Psalm 119:99

I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(99) More understanding . . .—The Rabbinical writers disliked the idea of a scholar professing wisdom above his teachers, and rendered, “from all my teachers I got wisdom,” which was certainly far more in keeping with the process by which the Talmud grew into existence.

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 have more understanding than all my teachers - Referring perhaps to those who had given him instruction in early life. By constant meditation on the law of God, he had, in the progress of years, advanced to a point beyond that to which they had arrived. He had improved upon their suggestions and instructions, until he had surpassed them in knowledge. His "design" in saying this was to set forth the excellency and the fullness of the law of God, and to show how the study of it was suited to enlarge the understanding. In early life the wisdom of teachers seems to be far beyond anything that we can hope to reach; yet a few years of study and meditation may place us far beyond them. What those teachers seemed to be to us, however, when we were young, may serve ever onward as a means of comparison when we wish to speak of the greatness of human attainments. So the psalmist says that he had now reached a point which seemed to him in early life to be wonderful, and to be beyond what he had then hoped ever to attain. He had now reached that point; he had gone beyond it.

For thy testimonies are my meditation - Compare Psalm 1:2; 2 Timothy 3:15. All this knowledge he had obtained by meditation on the law of God; by the study of divine truth. The effect of that constant study was seen in the knowledge which he now possessed, and which seemed to surprise even himself as compared with the brightest anticipations of his early years.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

99. understanding—is practical skill (Ps 2:10; 32:8).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Understanding: he speaks not here of notional, but of spiritual, and practical, and experimental knowledge.

Than all my teachers; than all or most (for that general word is oft so understood) of those who taught me formerly, or of the public teachers in Saul’s time; which probably were for the generality of them neither so knowing nor so good as they should have been.

My meditations; the matter of my constant and most diligent study.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I have more understanding than all my teachers,.... Such as had been or would have been his teachers, who were bad ones in religious matters; especially such might be the religious teachers in Saul's time, when David was a young man: as the priests, whose lips should keep knowledge, and deliver it to the people, were in the times of Malachi; and as the Scribes and Pharisees, who, sat in Moses's chair, were in Christ's time; and as those legal teachers were in the apostles' times, who would be teachers of the law, not knowing what they said, nor whereof they affirmed; such as these David exceeded in spiritual understanding. Or his good teachers are meant; and though in common it is true that "a disciple is not above his master", Matthew 10:24; yet there are sometimes instances in which scholars exceed their teachers in knowledge and learning; and this is no reproach to a master to have such scholars: no doubt Apollos so improved in knowledge as to excel Aquila and Priscilla, of whom he learned much; as the Apostle Paul excelled Ananias; and so David excelled his teachers: and which is said by him, not in an ostentatious way of himself, nor in contempt of his teachers; but to commend the word of God, the source of his knowledge; and to magnify the grace of God, to whom he attributes all his wisdom, as in Psalm 119:98. Kimchi interprets it,

"of them all I have learned and received instruction; and from them I have understood the good way, and they have taught me;''

for thy testimonies are my meditation; what he learned of his teachers he compared with the word, the Scriptures, which testify of the mind and will of God; he searched into them, he meditated upon them, and considered whether what his instructors taught him were agreeable to them or and by this means he got more understanding than they had.

Geneva Study Bible

I have more {b} understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.

(b) Whoever submits himself only to God's word will not only be safe against the practises of his enemies, but also learn more wisdom than they who profess it, and are men of experience.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

99. than all my teachers] Who derive their learning from other sources. Delitzsch thinks that Psalm 119:98-100 refer to teachers and elders who, like the Hellenizing Sadducees, were in danger of apostasy through their laxity, and persecuted the strict young zealot for God’s law. But clearly the Psalmist’s point is not the superiority of his own stricter interpretation of the law to the laxer interpretation of his teachers, but the superiority of the law to all other sources of instruction as a fountain of wisdom and prudence and discernment.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 99. - I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. Teachers of secular knowledge are intended, wise in their special branches of learning, but not "wise unto salvation." Such "teachers" have often no spiritual knowledge or discernment. Psalm 119:99

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.