Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 119:118
Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit [is] falsehood.
118. Thou hast trodden down ] Rather, hast set at nought (R.V.), or hast rejected.
for their deceit is falsehood ] Not, their crafty schemes are vain (R.V. marg.), doomed to be frustrated: but, the principles with which they deceive themselves and mislead others are false and baseless; therefore God rejects them. P.B.V. for they imagine but deceit is derived through the Vulg. ( quia iniusta cogitatio eorum) from the LXX, which with Jer., Theod. and Syr. seems to have read tar‘thm, ‘their thought,’ for tarmthm, ‘their deceit.’ It is an Aramaic word, but the occurrence of an Aramaic word in so late a Psalm would not be impossible, and it may be the right reading.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes – Compare the notes at Psa 119:21. Rather, Thou hast made light of, or thou despisest. The Hebrew word means properly to suspend in a balance; to weigh. Then it means to lift up lightly or easily; and then, to make light of; to contemn; to regard anything as light. The Septuagint and Latin Vulgate render it, Thou dost despise. That is, God regards them as of no account; as a light substance of no value; as chaff which the wind carries away. Compare Job 21:18; Psa 1:4; Psa 35:5; Isa 17:13.
For their deceit is falsehood – This seems to be a truism – for deceit must imply falsehood. In the original this is an emphatic way of declaring the whole thing to be false, as the Hebrew language often expresses emphasis by mere repetition – thus pits, pits, meaning many pits. The psalmist first characterizes their conduct as deceitful – as that which cannot be relied on – as that which must fail in the end; he then speaks of this system on which they acted as altogether a lie – as that which is utterly false; thus giving, as it were, a double emphasis to the statement, and showing how utterly delusive and vain it must be.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 118. Thou hast trodden down] All thy enemies will be finally trodden down under thy feet.
Their deceit is falsehood.] Their elevation is a lie. The wicked often become rich and great, and affect to be happy, but it is all false; they have neither a clean nor approving conscience. Nor can they have thy approbation; and, consequently, no true blessedness.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
All their crafty and deceitful devices, by which they design to insnare and ruin me, and other good men, shall deceive them and their own expectations, and bring that destruction upon themselves which they design for others.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
118-120. But the disobedient andrebellious will be visited by God’s wrath, which impresses the piouswith wholesome fear and awe.
their deceit isfalsehoodthat is, all their cunning deceit, wherewith theyseek to entrap the godly, is in vain.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes,…. That wander from the way of the Lord’s commandments; that deviate from his precepts, go astray constantly and wilfully; a people that err in their hearts, and with all their hearts. These the Lord treads down, as mire in the streets, as grapes in a winepress; which shows his abhorrence of them, his indignation at them, and how easily they are subdued under him;
for their deceit [is] falsehood: or, “their hypocrisy [is] a lie” m: the appearance they make is a false one; they appear outwardly righteous, but are inwardly wicked; have a form of godliness, but deny the power of it: or all their deceitful doctrines are lies in hypocrisy, though dressed up with all the art and cunning they are masters of; or all their subtle schemes to corrupt and subvert the true doctrines of the word are in vain and to no purpose.
m So Michaelis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
118 Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit is falsehood. 119 Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross: therefore I love thy testimonies. 120 My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments.
Here is, I. God’s judgment on wicked people, on those that wander from his statutes, that take their measures from other rules and will not have God to reign over them. All departure from God’s statutes is certainly an error, and will prove a fatal one. These are the wicked of the earth; they mind earthly things, lay up their treasures in the earth, live in pleasure on the earth, and are strangers and enemies to heaven and heavenly things. Now see how God deals with them, that you may neither fear them nor envy them. 1. He treads them all down. He brings them to ruin, to utter ruin, to shameful ruin; he makes them his footstool. Though they are ever so high, he can bring them low (Amos ii. 9); he has done it many a time, and he will do it, for he resists the proud and will triumph over those that oppose his kingdom. Proud persecutors trample upon his people, but, sooner or later, he will trample upon them. 2. He puts them all away like dross. Wicked people are as dross, which, though it be mingled with the good metal in the ore, and seems to be of the same substance with it, must be separated from it. And in God’s account they are worthless things, the scum and refuse of the earth, and no more to be compared with the righteous than dross with fine gold. There is a day coming which will put them away from among the righteous (Matt. xiii. 49), so that they shall have no place in their congregation (Ps. i. 5), which will put them away into everlasting fire, the fittest place for the dross. Sometimes, in this world, the wicked are, by the censures of the church, or the sword of the magistrate, or the judgments of God, put away as dross,Pro 25:4; Pro 25:5.
II. The reasons of these judgments. God casts them off because they err from his statutes (those that will not submit to the commands of the word shall feel the curses of it) and because their deceit is falsehood, that is, because they deceive themselves by setting up false rules, in opposition to God’s statutes, which they err from, and because they go about to deceive others with their hypocritical pretences of good and their crafty projects of mischief. Their cunning is falsehood, so Dr. Hammond. The utmost of their policy is treachery and perfidiousness; this the God of truth hates and will punish.
