The introduction (vv. 1, 2) asserts, with an accent of assurance, the conviction which the psalmist had all but lost, and therefore had the more truly won. The initial word "Surely" is an indication of his past struggle, when the truth that God was good to Israel had seemed so questionable. "This I have learned by doubts; this I now hold as most sure; this I proclaim, impugn it who list, and seem to contradict it what may." The decisiveness of the psalmist's conviction does not lead him to exaggeration. He does not commit himself to the thesis that outward prosperity attends Israel. That God is good to those who truly bear that name is certain; but how He shows His goodness, and who these are, the psalmist has, by his struggles, learned to conceive of in a more spiritual fashion than before. That goodness may be plainly seen in sorrows, and it is only sealed to those who are what the name of Israel imports--"pure in heart." That such are blessed in possessing God, and that neither are any other blessed, nor is there any other blessedness, are the lessons which the singer has brought with him from the darkness, and by which the ancient faith of the well-being of the righteous is set on surer foundations than before.
The avowal of conquered doubts follows on this clear note of certitude. There is a tinge of shame in the emphatic "I" of ver. 2, and in the broken construction and the change of subject to "my feet" and "my steps." The psalmist looks back to that dreary time, and sees more clearly than he did, while he was caught in the toils of perplexity and doubt, how narrow had been his escape from casting away his confidence. He shudders as he remembers it; but he can do so now from the vantage-ground of tried and regained faith. How eloquently the order of thought in these two verses speaks of the complete triumph over doubt!
In the first quatrain of verses, the prosperity of the godless, which had been the psalmist's stumbling-block, is described. Two things are specified--physical health, and exemption from calamity. The former is the theme of ver. 4. Its first clause is doubtful. The word rendered "bands" only occurs here and in Isa. lviii. 6. It literally means bands, but may pass into the figurative signification of pains, and is sometimes by some taken in that meaning here, and the whole clause as asserting that the wicked have painless and peaceful deaths. But such a declaration is impossible in the face of vv. 18, 19, which assert the very opposite, and would be out of place at this point of the psalm, which is here occupied with the lives, not the deaths, of the ungodly. Hupfeld translates "They are without pains even until their deaths"; but that rendering puts an unusual sense on the preposition "to," which is not "till." A very plausible conjecture alters the division of words, splitting the one which means "to their death" (_l'motham_) into two (_lamo tam_), of which the former is attached to the preceding words ("there are no pains _to them_" = "they have no pains"), and the latter to the following clause ("_Sound_ and well nourished is," etc.). This suggestion is adopted by Ewald and most modern commentators, and has much in its favour. If the existing text is retained, the rendering above seems best. It describes the prosperous worldling as free from troubles or diseases, which would be like chains on a captive, by which he is dragged to execution. It thus gives a parallel to the next clause, which describes their bodies (lit., belly) as stalwart. Ver. 5 carries on the description, and paints the wicked's exemption from trouble. The first clause is literally, "In the trouble of man they are not." The word for man here is that which connotes frailty and mortality, while in the next clause it is the generic term "Adam." Thus the prosperous worldlings appeared to the psalmist, in his times of scepticism, as possessing charmed lives, which were free from all the ills that came from frailty and mortality, and, as like superior beings, lifted above the universal lot. But what did their exemption do for them? Its effects might have taught the doubter that the prosperity at which his faith staggered was no blessing, for it only inflated its recipients with pride, and urged them on to high-handed acts. Very graphically does ver. 6 paint them as having the former for their necklace, and the latter for their robe. A proud man carries a stiff neck and a high head. Hence the picture in ver. 6 of "pride" as wreathed about their necks as a chain or necklace. High-handed violence is their garment, according to the familiar metaphor by which a man's characteristics are likened to his dress, the garb of his soul. The double meaning of "habit," and the connection between "custom" and "costume," suggest the same figure. As the clothing wraps the body and is visible to the world, so insolent violence, masterfulness enforced by material weapons and contemptuous of others' rights, characterised these men, who had never learned gentleness in the school of suffering. Tricked out with a necklace of pride and a robe of violence, they strutted among men, and thought themselves far above the herd, and secure from the touch of trouble.