Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 18:24 - 18:24

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 18:24 - 18:24


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

(Heb.: 18:25-28) What was said in Psa 18:21 is again expressed here as a result of the foregoing, and substantiated in Psa 18:26, Psa 18:27. חָסִיד is a friend of God and man, just as pius is used of behaviour to men as well as towards God. גְּבַר תָמִים the man (construct of גֶּבֶר) of moral and religious completeness (integri = integritatis, cf. Psa 15:2), i.e., of undivided devotion to God. נָבָר (instead of which we find בַּר לֵבָב elsewhere, Psa 24:4; Psa 73:1) not one who is purified, but, in accordance with the reflexive primary meaning of Niph., one who is purifying himself, ἁγνίζων ἑαυτόν, 1Jo 3:3. עִקֵּשׁ (the opposite of יָשָׂר) one who is morally distorted, perverse. Freely formed Hithpaels are used with these attributive words to give expression to the corresponding self-manifestation: הִתְחַסֵּד, הִתַּמֵּם (Ges. §54, 2, b), הִתְבָּרֵר, and הִתְפַּתֵּל (to show one's self נִפְתָּל or פְּתַלְתֹּל). The fervent love of the godly man God requites with confiding love, the entire submission of the upright with a full measure of grace, the endeavour after purity by an unbeclouded charity (cf. Psa 73:1), moral perverseness by paradoxical judgments, giving the perverse over to his perverseness (Rom 1:28) and leading him by strange ways to final condemnation (Isa 29:14, cf. Lev 26:23.). The truth, which is here enunciated, is not that the conception which man forms of God is the reflected image of his own mind and heart, but that God's conduct to man is the reflection of the relation in which man has placed himself to God; cf. 1Sa 2:30; 1Sa 15:23. This universal truth is illustrated and substantiated in Psa 18:28. The people who are bowed down by affliction experience God's condescension, to their salvation; and their haughty oppressors, god's exaltation, to their humiliation. Lofty, proud eyes are among the seven things that Jahve hateth, according to Pro 6:17. The judgment of God compels them to humble themselves with shame, Isa 2:11.