Psalms 40:8

I delight to do thy will, O my God,.... This he came down from heaven to do, and this he did do, by preaching the Gospel, and working miracles; and above all by obtaining eternal redemption for his

I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

I delight to do thy will. This, though in a general sense it may be true of David and of all God’ s people, yet if it be compared with the foregoing verse, and with the explication thereof in the New Testament, (in which those mysteries which were darkly and doubtfully expressed in the Old Testament are fully and clearly revealed,) must be appropriated to Christ, of whom it is eminently true, and is here observed as an act of heroical obedience, that he not only resolved to do, but delighted in doing, the will of God, or what God had commanded him and he had promised to do, which was to die, and that a most shameful, and painful, and cursed death. See ,10. Thy law is within my heart, i.e. I do not only hear and understand it, but I receive it with heartiest love and affection, delighting both to meditate of it, and to yield obedience to it.

Psalms 40:8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [is] within my heart.Ver. 8. I delight to do thy will, O my God] To Christ it was his meat and drink, John 4:34, he set his face to do it, and to suffer it, Luke 9:51; yea, he was straitened, pained, till it was done, Luke 12:50. And the same mind is also in the saints that was in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2:5. They delight in the law of God after the inward man, Romans 7:22, they prefer it before their necessary food, Job 23:12. Yea, thy law is within my heart] Heb. in the midst of my bowels; there is the counterpane, the duplicate of the law written, yea, printed, Jeremiah 31:33 2 Corinthians 3:3. Rip up my heart (said Queen Mary) when I am dead, and there shall you find Calais, the loss whereof (it is thought) killed her. Rip up the most men’ s hearts, and there you shall find written, The god of this present world. But God’ s law is in good men’ s hearts, to live and to die with it: O beata Apocalypsis (said that martyr, catching up that revelation cast into the same fire with him to be burnt), O blessed revelation, how happy am I to be burned with thee in my hands!

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.

8. I delight] Cp. Psalms 40:6. What is God’s delight is his delight. Contrast the delight of the wicked in evil, Psalms 40:14. thy will] Thy good pleasure: what Thou approvest (Proverbs 15:8; Psalms 19:14). thy law is within my heart] Lit. in the midst of my body, as though God’s law were itself the heart which gives life to his whole being (Psalms 22:14). Such was God’s demand of Israel (Deuteronomy 6:6); such is the characteristic of the righteous (Psalms 37:31; Isaiah 51:7): such is to be the universal condition in the Messianic age (Jeremiah 31:33). The law will be graven not on tablets of stone (Exodus 32:15 f.), but on the tablet of the heart (Proverbs 3:3; Proverbs 7:3). Psalms 40:6-8 a are quoted in Hebrews 10:5-7 according to the LXX[17], with some slight variations. The writer is contrasting Christ’s perfect obedience with the inefficacy of the sacrifices of the Law, and he puts these words into His mouth as the most fitting expression of the purpose of His life. The willing obedience which the Psalmist of old was taught to recognise as the divine requirement for himself and Israel was carried to its completion, was ‘fulfilled,’ in Christ. The variation of the LXX from the Hebrew may seem to present a serious difficulty. But the appropriateness of the quotation does not depend on this particular clause, and the rendering of the LXX, whatever its origin, has in effect a sense analogous to the sense of the original. As the ear is the instrument for receiving the divine command, so the body is the instrument for fulfilling it. The possession of a body implies the duty of service, in the same way that the possession of hearing implies the duty of obedience. See Bp. Westcott’s note. [17] The reading of the LXX is σῶμαδὲκατηρτίσωμοι, a body didst thou Prepare for me. This reading is attested by the Vulgate. Aures in the Gallican Psalter is a correction. καταρτίζεσθαι occurs in the LXX as the rendering of several Hebrew words, and might easily have been chosen to represent the obscure thou hart dug. ‘Body’ for ‘ears’ may then have been a free paraphrase. But the reading may have originated in an ancient corruption of the Greek text. Through a repetition of the final ϲ of the preceding word and the change of Ⲱ ?ⲧ ?ⲓ ?Ⲁ ? into Ⲱ ?Ⲙ ?Ⲁ ?, Ⲏ ?θελⲎ ?Ⲥ ?Ⲁ ?Ⲥ ?ωⲦ ?ⲓ ?ⲁ ? might easily have become Ⲏ ?θελⲎ ?Ⲥ ?Ⲁ ?Ⲥ ?Ⲥ ?ωⲘ ?Ⲁ ?.

I delight to do thy will, O my God - To wit, in obeying the law; in submitting to all the trials appointed to me; in making an atonement for the sins of men. See the notes at Hebrews 10:7. Compare Phi 2:8; Matthew 26:39.

8. I delight to do thy will— “Delight” in God’s will is the true test of a spiritual mind, and of the highest obedience. This was Christ’s profession.John 4:34; John 17:4.