Psalms 26:4

He still further bases his petition upon his comportment towards the men of this world; how he has always observed a certain line of conduct and continues still to keep to it. With Psa 26:4 compare Jer 15:17. מתי שׁוא (Job 11:11, cf. Psa 31:5, where the parallel word is מרמה) are "not-real," unreal men, but in a deeper stronger sense than we are accustomed to use this word. שׁוא (= שׁוא, from שׁוא) is aridity, hollowness, worthlessness, and therefore badness (Arab. su') of disposition; the chaotic void of alienation from God; untruth white-washed over with the lie of dissimulation (Psa 12:3), and therefore nothingness: it is the very opposite of being filled with the fulness of God and with that which is good, which is the morally real (its synonym is און, e.g., Job 22:15). נעלמים, the veiled, are those who know how to keep their worthlessness and their mischievous designs secret and to mask them by hypocrisy; post-biblical צבוּעים, dyed (cf. ἀνυπόκριτος, Luther "ungefδrbt," undyed). (את) בּוא עם, to go in with any one, is a short expression for: to go in and out with, i.e., to have intercourse with him, as in Pro 22:24, cf. Gen 23:10. מרע (from רעע) is the name for one who plots that which is evil and puts it into execution. On רשׁע see Psa 1:1.

Holy David is in this psalm putting himself upon a solemn trial, not by God and his country, but by God and his own conscience, to both which he appeals touching his integrity (Psa 26:1, Psa 26:2), for the proof of which he alleges, I. His constant regard to God and his grace (Psa 26:3). II. His rooted antipathy to sin and sinners (Psa 26:4, Psa 26:5). III. His sincere affection to the ordinances of God, and his care about them (Psa 26:6-8). Having thus proved his integrity, 1. He deprecates the doom of the wicked (Psa 26:9, Psa 26:10). 2. He casts himself upon the mercy and grace of God, with a resolution to hold fast his integrity, and his hope in God (Psa 26:11, Psa 26:12). In singing this psalm we must teach and admonish ourselves, and one another, what we must be and do that we may have the favour of God, and comfort in our own consciences, and comfort ourselves with it, as David does, if we can say that in any measure we have, through grace, answered to these characters. The learned Amyraldus, in his argument of his psalm, suggests that David is here, by the spirit of prophecy, carried out to speak of himself as a type of Christ, of whom what he here says of his spotless innocence, was fully and eminently true, and of him only, and to him we may apply it in singing this psalm. "We are complete in him." A psalm of David.

26:4-5 Because of his devotion to the Lord (26:1-3), the psalmist dissociates himself from evil people (see 1:1).