Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 40:8
I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [is] within my heart.
8. I delight ] Cp. Psa 40:6. What is God’s delight is his delight. Contrast the delight of the wicked in evil, Psa 40:14.
thy will ] Thy good pleasure: what Thou approvest (Pro 15:8; Psa 19:14).
thy law is within my heart ] Lit. in the midst of my body, as though God’s law were itself the heart which gives life to his whole being (Psa 22:14). Such was God’s demand of Israel (Deu 6:6); such is the characteristic of the righteous (Psa 37:31; Isa 51:7): such is to be the universal condition in the Messianic age (Jer 31:33). The law will be graven not on tablets of stone (Exo 32:15 f.), but on the tablet of the heart (Pro 3:3; Pro 7:3).
Psa 40:6-8 a are quoted in Heb 10:5-7 according to the LXX [17] , with some slight variations. The writer is contrasting Christ’s perfect obedience with the inefficacy of the sacrifices of the Law, and he puts these words into His mouth as the most fitting expression of the purpose of His life. The willing obedience which the Psalmist of old was taught to recognise as the divine requirement for himself and Israel was carried to its completion, was ‘fulfilled,’ in Christ. The variation of the LXX from the Hebrew may seem to present a serious difficulty. But the appropriateness of the quotation does not depend on this particular clause, and the rendering of the LXX, whatever its origin, has in effect a sense analogous to the sense of the original. As the ear is the instrument for receiving the divine command, so the body is the instrument for fulfilling it. The possession of a body implies the duty of service, in the same way that the possession of hearing implies the duty of obedience. See Bp. Westcott’s note.
[17] The reading of the LXX is , a body didst thou Prepare for me. This reading is attested by the Vulgate. Aures in the Gallican Psalter is a correction. occurs in the LXX as the rendering of several Hebrew words, and might easily have been chosen to represent the obscure thou hart dug. ‘Body’ for ‘ears’ may then have been a free paraphrase. But the reading may have originated in an ancient corruption of the Greek text. Through a repetition of the final of the preceding word and the change of into , might easily have become .
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
I delight to do thy will, O my God – To wit, in obeying the law; in submitting to all the trials appointed to me; in making an atonement for the sins of men. See the notes at Heb 10:7. Compare Phi 2:8; Mat 26:39.
Yea, thy law is within my heart – Margin, In the midst of my bowels. So the Hebrew. The idea is, that the law of God was within him. His obedience was not external, but proceeded from the heart. How true this was of the Redeemer it is not necessary here to say.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 40:8
I delight to do Thy will, O my God.
Duty a delight
I delight to do Thy will, O my God. In other words, Gods pleasure is his pleasure. Yea, Thy law is within my heart, the object of choice and love.
I. We instinctively recognize here an expression of the highest type of piety, This marks the psalm as Messianic, since it was fulfilled only in Christ. The piety here breathed is not to be thought of as beyond the imitation of every disciple. Jesus stands as the Divine model and pattern of a believers life. When we look at the believers experience we find it in three stages. First, a sense of danger, when fear rouses him to flee from the wrath to come; then a sense of duty, when conscience urges him to do that which he feels to be right; and last, a sense of delight, when choice impels him to do and bear Gods will. Duty has become delight. This last stage of experience is the highest, and heaven only is higher.
II. To delight in Gods will supplies the noblest motive, The roads of duty and delight never cross each other. Piety is not so much any conformity of outward life, as it is a disposition toward the divine, which, in a growing Christian will become more and more habitual as a law of life, and in a sense unconscious. A young disciple is like the musical pupil, who, in playing his exercises, keeps thinking how he is sitting, holding his hands, and managing his fingers. The mature disciple is more like the master in whom practice and habit have made it possible to lose sight of what is merely mechanical in what is spiritual about music, till he forgets the instrument in the inspiration of musical enthusiasm, and becomes no longer merely a practiser of scales or an imitator of others, but a creator and composer of musical harmonies. He who makes it his habit to aim after true holiness will find more and more that it ceases to be an effort to be good and to do good, as he rises to real and almost unconscious sympathy with goodness.
