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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 139:23 - 139:23
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He sees in them the danger which threatens himself, and prays God not to give him over to the judgment of self-delusion, but to lay bare the true state of his soul. The fact “Thou hast searched me,” which the beginning of the Psalm confesses, is here turned into a petitioning “search me.” Instead of רֵעִים in Psa 139:17, the poet here says שַׂרְעַפִּים, which signifies branches (Eze 31:5) and branchings of the act of thinking (thoughts and cares, Psa 94:19). The Resh is epenthetic, for the first form is שְׂעִפִּים, Job 4:13; Job 20:2. The poet thus sets the very ground and life of his heart, with all its outward manifestations, in the light of the divine omniscience. And in Psa 139:24 he prays that God would see whether any דֶּרֶךְ־עֹצֶב cleaves to him (בִּי as in 1Sa 25:24), by which is not meant “a way of idols” (Rosenmüller, Gesenius, and Maurer), after Isa 48:5, since an inclination towards, or even apostasy to, heathenism cannot be an unknown sin; nor to a man like the writer of this Psalm is heathenism any power of temptation. דוך בֶּצַע (Grätz) might more readily be admissible, but דוך עֹצֶב is a more comprehensive notion, and one more in accordance with this closing petition. The poet gives this name to the way that leads to the pain, torture, viz., of the inward and outward punishments of sin; and, on the other hand, the way along which he wishes to be guided he calls דֶּרֶךְ עֹולָם, the way of endless continuance (lxx, Vulgate, Luther), not the way of the former times, after Jer 6:16 (Maurer, Olshausen), which thus by itself is ambiguous (as becomes evident from Job 22:15; Jer 18:15), and also does not furnish any direct antithesis. The “everlasting way” is the way of God (Psa 27:11), the way of the righteous, which stands fast for ever and shall not “perish” (Psa 1:6).