Psalms 26

1. JUDGE me, O LORD, for I have walked in mine integrity : I have trusted also in the LORD without wavering. 2 Examine me, O LORD, and prove me ; Try my reins and my heart. 3 For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes ; And I have walked in thy truth. 4 I have not sat with vain persons ; Neither will I go in with dissemblers. 5 I hate the congregation of evil-doers, And will not sit with the wicked. 6 I will wash mine hands in innocency ; So will I compass thine altar, O LORD :

7. That I may make the voice of thanksgiving to be heard, And tell of all thy wondrous works. 8 LORD, I love the habitation of thy house, And the place where thy glory dwelleth. 9 Gather not my soul with sinners, Nor my life with men of blood : 10 In whose hands is mischief [or, crime], And their right hand is full of bribes. 11 But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity : Redeem me, and be merciful unto me. 12 My foot standeth in an even place : In the congregations will I bless the LORD.

THERE are wanting in this Psalm those touching confessions of sinfulness and pleadings for forgiveness which in the twenty-fifth Psalm are thrice repeated. Here is only the avowal of conscious uprightness—an avowal solemnly made as in the sight of the Searcher of hearts, and deriving, no doubt, much of its intensity and almost impassioned force from the desire, on the part of the singer, to declare his entire separation from and aversion to the vain and evil men by whom he is surrounded.

1. Judge me; i.e., vindicate my cause, so that my innocency may be made manifest; do me justice. Integrity; not moral perfection, but uprightness of heart, conscious sincerity of intention is meant, and this as resting on that unwavering trust in God which follows. P.—He cannot justify himself against the charge of sin; he owns his iniquity is great, and he is undone if God in His infinite mercy do not forgive him; but he can justify himself against the charge of hypocrisy, and has reason to hope that, according to the tenor of the covenant of grace, he is one of those that may expect to find favor with God. It is a comfort to those who are falsely accused that there is a righteous God, who sooner or later will clear up their innocency, and a comfort to all who are sincere in religion, that God Himself is a witness to their sincerity. H.—A good cause, a good conscience, and a good deportment, are good grounds of appeal to God. Ingram Cobbin.

The Scriptures speak of integrity; in manifold and bold forms they commend it, and the good men of the Scripture times testify their consciousness of it in their appeals to God. David says repeatedly, “I have walked in mine integrity.” The Proverbs testify in language still more unqualified, “That the integrity of the upright shall preserve them;” “The just man walketh in his integrity.” In the same view it is that good men are so often called “the upright” and “the just”—“Mark the perfect man and behold the upright;” “The way of the just is uprightness, Thou most upright dost weigh the path of the just.” They are called “righteous” too and “right” in the same manner, and it is even declared that they “shall deliver their own souls by their righteousness.” And lest we should imagine that the integrity honored by so many commendations and examples is only a crude and partial conception, belonging to the piety of the Old Testament, the Christian disciples of the New are testifying also in a hundred ways to the integrity, before God and man, in which they consciously live. They dare to say that they have a conscience void of offence, that they serve God with a pure conscience, that they count it nothing to be judged of man’s judgment, when they know that God approves them. They rejoice in the confidence that they are made manifest unto God, and tenderly hope that they may be made manifest also in the consciences of men. They are so assured in the sense of their own integrity, as followers of Christ, that they even dare to exhort others to walk as they have them for examples. And this holy consciousness of being right with God, of being wholly offered up to Him, of wanting to know nothing but Christ, of losing all things for His sake, appears and reappears in as many forms as language can possibly take. They spend their life, as it were, in the testimony that they please God. Making the strongest confessions of ill desert, and resting their salvation everywhere on the justifying grace and righteousness of God, they still are able, somehow, to be free in professing their own conscious integrity in their discipleship, and the sense they have of being right and true—whole men, so to speak, in the service of their Master. A man of integrity (in the Psalmist’s meaning) is a man whose aim, in the right, is a whole aim, in distinction from one whose aim is divided, partial, or unstable. It is such a state of right intention as allows the man to be consciously right-minded, and to firmly rest in the singleness of his purpose. It does not mean that he has never been a sinner or that he is not now, but simply that whatever may have been his life or the guilt of it, he is now turned as regards the intent of his soul to do and be wholly right; firmly set, of course, to receive all the possible helps in his reach, for maintaining a life wholly right with God and man. Bushnell.

