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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: either,
1. God’s mercy and truth. So it is a promise, God’s mercy and truth shall not forsake thee. Or rather,
2. That mercy and truth which is man’s duty. So it is a precept; which seems most probable, both from the form of the Hebrew phrase, and from the following words of this verse, which are plainly preceptive, and from the promise annexed to the performance of this precept in the next verse.
Mercy and
truth are frequently joined together, as they are in God, as Psa_25:10 57:3, &c., or in men, as Pro_16:6 20:28 Hos_4:1, and here. Mercy notes all that benignity, clemency, charity, and readiness to do good freely to others; truth or faithfulness respects all those duties which we owe to God or man, to which we have special obligation from the rules of justice.
Bind them about thy neck, like a chain, wherewith persons adorn their necks, as it is expressed, Pro_1:9; which is fastened there, and not easily lost, which also is continually in one’s view.
Upon the table of thine heart: either,
1. Upon those tablets which the Jews are said to have worn upon their breasts, which are always in sight. So he alludes to Deu_6:8. Or,
2. In thy mind and heart, in which all God commands are to be received and engraven, as is oft required in this book, and every where. So the table of the heart seems to be opposed to the tables of stone in which God’s law was written, as it is Jer_31:33 2Co_3:3.