III. The text expresses also the highest spiritual liberty. In civil government, the nearer we get to a true idea or ideal of liberty, the less does government seem to exist at all, for the highest freedom involves unconsciousness of restraint or constraint. The Christian is the Lords freeman; it is the sinner who is wearing a yoke of bondage; and he who has escaped the obedience of fear and learned the subjection of love enjoys the highest liberty of the sons of God. And we misrepresent Christianity before others whenever we lead them to suppose that it rules by the iron sceptre of duty. He who will surrender himself completely to its sway shall find the Christian experience such a blending of Gods life with mans life as maketh His will our will, and His service perfect freedom!
IV. The text expresses the truest preparation for a life of service to Christ. When duty becomes delight we are fitted for our highest usefulness, for that is inseparable from the highest piety, the noblest motive, and the truest liberty. Those who most win souls are those who delight to do Gods will. If others see that it makes us happy to be disciples of Christ, that we are under no constraint, galled by no fetters of conscience, confined by no severe restrictions; that we are simply walking at liberty because we love to do Gods will, we become to them living epistles. Men may feel little interest in hearing another say what he is forced to utter because he feels that he ought; but no man will lack attentive audience who speaks from a full heart, which would burst if denied expression. Ordinarily a sculptor does not himself work the marble: he fashions the clay model, leaving to the mechanical workman to work out in stone what he has not the imagination to invent, or think out in mind. What a wide difference between them! The workman, for a certain sum, undertakes the task of giving to the creation of the artists genius simply a more enduring form. He feels, perhaps, but little interest in his wearisome work. His aim at most is to be rigidly accurate and correct in copying the model. Everything is done by rule. How different the experience of the sculptor! He finds in his work a rest, a relief. An image is stamped upon his mind, his brain burns, his heart throbs! The Greeks called such a state of mind enthusiasm–an inspiration from God. We are too often only the mechanical workmen when we ought to be sculptors of life.
V. Helps to attaining delight is duty.
1. We must habituate ourselves to think of Gods law in its true light. We do great injustice to Him when we construe the rule of duty as an arbitrary regulation. The more we learn to interpret His commands by His benevolence the more shall we delight to do His will.
2. There must be holy fellowship with God. No unregenerate man can know such experience of delight in duty, for it is born only of the Spirit.
3. There must be a full surrender to God. No man delights to do Gods will whose whole will is not given up to God.
4. Duty will become delight in proportion to our faithful discharge of duty itself. The more complete your obedience, the more positive your happiness. We are reminded of the beautiful myth about the wingless birds, who first took up their wings as burdens to be borne, but found them changing to pinions, which, in the end, bore them. We are the birds without wings. God puts our duties before us to be patiently assumed for His sake. But, though at first they are loads, we shall be able afterwards to say, with Rutherford, The cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bore: such a burden as wings are to the bird, that help it to soar; or, as sails are to the ship, that help it to catch the breeze that wafts it to the desired haven. (A. T. Pierson, D. D.)
The will–before, in, and after conversion
The Word of God presents to us the action of the will during three phases of experience: first, during that period in which man asserts his independence, and refuses to submit to the claims and authority of God; secondly, during the period of transition, in which he is abandoning his claims to independence, and is learning to submit to the yoke of Christ; thirdly, during the subsequent period of self-surrender and self-consecration.
I. The will before conversion. God is not in all his thoughts. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God. Man may be unconscious of the enmity, but it surely exists; and there needs only an authoritative assertion of the Divine will to provoke the human will and call it into action.
II. The will in conversion. Hew does a man pass from a state of active or passive antagonism to the will of God into one of holy and willing conformity to that will? It is difficult to answer this question in few words. Whilst every true conversion is one in its essential features, as involving the active turning to God in repentance end faith, conversions vary greatly in the causes which lead to them and in the phases through which they pass. Thus, it is difficult to define with any accuracy the precise action of the will in conversion. It is important, however, to recognize in the process the existence and activity of two forces: that of Divine grace, and that of human effort. It is the magnet of the Cross which draws mens hearts to God; I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. It is the supreme love of Jesus Christ living, labouring, suffering, dying for sinful men, which touches the heart, attracts the affections and expels the old love of the world by introducing a higher and more absorbing love in its place. The heart thus won, the will resumes its rightful authority.