2. Try me, Jehovah, and prove me; assay my reins and my heart. The first verb is supposed by etymologists to signify originally trial by touch, the second by smell, and the third by fire. In usage, however, the second is constantly applied to moral trial or temptation, while the other two are frequently applied to the testing of metals by the touchstone or the furnace. This is indeed the predominant usage of the third verb, which may therefore be represented by the technical metallurgic term, assay. Reins and heart are joined, as seats of the affections. The prayer of this verse is an appeal to God’s omniscience for the Psalmist’s integrity of purpose. A.—It is not so much a challenge that God would satisfy Himself of his innocence as rather a prayer to prove the state of his mind; and if it be not as he himself deems, that He would make that clear to him. D.

Prove, purify. Words used of testing metals; the last especially of trying and refining them by means of smelting. The reins, as the seat of the lower animal passions; the heart, as comprising not only the higher affections, but also the will and the conscience. He thus desires to keep nothing back; he will submit himself to the searching flame of the Great Refiner, that all dross of self-deception may be purged away. P.

As gold by fire is severed and parted from dross, so singleness of heart and true Christian simplicity is best seen and made most evident in troubles and afflictions. In prosperity every man will seem godly, but afflictions do draw out of the heart whatsoever is there, whether it be good or bad. Cawdray.—God knows every man’s true character, for He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart, and sees through every disguise. David prays, Lord, examine me; which intipates that he was well pleased that God did know him, and truly desirous that He would discover him to Himself, and discover him to all the world. H.—This is a very bold appeal, and made by a man like David, who feared the Lord exceedingly, it manifests a most solemn and complete conviction of innocence. The expressions here used should teach us the thoroughness of the Divine judgment, and the necessity of being in all things profoundly sincere, lest we be found wanting at the last. S.

Here is the true and proper method of self-examination: it must be accomplished under and through the scrutiny or inspecting power of God; we truly prove ourselves when He proves us, and may rightly approve ourselves only when He approves us. God is manifested always in the consciousness of them that love Him, and are right toward Him. They need not go into any curious self-examination that will only confuse and obscure the witness. They will know God by an immediate knowledge or revelation. They will have His Spirit witnessing with theirs. They will have the testimony that they please God. In their simple love they will know God’s love to them; for he that loveth knoweth God. For a man then to be obliged to examine himself, and study and cipher over himself to find out whether he is a child of God or not, is no good sign; for if he is, he should have a witness more immediate, and should want no such information at all. God knows him perfectly, and if God has revealed Himself in the consciousness, if he has the witness of God and the testimony that he pleases God, what more can he have? and if he has not this at all, what can he have, or what, by self-scrutiny, find to make good the want of it? Bushnell.

God’s proving does not mean that He stands by watching how His child will behave. He helps us to sustain the trial to which He subjects us. Life is all probation; and because it is so, it is all a field for the Divine aid. The motive of His proving men is that they may be strengthened. He puts us into His gymnasium to improve our physique. If we stand the trial, our faith is increased; if we fall, we learn self-distrust and closer clinging to Him. A. M.

3. He tells us how confidingly he sets himself in God’s light. God’s grace is that on which his eye is fixed, the delight of his eye, and he walks in God’s truth. This lovingkindness of God has hitherto been steadily the model of his life, this truth of God the rule and boundary of his walk. D.

