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Psalms 119:143

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Trouble and distress have found me, but Your commandments are my delight.

Commentaries

Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.

Matthew Henry Bible Commentaryv. 143

These two verses are almost a repetition of the two foregoing verses, but with improvement. 1. David again professes his constant adherence to God and his duty, notwithstanding the many difficulties and discouragements he met with. He had said (Psa 119:14), I am small and despised, and yet adhere to my duty. Here he finds himself not only mean, but miserable, as far as this world could make him so: Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me - trouble without, anguish within; they surprised him, they seized him, they held him. Sorrows are often the lot of saints in this vale of tears; they are in heaviness through manifold temptations. There he had said, Yet do I not forget thy precepts; here he carries his constancy much higher: Yet thy commandments are my delights. All this trouble and anguish did not put his mouth out of taste for the comforts of the word of God, but he could still relish them and find that peace and pleasure in them which all the calamities of this present time could not deprive him of. There are delights, variety of delights, in the word of God, which the saints have often the sweetest enjoyment of when they are in trouble and anguish, Co2 1:5. 2. He again acknowledges the everlasting righteousness of God's word as before (Psa 119:142): The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting and cannot be altered; and, when it is admitted in its power into a soul, it is there an abiding principle, a well of living water, Joh 4:14. We ought to meditate much and often upon the equity and the eternity of the word of God. Here he adds, by way of inference, (1.) His prayer for grace: Give me understanding. Those that know much of the word of God should still covet to know more; for there is more to be known. He does not say, "Give me a further revelation," bu…

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