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: — This is the language of prayer; but it is prayer almost in the tone of a challenge. Taken in connection with its context, it is a claim on the part of the speaker to a spotless innocence. The words of the psalmist are, in the full sense, proper only in the mouth of His Divine Son and Lord. Has, then, the text no meaning for the sinful, struggling followers of Christ? Yea! the followers of the Messiah are His members as well as followers. The prayer of our text, then, is not out of place in the mouth of a true-hearted Christian. He may offer it. In the name and strength of his Divine Surety and Head he is bound continually to cherish the spirit of one whose soul will break forth into the prayer, "Search me, O God," etc.

I. TO KNOW HEARTS BELONGETH ONLY TO THE LORD. This is an attribute distinctively His own, not shared in any measure with any created being.

1. God's knowledge of the heart differs from that which man or angel has in this, that it is immediate. God knows, — as it were, sees, — the very spirit, and its every act and state. Man knows only certain outer signs which the spirit makes, from which he infers its thoughts and feelings.

2. The knowledge of God, and of God alone, is unintermittent and all-piercing. It alone is eternal in duration of exercise, and it alone is able to compass the infinite relations even of one spirit. And to be the Searcher of hearts is to have an incessant and all-piercing glance into the inner being and most extended relations, not only of one spirit, but of all spirits, human and angelic. To form, therefore, a truthful estimate of the moral character of any one soul, the Searcher of hearts must know the attitude it would assume if brought into the presence of each creature, and also the attitude it would assume to every manifestation of His own infinite nature.

II. HE KNOWS THE HEART NECESSARILY: He cannot but know it.

1. Then to Him are known all the dark mysteries of iniquity which men carry about locked up in their breasts. You yourself may sometimes forget it; He never does; and He intends with a changeless purpose to discover you to the whole world in due time, to put you to open shame, and bring you to condign punishment. Struggle no more in the fruitless labour to conceal your sin. In shame and sorrow of deep repentance hasten to make confession to the Searcher of hearts; to make confession not only of your black secret, but of all the ills with which your life is filled. Cast yourself upon His mercy. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin."

2. Then all hypocritical profession of the faith is vain. You may be wickedly deceiving yourselves as well as your fellow-men, like the young man in the Gospel ready to say of the commandments, "All these have I kept from my youth up," and in truth very near the kingdom of heaven; but the Lord marks with unerring certainty that beloved lust, that precious thing of earth, reserved, which you will not give up for Christ. And it, no matter how trivial, no matter how godlike, digs a gulf fathomless and bridgeless between you and life.

3. The Lord searcheth the heart; and, if so, "the Lord knoweth them that are His." With this truth Paul comforted himself and Timothy amid the desponding thoughts with which the apostasy of certain flaming professors in the Church of Ephesus was crushing them. With this truth, too, comfort yourself, O child of God, amid the painful doubts which the humble heart is so ready to entertain of its own sincerity and steadfastness.

(James Hamilton, M. A.)

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KJV: Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

WEB: Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts.