. 10; and for farther grace and respite, ver. 12, 13.

I. David acquaints us with his resolution: I saidI fully purposed to keep silence.

1. "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.”

2. This resolution he kept for a while: "I was dumb; I held my peace even from good," even from making a just defence.

3. But in this I found great difficulty, nay, impossibility.

1. For all the time "my sorrow was stirred." My pain was increased by silence.

2. "My heart was hot." I was strongly incited to my mind.

utter

3. "And, while thus musing, the fire burned;" what was within I saw should not be longer concealed: "Then spake I with my tongue."

II. He expostulates with God: and, being greatly oppressed both in body and mind, prays to know how long he is to live; or, rather, how soon he may get rid of his maladies, false friends, and deceitful enemies. Many considerations render his life uncomfortable.

Verse 1. I waited patiently for the Lord] The two preceding psalms are proofs of the patience and resignation with which David waited for the mercy of God. The reader is requested to consult the notes on them.

And heard my cry.] The two preceding psalms show how he prayed and waited; this shows how he mcceeded.

Verse 2. An horrible pit] Literally, the sounding pit; where nothing was heard except the howlings of wild beasts, or the hollow sounds of winds reverberated and broken from the craggy sides and roof. The miry clay] Where the longer I staid the deeper I sank, and was utterly unable to save myself. The Syriae and Arabic translate, "The pit of perdition, and the mud of corruption." These are figurative expressions to point out the dreary, dismal, rainous state of sin and guilt, and the utter inability of a condemned sinner to save himself either from the guilt of his conscience, or the corruption of his heart.

Set my feet upon a rock] Thou hast changed my state from guilt to pardon; from corruption to holine; in consequence of which my goings are established. I have now power over all sin, and can walk steadily in the way that leads to God's kingdom.

Verse 3. A new song] Cheerfulness and joy had ing been strangers to him. He seemed to live to ater the most doleful complaints, and be a prey to affering and wretchedness. Praise for a sense of God's favour was a new song to him. The word is ften used to signify excellence: I will sing a most excellent and eminent song.

Many shall see it] I will publish it abroad; and far-to sin against the Lord, knowing by my example what a grievous and bitter thing it is.

And shall trust in the Lord.] Even the worst of sinners shall not despair of mercy, being penitent, when they see that I have found favour in his sight.

Verse 4. Blessed is that man] The man must be blessed and happy who casts his soul, with all its burden of sin and wretchedness, at the footstool of God's mercy; for he will save all who come to him through the Son of his love.

concerning Christ.

be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.

h

A. M. cir. 2971. B. C. cir. 1033. Davidis, Regis Israelitarum, cir. annum 23.

6 Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burntoffering and sin-offering hast thou not required.

7 Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of

li. 16. Prov. xxi. 3. vi. 6. Matt. ix. 13. Exod. xxi. 6.

Eccles. v. 1. Isai. i. 11. lxvi. 3. Hos. xii. 7. Hebr. x. 5. i Heb. digged.

Verse 5. Many-are thy wonderful works] The Psalmist seems here astonished and confounded at the counsels, loving-kindnesses, and marvellous works of the Lord, not in nature, but in grace; for it was the mercy of God towards himself that he had now particularly in view.

Verse 6. Sacrifice and offering] The apostle, Heb. x. 5, &c., quoting this and the two following verses, says, When he (the Messiah) cometh into the world— was about to be incarnated, He saith-to God the Father, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not — it was never thy will and design that the sacrifices under thy own law should be considered as making atonement for sin; they were only designed to point out my incarnation and consequent sacrificial death; and therefore a body hast thou prepared me, by a miraculous conception in the womb of a virgin; according to thy word, The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent.

A body hast thou prepared me:-The quotation of this and the two following verses by the apostle, Heb. x. 5, &c., is taken from the Septuagint, with scarcely any variety of reading: but, although the general meaning is the same, they are widely different in verbal expression in the Hebrew. David's words are • ♫ ` oznayim caritha lli, which we translate, My ears hast thou opened; but they might be more properly rendered, My ears hast thou bored; that is, Thou hast made me thy servant for ever, to dwell in thine own house: for the allusion is evidently to the custom mentioned Exod. xxi. 2, &c.: "If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free: but if the servant shall positively say, I love my master, &c., I will not go out free; then his master shall bring him to the door-post, and shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him for ever."

