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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 40:7 - 40:7
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The connection of the thoughts is clear: great and manifold are the proofs of Thy loving-kindness, how am I to render thanks to Thee for them? To this question he first of all gives a negative answer: God delights not in outward sacrifices. The sacrifices are named in a twofold way: (a) according to the material of which they consist, viz., זֶבַח, the animal sacrifice, and מִנְחָה, the meal or meat offering (including the נֶסֶךְ, the wine or drink offering, which is the inalienable accessory of the accompanying mincha); (b) according to their purpose, in accordance with which they bring about either the turning towards one of the good pleasure of God, as more especially in the case of the עֹולָה, or, as more especially in the case of the הַטָּאת (in this passage חֲטָאָה), the turning away of the divine displeasure. The fact of the זֶבַח and עֹולָה standing first, has, moreover, its special reason in the fact that זֶבַח specially designates the shelamı̂m offerings, and to the province of these latter belongs the thank-offering proper, viz., the tôda-shelamı̂m offering; and that עֹולָה as the sacrifice of adoration (προσευχή), which is also always a general thanksgiving (εὐχαριστία), is most natural, side by side with the shalemim, to him who gives thanks. When it is said of God, that He does not delight in and desire such non-personal sacrifices, there is as little intention as in Jer 7:22 (cf. Amo 5:21.) of saying that the sacrificial Tôra is not of divine origin, but that the true, essential will of God is not directed to such sacrifices.
Between these synonymous utterances in Psa 40:7 and Psa 40:7 stands the clause אָזְנַיִם כָּרִיתָ לִּי. In connection with this position it is natural, with Rosenmüller, Gesenius, De Wette, and Stier, to explain it “ears hast Thou pierced for me” = this hast Thou engraven upon my mind as a revelation, this disclosure hast Thou imparted to me. But, although כָּרָה, to dig, is even admissible in the sense of digging through, piercing (vid., on Psa 22:17), there are two considerations against this interpretation, viz.: (1) that then one would rather look for אֹזֶן instead of אָזְנַיִם after the analogy of the phrases גָּלָה אֹזֶן, חֵעִיר אֹזֶן, and פָּתַח אֹזֶן, since the inner sense, in which the external organs of sense, with their functions, have their basis of unity, is commonly denoted by the use of the singular; (2) that according to the syntax, חָפַצְתָּ, כָּרִיתָ, and שָׁאָֽלְתָּ are all placed on the same level. Thus, therefore, it is with this very אזנים כרית לי that the answer is intended, in its positive form, to begin; and the primary passage, 1Sa 15:22, favours this view: “Hath Jahve delight in whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in one's obeying the voice of Jahve? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, to attend better than the fat of rams!” The assertion of David is the echo of this assertion of Samuel, by which the sentence of death was pronounced upon the kingship of Saul, and consequently the way of that which is well-pleasing to God was traced out for the future kingship of David. God - says David - desires not outward sacrifices, but obedience; ears hath He digged for me, i.e., formed the sense of hearing, bestowed the faculty of hearing, and given therewith the instruction to obey.
(Note: There is a similar expression in the Tamul Kural, Graul's translation, S. 63, No. 418: “An ear, that was not hollowed out by hearing, has, even if hearing, the manner of not hearing.” The “hollowing out” meaning in this passage an opening of the inward sense of hearing by instruction.)
The idea is not that God has given him ears in order to hear that disclosure concerning the true will of God (Hupfeld), but, in general, to hear the word of God, and to obey that which is heard. God desires not sacrifices but hearing ears, and consequently the submission of the person himself in willing obedience. To interpret it “Thou hast appropriated me to Thyself לְעֶבֶד עֹולָם,” after Exo 21:6; Deu 15:17, would not be out of harmony with the context; but it is at once shut out by the fact that the word is not אֹזֶן, but אָזְנַיִם. Concerning the generalizing rendering of the lxx, σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μου, following which Apollinaris renders it αὐτὰρ ἐμοί Βροτέης τεκτήναο σάρκα γενέθλης, and the Italic (which is also retained in the Psalterium Romanum), corpus autem perfecisti mihi; vide on Heb 10:5, Commentary, S. 460f. transl. vol. ii. p. 153.
The אָז אָמַרְתִּי, which follows, now introduces the expression of the obedience, with which he placed himself at the service of God, when he became conscious of what God's special will concerning him was. With reference to the fact that obedience and not sacrifice has become known to him as the will and requirement of God, he has said: “Lo, I come,” etc. By the words “Lo, I come,” the servant places himself at the call of his master, Num 22:38; 2Sa 19:21. It is not likely that the words בִּמְגִלַּת סֶפֶר כָּתוּב עָלַי then form a parenthesis, since Psa 40:9 is not a continuation of that “Lo, I come,” but a new sentence. We take the Beth, as in Psa 66:13, as the Beth of the accompaniment; the roll of the book is the Tôra, and more especially Deuteronomy, written upon skins and rolled up together, which according to the law touching the king (Deu 17:14-20) was to be the vade-mecum of the king of Israel. And עָלַי cannot, as synonymous with the following בְּמֵעַי, signify as much as “written upon my heart,” as De Wette and Thenius render it-a meaning which, as Maurer has already correctly replied, עָלַי obtains elsewhere by means of a conception that is altogether inadmissible in this instance. On the contrary, this preposition here, as in 2Ki 22:13, denotes the object of the contents; for כָּתַב עַל signifies to write anything concerning any one, so that he is the subject one has specially in view (e.g., of the judicial decision recorded in writing, Job 13:26). Because Jahve before all else requires obedience to His will, David comes with the document of this will, the Tôra, which prescribes to him, as a man, and more especially as the king, the right course of conduct. Thus presenting himself to the God of revelation, he can say in Psa 40:9, that willing obedience to God's Law is his delight, as he then knows that the written Law is written even in his heart, or, as the still stronger expression used here is, in his bowels. The principal form of מֵעַי, does not occur in the Old Testament; it was מֵעִים (from מֵעַ, מֵעֶה, or even מֵעִי), according to current Jewish pronunciation מֵעַיִם (which Kimchi explains dual); and the word properly means (vid., on Isa 48:19) the soft parts of the body, which even elsewhere, like רַֽחֲמִים, which is synonymous according to its original meaning, appear pre-eminently as the seat of sympathy, but also of fear and of pain. This is the only passage in which it occurs as the locality of a mental acquisition, but also with the associated notion of loving acceptance and cherishing protection (cf. the Syriac phrase סם בגו מעיא, som begau meajo, to shut up in the heart = to love). That the Tôra is to be written upon the tables of the heart is even indicated by the Deuteronomion, Deu 6:6, cf. Pro 3:3; Pro 7:3. This reception of the Tôra into the inward parts among the people hitherto estranged from God is, according to Jer 31:33, the characteristic of the new covenant. But even in the Old Testament there is among the masses of Israel “a people with My law in their heart” (Isa 51:7), and even in the Old Testament, “he who hath the law of his God in his heart” is called righteous (Psa 37:31). As such an one who has the Tôra within him, not merely beside him, David presents himself on the way to the throne of God.