Psalm 119:100

I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(100) Ancients.—Or, more probably, as the LXX. and Vulg., and the old versions generally took it, old men.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

119:97-104 What we love, we love to think of. All true wisdom is from God. A good man carries his Bible with him, if not in his hands, yet in his head and in his heart. By meditation on God's testimonies we understand more than our teachers, when we understand our own hearts. The written word is a more sure guide to heaven, than all the fathers, the teachers, and ancients of the church. We cannot, with any comfort or boldness, attend God in holy duties, while under guilt, or in any by-way. It was Divine grace in his heart, that enabled the psalmist to receive these instructions. The soul has its tastes as well as the body. Our relish for the word of God will be greatest, when that for the world and the flesh is least. The way of sin is a wrong way; and the more understanding we get by the precepts of God, the more rooted will be our hatred of sin; and the more ready we are in the Scriptures, the better furnished we are with answers to temptation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I understand more than the ancients - Hebrew, The old men. It does not refer, as the word "ancients" does with us, to the people of former times, but to aged men. They have treasured up wisdom. They have had the advantage of experience, of study, and of observation. They, therefore, like teachers, become a standard by which we measure our own attainments, as the boy hardly hopes to gain that amount of knowledge which he observes in people who are venerable in years, and who are remarkable for their acquirements. Compare Job 12:12 : "With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding." Job 32:7 : "I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom." Compare 1 Kings 4:30-31. Yet the psalmist says that he "had" reached this point, and had even gone beyond what he had once thought he could never attain.

Because I keep thy precepts - It is all the result of an honest endeavor to do right; to observe law; to keep the commands of God. Obedience to the law of God will do more than any mere human teaching to make a man truly wise.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

100. more than the ancients—Antiquity is no help against stupidity, where it does not accord with God's word [Luther] (Job 32:7-9). The Bible is the key of all knowledge, the history of the world, past, present, and to come (Ps 111:10). He who does the will of God shall know of the doctrine (Joh 7:17).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 100. By which reason he intimates that the practice of religion is the best way to understand it, and that men’s vicious hearts and lives are the greatest hinderances of all true and solid knowledge of it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I understand more than the ancients,.... Than those that had lived in ages before him; having clearer light given him, and larger discoveries made unto him, concerning the Messiah, his person and offices particularly, as it was usual for the Lord to do; or than aged men in his own time: for though wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, may be reasonably supposed to be with ancient men; who have had a long experience of things, and have had time and opportunity of making their observations, and of laying up a stock of knowledge; and this may be expected from them, and they may be applied to for it; yet this is not always the case; a younger man, as David was, may be endued with more knowledge and understanding than such; so Elihu; see Job 8:8, Job 32:6. Or, "I have got understanding by the ancients"; so Kimchi; though the other sense seems preferable;

because I keep thy precepts; keep close to the word; attend to the reading of it, and meditation on it; keep it in mind and memory, and observe to do the commands of it; and by that means obtained a good understanding, even a better one than the ancients; especially than they that were without it, or did not carefully attend unto it; see Psalm 111:10.

Geneva Study Bible

I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

100. I have more discernment than the aged] It is not official ‘elders’ who are meant, but those whose long life has given them opportunity to learn by experience.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 100. - I understand more than the ancients; or, "the aged." Advanced age does not necessarily give wisdom (see Job 32:7-9). "Antiquity is no help against stupidity" (Luther). Because I keep thy precepts (comp. ver. 104 and John 7:17). Psalm 119:100

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The eightfold Mem. The poet praises the practical wisdom which the word of God, on this very account so sweet to him, teaches. God's precious law, with which he unceasingly occupies himself, makes him superior in wisdom (Deuteronomy 4:6), intelligence, and judgment to his enemies, his teachers, and the aged (Job 12:20). There were therefore at that time teachers and elders (πρεσβύτεροι), who (like the Hellenizing Sadducees) were not far from apostasy in their laxness, and hostilely persecuted the young and strenuous zealot for God's law. The construction of Psalm 119:98 is like Joel 1:20; Isaiah 59:12, and frequently. היא refers to the commandments in their unity: he has taken possession of them for ever (cf. Psalm 119:111). The Mishna (Aboth iv. 1) erroneously interprets: from all my teachers do I acquire understanding. All three מן in Psalm 119:98-100 signify prae (lxx ὑπὲρ). In כּלאתי, Psalm 119:101, from the mode of writing we see the verb Lamed Aleph passing over into the verb Lamed He. הורתני is, as in Proverbs 4:11 (cf. Exodus 4:15), a defective mode of writing for הוריתני. נמלצוּ, Psalm 119:103, is not equivalent to נמרצוּ, Job 6:25 (vid., Job, at Job 6:25; Job 16:2-5), but signifies, in consequence of the dative of the object לחכּי, that which easily enters, or that which tastes good (lxx ὡς gluke'a); therefore surely from מלץ equals מלט, to be smooth: how smooth, entering easily (Proverbs 23:31), are Thy words (promises) to my palate or taste! The collective singular אמרתך is construed with a plural of the predicate (cf. Exodus 1:10). He has no taste for the God-estranged present, but all the stronger taste for God's promised future. From God's laws he acquires the capacity for proving the spirits, therefore he hates every path of falsehood ( equals Psalm 119:128), i.e., all the heterodox tendencies which agree with the spirit of the age.