Psalms 73:22

The psalmist designs an account of a temptation he was strongly assaulted with--to envy the prosperity of the wicked, a common temptation, which has tried the graces of many of the saints. He lays down, in the first place, that great principle which he is resolved to abide by and not to quit while he was parleying with this temptation,

Fretfulness is a corruption that is its own correction. Now in the reflection upon it, 1. He owns it was his folly thus to vex himself: " So foolish was I to be my own tormentor." Let peevish people thus reproach themselves for, and shame themselves out of, their discontents.

So foolish was I. He, though a saint of God, had acted as if he had been one of the fools whom God abhorreth. Had he not even envied them?—and what is that but to aspire to be like them? The wisest of men have enough folly in them to ruin them unless grace prevents. And ignorant. He had acted as if he knew nothing, had babbled like an idiot, had uttered the very drivel of a witless loon. He did not know how sufficiently to express his sense of his own fatuity. I was as a beast before thee. Even in God's presence he had been brutish, and worse than a beast. As the grass eating ox has but this present life, and can only estimate things thereby, and by the sensual pleasure which they afford, even so had the psalmist judged happiness by this mortal life, by outward appearances, and by fleshly enjoyments. Thus he had, for the time, renounced the dignity of an immortal spirit, and, like a mere animal, judged after the sight of the eyes. We should be very loath to call an inspired man a beast, and yet, penitence made him call himself so; nay, he uses the plural, by way of emphasis, and as if he were worse than any one beast. It was but an evidence of his true wisdom that he was so deeply conscious of his own folly. We see how bitterly good men bewail mental wanderings; they make no excuses for themselves, but set their sins in the pillory, and cast the vilest reproaches upon them. O for grace to detest the very appearance of evil!

OUR Lord Jesus was tempted in all points like we are. With some reserve we might almost say the same of David. Of all the worthies whose lives are written out at length in Holy Writ, David possesses an experience of the most striking, varied and instructive character. In his history we meet with temptations, and complications of temptations not to be discovered, at least as a connected whole, in other saints of ancient times. Trials which stand out in the lives of other men as isolated hills form whole chains and ranges of mountains in the case of the son of Jesse. David knew the trials of all ranks and conditions of men. Kings have their troubles and David wore a crown—the peasant has his cares and David handled the shepherd's crook. The wanderer has many hardships and David abode in the caves of Engedi—the captain has his difficulties and David found the sons of Zeruiah too hard for him. The Psalmist of Israel was tried by his friends. His counselor, Ahithophel, forsook him. "He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me." His worst foes were of his own household. His children were his greatest afflictions. Amnon disgraces him, Absalom excites revolt, Adonijah disturbs his dying bed. The temptations of poverty and wealth, of honor and reproach, of health and sickness, all tried their power upon him. He had tribulations from without. I need not remind you that during his long life they came from every quarter. He had temptations from within, for the man after God's own heart not only knew what it was to be assailed, but to be carried by storm, by fierce and terrible passions. I may grant, perhaps, that Job's trial was more severe than any that fell to David. But yet I know not.

OUR Lord Jesus was tempted in all points like we are. With some reserve we might almost say the same of David. Of all the worthies whose lives are written out at length in Holy Writ, David possesses an experience of the most striking, varied and instructive character. In his history we meet with temptations, and complications of temptations not to be discovered, at least as a connected whole, in other saints of ancient times.

So foolish was I, and ignorant - Such low and imperfect views did I take of the subject. The margin is, “I knew not.” So the Hebrew: “And I am brutish, and know not;” that is, I did not understand the case; I had no correct views in regard to it. I was as a beast before thee - Margin, as in Hebrew, “with thee.” That is, in thy very presence; or, I was guilty of such foolishness in the very presence of my Maker. If it had been when I was alone, or when no one saw me, the folly would not have been so aggravated, and so much to be regretted, but it was when the very eye of God was upon me. Compare Isa 1:7; Jer 7:30; Jer 18:10; Psa 51:4. When he says that he was as a beast, he means that he was stupid and senseless; he had no proper understanding of the case; he did not take any just views of it.