Psalm 50:17

Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 50:17. Seeing thou hatest instruction — Seeing thy practice contradicts thy profession, and makes thee a notorious and impudent liar. For though with thy mouth thou showest much love to my statutes and counsels, yet, in truth, thou hatest them, as they oppose and hinder the gratification of thy beloved lusts, and are the instruments of thy just condemnation, and a manifest reproach to thy conduct. Or, seeing thou hatest reproof as מוסר, musar, is often rendered. And this, above all other parts of God’s word, is most hateful to ungodly men; and, therefore, this is fitly alleged as an evidence of their wickedness. And castest my words behind thee — As men do things which they abhor and despise.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

50:16-23 Hypocrisy is wickedness, which God will judge. And it is too common, for those who declare the Lord's statutes to others, to live in disobedience to them themselves. This delusion arises from the abuse of God's long-suffering, and a wilful mistake of his character and the intention of his gospel. The sins of sinners will be fully proved on them in the judgment of the great day. The day is coming when God will set their sins in order, sins of childhood and youth, of riper age and old age, to their everlasting shame and terror. Let those hitherto forgetful of God, given up to wickedness, or in any way negligent of salvation, consider their urgent danger. The patience of the Lord is very great. It is the more wonderful, because sinners make such ill use of it; but if they turn not, they shall be made to see their error when it is too late. Those that forget God, forget themselves; and it will never be right with them till they consider. Man's chief end is to glorify God: whoso offers praise, glorifies him, and his spiritual sacrifices shall be accepted. We must praise God, sacrifice praise, put it into the hands of the Priest, our Lord Jesus, who is also the altar: we must be fervent in spirit, praising the Lord. Let us thankfully accept God's mercy, and endeavour to glorify him in word and deed.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Seeing thou hatest instruction - That is, He is unwilling himself to be taught. He will not learn the true nature of religion, and yet he presumes to instruct others. Compare the notes at Romans 2:21.

And castest my words behind thee - He treated them with contempt, or as unworthy of attention. He did not regard them as worthy of being "retained," but threw them contemptuously away.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

16-20. the wicked—that is, the formalists, as now exposed, and who lead vicious lives (compare Ro 2:21, 23). They are unworthy to use even the words of God's law. Their hypocrisy and vice are exposed by illustrations from sins against the seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Seeing thy practice contradicts thy profession, and makes thee a notorious and impudent liar. Though with thy mouth thou showest much love (as is said of them, Ezekiel 33:31) to my statutes and counsels, yet in truth thou hatest them, as they are curbs to thy beloved lusts, and instruments of thy just condemnation, and a manifest reproach to thy conversation. Or,

seeing thou hatest reproof, as this word is oft rendered. And this, above all other parts of God’s word, is most hateful to ungodly men, Proverbs 9:8 Proverbs 12:1 15:10,12 Am 5:10. And therefore this is fitly alleged as an evidence of their wickedness.

Castest my words behind thee; as men do things which they abhor or despise.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Seeing thou hatest instruction,.... Or "correction" (z); to be reproved or reformed by the statutes and covenant they declared to others; they taught others, but not themselves, Romans 2:21; or evangelical instruction, the doctrines of grace, and of Christ; for, as concerning the Gospel, they were enemies, Romans 11:28; and since they were haters of that, they ought not to have been teachers of others;

and castest my words behind thee; the doctrines of the Gospel, which they despised and rejected with the utmost abhorrence, as loathsome, and not fit to be looked upon and into; and also the ordinances of it, the counsel of God, which they rejected against themselves, Acts 13:45.

(z) "correctionem", Vatablus; "correptionem", Gejerus.

Geneva Study Bible

Seeing thou hatest {n} instruction, and castest my words behind thee.

(n) To live according to my word.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

17. instruction] Or, correction; the whole discipline of moral education; a word occurring here only in the Psalter, but common in Proverbs, where it is the mark of the fool and the scorner to despise instruction. Cp. Deuteronomy 8:5; Deuteronomy 11:2.

and castest &c.] Lit., and hast cast, flung them away out of sight and got rid of them. Contrast David’s behaviour, Psalm 18:22. My words includes all God’s commandments, but points especially to the ‘ten words’ of the Decalogue (Deuteronomy 4:13; cp. Exodus 20:1).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - Seeing thou hatest instruction (comp. Proverbs 1:25, 29). God, by his Law, teaches men their duties; but many men "hate" to be instructed. And castest my words behind thee (comp. 1 Kings 14:9; Nehemiah 9:26). They proceed from "inward alienation" to "open rejection" of the moral law. Psalm 50:17

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The accusation of the manifest sinners. It is not those who are addressed in Psalm 50:7, as Hengstenberg thinks, who are here addressed. Even the position of the words ולרשׁע אמר clearly shows that the divine discourse is now turned to another class, viz., to the evil-doers, who, in connection with open and manifest sins and vices, take the word of God upon their lips, a distinct class from those who base their sanctity upon outward works of piety, who outwardly fulfil the commands of God, but satisfy and deceive themselves with this outward observance. מה־לּך ל, what hast thou, that thou equals it belongs not to thee, it does not behove thee. With ועתּה, in Psalm 50:17, an adversative subordinate clause beings: since thou dost not care to know anything of the moral ennobling which it is the design of the Law to give, and my words, instead of having them as a constant test-line before thine eyes, thou castest behind thee and so turnest thy back upon them (cf. Isaiah 38:17). ותּרץ is not from רוּץ (lxx, Targum, and Saadia), in which case it would have to be pointed ותּרץ, but from רצה, and is construed here, as in Job 34:9, with עם: to have pleasure in intercourse with any one. In Psalm 50:18 the transgression of the eighth commandment is condemned, in Psalm 50:18 that of the seventh, in Psalm 50:19. that of the ninth (concerning the truthfulness of testimony). שׁלח פּה ברעה, to give up one's mouth unrestrainedly to evil, i.e., so that evil issues from it. תּשׁב, Psalm 50:20, has reference to gossiping company (cf. Psalm 1:1). דּפי signifies a thrust, a push (cf. הדף), after which the lxx renders it ἐτίθεις σκάνδαλον (cf. Leviticus 19:14), but it also signifies vexation and mockery (cf. גּדף); it is therefore to be rendered: to bring reproach (Jerome, opprobrium) upon any one, to cover him with dishonour. The preposition בּ with דּבּר has, just as in Numbers 12:1, and frequently, a hostile signification. "Thy mother's son" is he who is born of the same mother with thyself, and not merely of the same father, consequently thy brother after the flesh in the fullest sense. What Jahve says in this passage is exactly the same as that which the apostle of Jesus Christ says in Romans 2:17-24. This contradiction between the knowledge and the life of men God must, for His holiness' sake, unmask and punish, Psalm 50:20. The sinner thinks otherwise: God is like himself, i.e., that is also not accounted by God as sin, which he allows himself to do under the cloak of his dead knowledge. For just as a man is in himself, such is his conception also of his God (vid., Psalm 18:26.). But God will not encourage this foolish idea: "I will therefore reprove thee and set (it) in order before thine eyes" (ואערכה, not ואערכה, in order to give expression, the second time at least, to the mood, the form of which has been obliterated by the suffix); He will set before the eyes of the sinner, who practically and also in theory denies the divine holiness, the real state of his heart and life, so that he shall be terrified at it. Instead of היה, the infin. intensit. here, under the influence of the close connection of the clauses (Ew. 240, c), is היות; the oratio obliqua begins with it, without כּי (quod). כמוך exactly corresponds to the German deines Gleichen, thine equal.