1. The choice now made is free, for it is the choice of the will acting without compulsion, choosing that which it approves as the noblest and the best.
2. The choice is decided, for it recognizes the righteousness of Gods claim upon the unconditional submission and allegiance of man.
3. The choice is lasting, for being made after full consideration and without reserve, it knows no regrets, and has in it all the elements of permanency.
III. The will after conversion. Scripture teaches and experience proves that by reason of the law of sin yet abiding in our members we cannot always do the things that we would; still to will is present; we delight in the law of God after the inward man. The will after conversion, therefore, is no stranger to conflict, for sin yet dwells within; but throughout the struggle with evil it is at one with the will of God; its language is not my will but Thine be done. (Sir Emilius Bayley.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 8. To do thy will] God willed not the sacrifices under the law, but he willed that a human victim of infinite merit should be offered for the redemption of mankind. That there might be such a victim, a body was prepared for the eternal Logos, and in that body he came to do the will of God; that is, to suffer and die for the sins of the world.
1. Hence we see that the sovereign WILL of God is that Jesus should be incarnated; that he should suffer and die; or, in the apostle’s words, taste death for every man; that all should believe on him, and be saved from their sins; for this is the WILL of God, our sanctification.
2. And as the apostle grounds this on the words of the Psalm, we see that it is the WILL of God that that system shall end; for as the essence of it is contained in its sacrifices, and God says he will not have these, and has appointed the Messiah to do his will, i.e., to die for men, hence it necessarily follows, from the psalmist himself, that the introduction of the Messiah into the world is the abolition of the law; and that his sacrifice is that which shall last for ever.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
I delight to do thy will. This, though in a general sense it may be true of David and of all Gods people, yet if it be compared with the foregoing verse, and with the explication thereof in the New Testament, (in which those mysteries which were darkly and doubtfully expressed in the Old Testament are fully and clearly revealed,) must be appropriated to Christ, of whom it is eminently true, and is here observed as an act of heroical obedience, that he not only resolved to do, but delighted in doing, the will of God, or what God had commanded him and he had promised to do, which was to die, and that a most shameful, and painful, and cursed death. See Luk 12:50; Joh 10:18; Heb 10:9,10.
Thy law is within my heart, i.e. I do not only hear and understand it, but I receive it with heartiest love and affection, delighting both to meditate of it, and to yield obedience to it.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6-8. In Paul’s view this passagehas more meaning than the mere expression of grateful devotion toGod’s service. He represents Christ as declaring that the sacrifices,whether vegetable or animal, general or special expiatory offerings,would not avail to meet the demands of God’s law, and that He hadcome to render the required satisfaction, which he states waseffected by “the offering of the body of Christ” [Heb10:10], for that is the “will of God” which Christ cameto fulfil or do, in order to effect man’s redemption. We thus seethat the contrast to the unsatisfactory character assigned the OldTestament offerings in Ps 40:6is found in the compliance with God’s law (compare Psa 40:7;Psa 40:8). Of course, as Paul andother New Testament writers explain Christ’s work, it consisted inmore than being made under the law or obeying its precepts. Itrequired an “obedience unto death” [Php2:8], and that is the compliance here chiefly intended, and whichmakes the contrast with Ps 40:6clear.