But how is it possible that the Septuagint and the apostle should take a meaning so totally different from the sense of the Hebrew? Dr. Kennicott has a very ingenious conjecture here: he supposes that the Septuagint and apostle express the meaning of the words as they stood in the copy from which the Greek translation was made; and that the present Hebrew text is corrupted in the word σ oznayim, ears, which has been written through carelessness for a 18 az gevah, THEN, a BODY. The first syllable,

a Luke xxiv. 44.- b Ps. cxix. 16, 24, 47, 92. John iv. 34. Rom. vii. 22. e Heb. in the midst of my bowels. d Ps. Xxxvii. 31. Jer. xxxi. 33. 2 Cor. iii. 3. e Ps. xxii. 22,

Iaz, THEN, is the same in both; and the latter, , which, joined to makes D'IN oznayim, might have been easily mistaken for gevah, BODY; ɔ nun being very like a gimel; yod like vau; and ♫ he like final □ mem; especially if the line on which the letters were written in the MS. happened to be blacker than ordinary, which has often been a cause of mistake, it might then have been easily taken for the under-stroke of the mem, and thus give rise to a corrupt reading; add to this, the root carah signifies as well to prepare, as to open, bore, &c. On this supposition the ancient copy translated by the Septuagint, and followed by the apostle, must have read the text thus: az gevah charitha lli; Σωμα δε κατηρτίσω μοι· Then a body thou hast prepared me: thus the Hebrew text, the version of the Septuagint, and the apostle will agree in what is known to be an indisputable fact in Christianity; namely, that Christ was incarnated for the sin of the world.

The Ethiopic has nearly the same reading: the Arabic has both, "A body hast thou prepared me, and mine ears thou hast opened." But the Syriac, the Chaldee, and the Vulgate agree with the present Hebrew text; and none of the MSS. collated by Kennicott and De Rossi have any various reading on the disputed words.

It is remarkable, that all the offerings and sacrifices which were considered to be of an atoning or cleansing nature, offered under the law, are here enumerated by the Psalmist and the apostle, to show that none of them, nor all of them, could take away sin; and that the grand sacrifice of Christ was that alone which could do it.

Four kinds are here specified, both by the Psalmist and the apostle: viz. SACRIFICE, a zebach,, Ovota; OFFERING, minchah, рoopopa; BURNT-OFFERING, by olah, blokavтwμа, SIN-OFFERING, chataah, TEρi àμaprias. Of all these we may say, with the apostle, it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats, &c. should take away sin.

Thou hast had no pleasure.-Thou couldst never be pleased with the victims under the law; thou couldst never consider them as atonements for sin, as they could never satisfy thy justice, nor make thy law

honourable.

Verse 7. In the volume of the book] bana bimegillath sepher, "in the roll of the book." Anciently, books were written on skins, and rolled up. Among the Romans, these were called volumina, from volvo, I roll; and the Pentateuch in the Jewish synagogues is still written in this way. There are two wooden rollers; on one they roll on, on the other they roll off,

25. xxxv. 18. Ps. cxix. 13. Ps. cxxxix. 2.--Acts xx. 20, 27

as they proceed in reading. One now lying before me, written on vellum, is two feet two inches in breadth, and one hundred and two feet long. To roll and unroll such a MS. was no easy task; and to be managed must lie flat on a table. This contains the Pentateuch only, and is without points, or any other Masoretic distinction. The book mentioned here must be the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses; for, in David's time, no other part of divine revelation had been committed to writing. This whole book speaks about Christ, and his accomplishing the will of God, not only in "the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent," and "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;" but in all the sacrifices and sacrificial rites mentioned in the law.

Verse 8. To do thy will.] God willed not the sacrifices under the law, but he willed that a human victim of infinite merit should be offered for the redemption of mankind. That there might be such a victim, a body was prepared for the eternal Logos, and in that body he came to do the will of God; that is, to suffer and die for the sins of the world.

1. Hence we see that the sovereign WILL of God is that Jesus should be incarnated; that he should suffer and die; or, in the apostle's words, taste death for every man; that all should believe on him, and be saved from their sins; for this is the WILL of God, our sanctification.

2. And as the apostle grounds this on the words of the psalm, we see that it is the WILL of God that that system shall end; for as the essence of it is contained in its sacrifices, and God says he will not have these, and has appointed the Messiah to do his will, i. e., to die for men, hence it necessarily follows, from the Psalmist himself, that the introduction of the Messiah into the world is the abolition of the law; and that

his sacrifice is that which shall last for ever.

Verse 9. I have preached righteousness] I think it best to refer these words to Christ and his apostles. In consequence of his having become a sacrifice for sin, the Jewish sacrificial system being ended, the middle wall of partition was broken down, and the door of faith, the doctrine of justification by faith, opened to the Gentiles. Hence the gospel was preached in all the world, and the mercy of God made known to the Gentiles; and thus righteousness— justification by faith, was preached in the great congregation-to Jews and Gentiles, throughout the Roman empire.

The great congregation, both in this and the following verse, I think, means the Gentiles, contradistinguished from the Jews.

The word righteousness means the plan or method