III. The improvement David made of these judgments. He took notice of them and received instruction from them. The ruin of the wicked helped to increase, 1. His love to the word of God. “I see what comes of sin; therefore I love thy testimonies, which warn me to take heed of those dangerous courses and keep me from the paths of the destroyer.” We see the word of Go fulfilled in his judgments on sin and sinners, and therefore we should love it. 2. His fear of the wrath of God: My flesh trembles for fear of thee. Instead of insulting over those who fell under God’s displeasure, he humbled himself. What we read and hear of the judgments of God upon wicked people would make us, (1.) To reverence his terrible majesty, and to stand in awe of him: Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? 1 Sam. vi. 20. (2.) To fear lest we offend him and become obnoxious to his wrath. Good men have need to be restrained from sin by the terrors of the Lord, especially when judgment begins at the house of God and hypocrites are discovered and put away as dross.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
118. Thou hast trodden under foot all those who wander from thy statutes. By treading under foot he means, that God overthrows all the despisers of his law, and casts them down from that loftiness which they assume to themselves. The phrase is directed against the foolish, or rather frantic, confidence with which the wicked are inflated, when they recklessly deride the judgments of God; and, what is more, scruple not to magnify themselves against him, as if they were not subject to his power. The last clause is to be particularly noticed: for their deceit is falsehood (439) By these words the prophet teaches, that the wicked gain nothing by their wiles, but that they are rather entangled in them, or at length discover that they were mere sleight of hand. Those ignorantly mar the sense who interpose the copula and, as if it had been said, that deceit and falsehood were in them The word רמוה, remyah, signifies a subtle and crafty device. Interpreters, indeed, often translate it thought; but this term does not sufficiently express the propriety and force of the Hebrew word. The prophet means, that, however well pleased the wicked are with their own cunning, they yet do nothing else than deceive themselves with falsehood. And it was needful to add this clause; for we see how the great bulk of mankind are fatally intoxicated with their own vain imaginations, and how difficult it is to believe what is here asserted, — that the more shrewd they are in their own estimation, the more do they deceive themselves.
(439) Dimock thinks that, by this expression, the Psalmist; probably alludes to the Lex Talionis amongst the Jews, and that the Apostle might refer to this passage in 2Th 2:11; where he says, “that God should send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. ”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(118) Trodden down.Better, thou despisest. So LXX. and Vulg. Aquila, Thou hast impaled. Symmachus, Thou hast convicted. Literally the word seems to mean to weigh or value, but, from the habit of the buyer beating down the price by depreciating, comes to have a sense of this kind. Mr. Burgess aptly quotes Pro. 20:14. We may compare the English word cheapen, which originally only meant to buy.
For their deceit is falsehood.Rather, as the parallelism indicates, for their tricks are in vain; or perhaps, to bring out the full intention of the Hebrew, we must paraphrase: for their wiles are as fruitless as they are deceitful. So Symmachus: all their craft is vain.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 119:118. For their deceit is falsehood For their falsehood shall prove a lie: their falsehood to God, in abandoning his law, shall deceive them. Mudge. Some render the words, For their cunning is falsehood, but Houbigant, For their elation is vain.
Psa 119:119. Thou puttest away, &c. Thou causest all the wicked of the earth to sink like dross. Mudge. Or, Thou destroyest the dross, all the wicked of the earth; therefore, &c.
AIN.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 119:118 Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit [is] falsehood.
Ver. 118. Thou hast trodden down all them, &c. ] Thou, as a mighty king or conqueror, hast made use of them for a footstool, as Sapores, king of Persia, did Valentinian the Roman emperor, and as Tamerlane did Bajazet.
For their deceit is falsehood
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
trodden down: or set at naught.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
trodden: Isa 25:10, Isa 63:3, Mal 4:3, Luk 21:24, Rev 14:20
err: Psa 119:10, Psa 119:21, Psa 95:10
their deceit: Psa 119:29, Psa 78:36, Psa 78:37, Psa 78:57, Isa 44:20, Eph 4:22, Eph 5:6, 2Th 2:9-11, 2Ti 3:13, 1Jo 2:21, Rev 18:23
Reciprocal: Psa 119:128 – and I Lam 1:15 – trodden Luk 8:5 – it Jam 5:19 – err
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 119:118-120. Thou hast trodden down all them that err, &c. Thou hast brought them to ruin, utter and shameful ruin; thou hast made them thy footstool. He seems to speak of those proud persecutors who trampled upon Gods people, and on whom he saw that sooner or later God would trample; for their deceit is falsehood All their crafty and deceitful devices, by which they design to insnare and ruin good men, shall deceive their expectations, and bring that destruction upon themselves which they designed for others. Thou puttest away all the wicked Thou removest them from thy presence, from the society of thy people, and from the land of the living; like dross Which, though for a season it be mixed with gold or silver, is not only separated from it, as a useless and contemptible thing, but also is utterly consumed by fire; therefore I love thy testimonies Because they are the best preservatives against wickedness, and against those dreadful punishments attending upon it. Of these he professes his fear, adding, in the next verse, My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, &c. As if he had said, The observation of thy terrible judgments against ungodly men, and the consciousness which I have of my own manifold sins and great weakness, make me fear lest thou shouldest punish me also, as thou justly mightest, if thou shouldest be so strict as to mark what is amiss in me; or lest I should partake with them in their sins, and consequently in their plagues.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
119:118 Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their {d} deceit [is] falsehood.
(d) The crafty practises of them who contemn your law will be brought to nothing.