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The especial point of this whole psalm lies in the contrast between the present and the future, between the transitory and the eternal. His bodily frame, or "flesh," the psalmist feels, is breaking up. For the moment it might seem that his "heart" was partaking in the depressing sense of coming dissolution. The "heart" with the Hebrews means, speaking generally, the centre or inner seat of life, whether physical or spiritual. It is indeed used in one well-known passage of the Psalter in the physical sense of animal life-power which is quickened by food and made glad by wine. More commonly it is the centre from which the life-stream of thought and feeling pours through the soul. Thus the "heart" is said to "speak," to "think," to "conceive within self," to "meditate," to "desire," to "cry out in song and jubilee," to be heated with intense thought, to be grieved, to be desolate, to be smitten and withered like grass, to be wounded, to be broken. Especially is the heart the seat of the moral life, of its movement and repose, of its conquests and failures, of its final victory or death. Thus the heart is said to be "ready," or "clean," or "fixed," or "whole" and "perfect," or "converted," or "hardened," as the case may be. As the seat of the moral life the heart is described as "deep." God knows its mysterious secrets. Thus, then, in the passage before us, "the flesh" is in contrast to the "heart," as the animal frame of man might be contrasted with the life of consciousness, feeling, and moral effort. The former is yielding to the slow, certain action of time, and has already upon it the presentiment of death. The latter seems for one instant to lose the sense of its real indestructibility in its profound sympathy with the weakly body which yet encases it. But the darkness lasts for a moment only; for "God is the strength of my heart," etc. The contrast is too perfect to be evaded. On the one side the perishing body; on the other, the undying soul. And it is this vision which removes the difficulty he had felt in regard to the ways of God. It melts away altogether beneath the rays of light which stream from one cardinal truth, it is solved by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul of man.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

WEB: My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.