2. A sense of his weakness —
[David had other enemies than those who opposed his regal authority. He complains in another psalm, " Iniquities prevail against me"^:" and he found it exceeding difficult to subdue them. On this account also he used the expressions in the text. He felt himself poor and needy in -reference to every thing that he accounted good. He lamented especially his want of wisdom, and strength, and righteousness. Hence he cried, " Open thou mine eyes;" " O give me understanding in the way of godliness ! " " Hold thou me up ! " " hold up my goings in thy ways, that my footsteps slip not!" " Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord! for in thy sight shall no man living be justified," Similar to this is the expe- rience of all the saints. All are insufiicient of themselves for any thing that is good : and the man who was stripped, and wounded, and left half dead^, was but a faint emblem of the man who, feeling in himself innumerable corruptions, is unable to mortify so much as one of them, except as he is aided from above, and strengthened by communications of the Spirit of grace. St. Paul himself lamented his state in reference to this ; yea, he even surpassed the Psalmist in his humiliating confes- sions and mournful complaints ^]
But in the midst of all this, we view with pleasure, IL His consolation —
He considered that God's thoughts were exercised
upon him —
[God is not an inattentive observer of any of his crea- tures : but " his eyes are more especially upon the righteous^." As " his eyes were upon the promised land from one end of the year even to the other ^," so are they upon his own people in every place and in every age. He says, " I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you an expected end'." He thinks of his people with tender compassion — with anxious care — with joyful compla- cency. How tenderly did he listen to the effusions of Ephraim's sorrow^! With what anxiety does he sit, as a refiner, to watch the vessel which he is purifying in the furnace, lest it should by any means suffer injury by the process that was intended only for its good'! With what exultation too does he say, " To this man will I look, even unto him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit ; " as though not all the angels in heaven could
d Ps. Ixv. 3. e Luke x. 30. ^ Rom. vii. 24.
g Ps. xxxiii. 18, 19. and xxxiv, 15.
ii Job xxxvi. 7. Deut. xi. 12, ' Jer. xxix. 11.
^ Jer. xxxi. 18—20. and Hos. xiv. 8. ^ Mai. iii. 3.