mine ears hast thouopenedWhether allusion is made to the custom of boring aservant’s ear, in token of voluntary and perpetual enslavement (Ex21:6), or that the opening of the ear, as in Isa 48:8;Isa 50:5 (though by a differentword in Hebrew) denotes obedience by the common figure ofhearing for obeying, it is evident that the clause is designed toexpress a devotion to God’s will as avowed more fully in Ps40:8, and already explained. Paul, however, uses the words, “abody hast thou prepared me” [Heb10:5], which are found in the Septuagint in the place ofthe words, “mine ears hast thou opened.” He does notlay any stress on this clause, and his argument is complete withoutit. It is, perhaps, to be regarded rather as an interpretation orfree translation by the Septuagint, than either an addition orattempt at verbal translation. The Septuagint translators mayhave had reference to Christ’s vicarious sufferings as taught inother Scriptures, as in Isa53:4-11; at all events, the sense is substantially the same, as abody was essential to the required obedience (compare Rom 7:4;1Pe 2:24).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
I delight to do thy will, O my God,…. This he came down from heaven to do, and this he did do, by preaching the Gospel, and working miracles; and above all by obtaining eternal redemption for his people, which he effected by fulfilling the law, becoming a sacrifice, and suffering and dying in their room; all which were the will of God, and grateful to him, and in doing which Christ took the utmost delight and pleasure, Joh 4:34;
yea, thy law [is] within my heart; either the whole moral law, under which he was, as man, and the surety of his people; and which was written upon his heart, and which he perfectly obeyed; or that particular law, injunction, and command laid upon him by his Father, to offer himself a sacrifice, and lay down his life for men; which he agreed to, had it in his mind, his heart was set upon it, and he cheerfully complied with it, Joh 10:18.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
8. I delight to do thy will “Delight” in God’s will is the true test of a spiritual mind, and of the highest obedience. This was Christ’s profession.
Joh 4:34; Joh 17:4.
Within my heart Hebrew, In the midst of my bowels; which, according to the Hebrew psychology means, in my innermost (most spiritual) sympathies, with tender affection implied.
Jer 31:33. This is an intensive repetition of the preceding line.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 40:8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [is] within my heart.
Ver. 8. I delight to do thy will, O my God ] To Christ it was his meat and drink, Joh 4:34 , he set his face to do it, and to suffer it, Luk 9:51 ; yea, he was straitened, pained, till it was done, Luk 12:50 . And the same mind is also in the saints that was in Christ Jesus, Phi 2:5 . They delight in the law of God after the inward man, Rom 7:22 , they prefer it before their necessary food, Job 23:12 .
Yea, thy law is within my heart
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
delight. Note the double delight (Isa 42:1. Mat 3:17).
will = good pleasure.
within = in the midst.
heart = bowels: i.e. my inward parts.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
I delight: Psa 112:1, Psa 119:16, Psa 119:24, Psa 119:47, Psa 119:92, Job 23:12, Jer 15:16, Joh 4:34, Rom 7:22, Rom 8:29
yea: Psa 37:30, Psa 37:31, Pro 3:1, Jer 31:33, 2Co 3:3
within my heart: Heb. in the midst of my bowels
Reciprocal: Exo 40:20 – the testimony Lev 1:3 – his own Num 28:11 – in the beginnings Deu 6:6 – shall be Deu 15:16 – General Psa 1:2 – But his Psa 19:8 – rejoicing Psa 84:5 – in whose Psa 119:11 – Thy word Psa 119:70 – but I Psa 119:167 – and I love Pro 4:21 – in the Pro 21:15 – joy Isa 42:21 – he will Isa 51:7 – in whose Jer 6:10 – delight Mat 3:15 – for Mat 6:10 – Thy will Mar 14:36 – nevertheless Luk 2:49 – my Luk 6:45 – good man Luk 12:50 – and Luk 22:42 – not Joh 5:30 – because Joh 6:38 – not Joh 7:10 – then Joh 9:31 – and doeth Joh 14:31 – that the Rom 3:31 – yea Gal 1:4 – according 1Th 4:3 – this Heb 1:9 – loved
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 40:8. I delight to do thy will This also, though in a general sense it may be true of David, and of all Gods people, yet, if it be compared with the foregoing verse, and with the explication thereof in the New Testament, (in which those mysteries, which were darkly and doubtfully expressed in the Old Testament, are fully and clearly revealed,) it must be appropriated to Christ, of whom it is eminently true; and it is here observed as an act of heroic obedience, that he not only resolved to do, but delighted in doing the will of God, or what God had commanded him, which was to die, and that a most shameful, and painful, and cursed death. Yea, thy law is within my heart I do not only understand it, but receive it with heartiest love, delighting both to meditate on it, and to yield obedience to it.