Psalms 5:4

For thou [art] not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness,.... Sin, ungodliness; it is contrary to his nature, who is holy, just, and good; and to his will revealed in his law, which is the same with

For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. For - the ground of his hope. Deliverance from his enemies is the object of his prayer.

For; or, but; or, surely. In wickedness; or, in wicked men. Thou dost not approve of nor delight in them, or in their prayers, but dost hate and wilt destroy them, as it here follows: compare . And this he saith partly for the conviction and discouragement of his enemies, who were such; and partly for his own vindication, to show that he was not such a wicked man as they falsely and maliciously represented him. Dwell with thee, i.e. have any friendship, or fellowship, or quiet abode with thee, as those that dwell together usually have one with another.

Psalms 5:4 For thou [art] not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.Ver. 4. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness] As the kings of the earth have, saith R. Solomon. Alexander the Great, promising a crown of one hundred and eighty pounds to those of his guests that drank most, caused forty one to kill themselves with drinking for that crown. King Charles IX of France gave one Albertus Tudius, a huckster’ s son, six hundred thousand crowns to teach him to swear with a grace (Camera. Med. Histor.). But God perfectly hateth wickedness and wicked persons. There were more remarkable expressions of God’ s anger upon man’ s sin, in the dead body of a man, than of a beast, Numbers 11:31-34. The one made unclean but till the evening, the other seven days. God hateth sin worse than he doth the devil, for he hateth the devil for sin’ s sake, and not sin for the devil’ s sake. He hateth sin naturally in whomsoever, like as we hate poison, whether it be in a toad or in a prince’ s cabinet. We read of antipathies in nature between the elephant and the boar, the lion and the cock, the horse and the stone taraxippe, &c., but nothing so great as between God, the chiefest good, and sin, the utmost evil. Let us be like affected to our heavenly Father, as dear children, abhorring that which is evil, Romans 12:9, hating it as we do hell itself, so the Greek word there signifieth, abandoning it, and abstaining from all appearance of it, as it is offensivum Dei, et aversivum a Deo, an offence against God, and a breach of his law. Neither shall evil dwell with thee] Heb. sojourn with thee, or be harboured as a guest, much less as a home dweller. Peter Martyr, out of Nathan’ s parable, observeth, that lust was but a stranger to David, that lodged with him for a night only, 2 Samuel 12:4. Though corruption may intrude upon us, and enter, yet it may not be harboured, and dwell with us; lest the traveller become the man of the house.

(4) Neither shall evil.—Better, the wicked man is not thy guest. For the same thought, see Psalms 15; and for the opposite, of God coming to dwell with the godly, Isaiah 57:15.

Verse 4. Neither shall evil dwell with thee.] As thou art holy, so thou hast pleasure only in holiness; and as to evil men, they shall never enter into thy glory; לא יגרך רע lo yegurecha ra, "the evil man shall not even sojourn with thee."

4–6. The ground of the Psalmist’s confident expectation of an answer is the holiness of God, who will tolerate no evil. Comp. the ideal of an earthly king’s court in Psalms 101.

For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness - The psalmist here refers to a well-known and well-understood characteristic of the Divine Being, that he was holy and pure, and that he could

4. For—Because. He now states the ground or cause of his trusting in prayer, which he gives in Psalms 5:4-6, namely, the fact that God cannot approve or allow wickedness, and that he is “my God and