Psalms 119:139-141 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

My zeal hath consumed me My zeal toward thy law, which my enemies violate and contemn. “Zeal is a high degree of love; and when the object of that love is ill treated, it vents itself in a mixture of grief and indignation, which are sufficient to wear and consume the heart. This will be the case when men rightly conceive of that dishonour which is continually done to God by creatures whom he hath made and redeemed. But never could the verse be uttered with such fulness of truth and propriety by any one, as by the Son of God, who had such a sense of his Father's glory, and of man's sin, as no person else ever had. And, accordingly, when his zeal had exerted itself in purging the temple, St. John tells us, his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.” Horne. Thy word is very pure Without the least mixture of any falsehood or sin; therefore thy servant loveth it Because of that exact purity and holiness of it; although, for that very reason, ungodly men either despise or hate it. I am small Hebrew, צעיר, a little one; not for age, but, in respect of my condition in the world, mean and obscure; yet do I not forget thy precepts As my conscience bears me witness. If we are small and despised, we have the more need to remember God's precepts, that we may have them to support us under the pressures of a low condition.