To be duly effective, truth must not merely fall from the lip, but breathe forth from the life; it must come, not like incense from the censer that only holds it, but like fragrance from a flower, exhaling from a nature suffused with it throughout. Caird.—If we set God’s lovingkindness before us as our pattern, to which we endeavor to conform ourselves, if we set it before us as our great engagement and encouragement to duty, and are afraid of doing anything to forfeit God’s favor, and in care by all means to keep ourselves in His love; this will not only be a good evidence of our integrity, but will have a great influence upon our perseverance in it. “I have walked in Thy truth, according to Thy law, for Thy law is truth.” Those only may expect the benefit of God’s lovingkindness that live up to His truths, and His laws that are grounded upon them.

4. This also was an evidence of his faithfulness to his God, that he never associated with those who he had any reason to think were disaffected to religion, or were open enemies or false friends to its interests. Great care to avoid bad company is both a good evidence of our integrity and a good means to preserve us in it. H.

5. Friendship, according to the philosopher, is one soul in two bodies. But how can they ever be of one soul that are as different as air and earth, and as contrary as fire and water? All true love is a motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for himself and his neighbors for God’s sake; so that he can never truly love man who doth not love his Maker. God is the only foundation upon which we can build friendship; therefore such as live without Him cannot love us in Him. Swinnock.

6. Not content with abstaining from all share in the counsels of the wicked, he is fully resolved to adhere to the service of the Lord. He will cleanse himself from all that would unfit him for that service, and then cleave to the sanctuary where God dwells. The idea expressed is that of close adherence and devoted attachment. A.—The washing of the hands is elsewhere a symbolical act, it is here merely a figurative confession of his consciousness of innocence, and is naturally suggested in this form, from the idea of the priest washing himself preparatory to service being associated with the idea of the altar. D.

“So will I compass Thine altar, O Lord.” Priests unto God must take great care to be personally cleansed; the brazen laver was as needful as the golden altar; God’s worship requires us to be holy in life. We must not bring our thank offerings with hands defiled with guilt. We see from this verse that holy minds delight in the worship of the Lord, and that it is their deepest concern never to enter upon any course of action which would unfit them for communion with God. S.—One morning, as Gotthold was pouring water into a basin, he recollected the words of Scripture: “I will wash my hands in innocence.” Upon this he mused, and said, “Henceforth, my God, when I pour out water to wash with, let me call to mind my duty to cleanse my hands from wicked actions, my mouth from wicked words, and my heart from wicked desires, that so I may be enabled to lift holy hands unto Thee, and with unspotted lips and heart worship Thee.” “Emblems.”

7. “And tell of all Thy wondrous works.” God’s people should not be tongue tied. God’s works of love are wondrous if we consider the unworthiness of their objects, the costliness of their method, and the glory of their result. And as men find pleasure in discoursing upon things remarkable and astonishing, so the saints should rejoice to tell of the great things which the Lord hath done for them. S.—In his attendance on God’s ordinances he aimed at the glory of God, and was much in the thankful praise and adoration of Him. He had an eye to the place of worship as the place where God’s honor dwelt, and therefore made it his business there to honor God and to give Him the glory due to His name; to publish with the voice of thanksgiving all God’s wondrous works. God’s gracious works, which call for our thanksgiving, are all wondrous works, which call for our admiration. We ought to publish them and tell of them for His glory and the excitement of others to praise Him; and we ought to do it with the voice of thanksgiving, as those that are sensible of our obligations. H.

8. Jehovah, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place of the dwelling of Thy glory. This verse shows that his compassing the altar was intended to denote his love for the earthly residence of God, the altar being there put for the whole sanctuary, which is here distinctly mentioned. A.—If there is to be a real, lasting love for our churches in the hearts of Christian men, it must be because we believe them to be centres of Christian life through the grace

of God. No external beauty, no desire to improve the outside of religion, can avail if there be rottenness within. To love the Lord Jesus Christ, to adhere to those plain, simple Gospel doctrines which are set forth in the New Testament—this must be the strength of our reformed Church. To this its ministers and people are pledged by their very declaration that they rest all their hopes on the pure word of God. A. C. Tait.