Psalms 50:19

50:16-23 Hypocrisy is wickedness, which God will judge. And it is too common, for those who declare the Lord's statutes to others, to live in disobedience to them themselves. This delusion arises from the abuse of God's long-suffering, and a wilful mistake of his character and the intention of his gospel. The sins of sinners will be fully proved on them in the judgment of the great day. The day is coming when God will set their sins in order, sins of childhood and youth, of riper age and old age, to their everlasting shame and terror. Let those hitherto forgetful of God, given up to wickedness, or in any way negligent of salvation, consider their urgent danger. The patience of the Lord is very great. It is the more wonderful, because sinners make such ill use of it; but if they turn not, they shall be made to see their error when it is too late. Those that forget God, forget themselves; and it will never be right with them till they consider. Man's chief end is to glorify God: whoso offers praise, glorifies him, and his spiritual sacrifices shall be accepted. We must praise God, sacrifice praise, put it into the hands of the Priest, our Lord Jesus, who is also the altar: we must be fervent in spirit, praising the Lord. Let us thankfully accept God's mercy, and endeavour to glorify him in word and deed.

Thou givest thy mouth to evil,.... To speak evil things against Christ, his doctrines, ordinances, ministers and people; and to deliver out evil doctrines, pernicious to the souls of men; and thy tongue frameth deceit; puts and joins together deceitful words in a very artful manner, by which simple and unstable minds are beguiled.

Thou givest, Heb. thou sendest forth , to wit, free; for the word is used of men’s dismissing their wives or their servants, whom they left to their freedom. Thou hast an unbridled tongue, and castest off all restraints of God’s law, and of thy own conscience, and givest thy tongue liberty to speak what thou pleasest, though it be offensive and dishonourable to God, and injurious to thy neighbour, or to thy own soul; which is justly produced as an evidence of their hypocrisy. To evil; either to sinful or mischievous speeches. Frameth deceit, i.e. uttereth lies or fair words, wherewith to circumvent those who deal with them.

Thou givest thy mouth to evil - Margin, as in Hebrew, "thou sendest." That is, they gave it up to evil; they employed it in evil: in falsehood, malice, deceit, slander, deception, detraction. And thy tongue frameth deceit - The word rendered "frameth" means properly to bind, to fasten; and then, to contrive, to frame. The meaning is, that it was employed in the work of deceit; that is, it was employed in devising and executing purposes of fraud and falsehood.

The accusation of the manifest sinners. It is not those who are addressed in Psalm 50:7 , as Hengstenberg thinks, who are here addressed. Even the position of the words ולרשׁע אמר clearly shows that the divine discourse is now turned to another class, viz., to the evil-doers, who, in connection with open and manifest sins and vices, take the word of God upon their lips, a distinct class from those who base their sanctity upon outward works of piety, who outwardly fulfil the commands of God, but satisfy and deceive themselves with this outward observance. מה־לּך ל, what hast thou, that thou equals it belongs not to thee, it does not behove thee. With ועתּה, in Psalm 50:17 , an adversative subordinate clause beings: since thou dost not care to know anything of the moral ennobling which it is the design of the Law to give, and my words, instead of having them as a constant test-line before thine eyes, thou castest behind thee and so turnest thy back upon them (cf. Isaiah 38:17 ). ותּרץ is not from רוּץ (lxx, Targum, and Saadia), in which case it would have to be pointed ותּרץ, but from רצה, and is construed here, as in Job 34:9 , with עם: to have pleasure in intercourse with any one.

In Psalm 50:18 the transgression of the eighth commandment is condemned, in Psalm 50:18 that of the seventh, in Psalm 50:19 . that of the ninth (concerning the truthfulness of testimony). שׁלח פּה ברעה, to give up one's mouth unrestrainedly to evil, i.e., so that evil issues from it. תּשׁב, Psalm 50:20 , has reference to gossiping company (cf. Psalm 1:1 ). דּפי signifies a thrust, a push (cf. הדף), after which the lxx renders it ἐτίθεις σκάνδαλον (cf. Leviticus 19:14 ), but it also signifies vexation and mockery (cf. גּדף); it is therefore to be rendered: to bring reproach (Jerome, opprobrium) upon any one, to cover him with dishonour. The preposition בּ with דּבּר has, just as in Numbers 12:1 , and frequently, a hostile signification. "Thy mother's son" is he who is born of the same mother with thyself, and not merely of the same father, consequently thy brother after the flesh in the fullest sense. What Jahve says in this passage is exactly the same as that which the apostle of Jesus Christ says in Romans 2:17-24 . This contradiction between the knowledge and the life of men God must, for His holiness' sake, unmask and punish, Psalm 50:20 . The sinner thinks otherwise: God is like himself, i.e., that is also not accounted by God as sin, which he allows himself to do under the cloak of his dead knowledge. For just as a man is in himself, such is his conception also of his God (vid., Psalm 18:26 .).