Psalms 63:2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

To see To enjoy, as seeing often means; thy power and glory The powerful and glorious effects and evidences of thy gracious presence: to see them here in this wilderness, as I have seen them in the tabernacle; to see them in secret, as I have seen them in the solemn assembly: or, to see them again in the sanctuary, as I have formerly seen them there. He longs to be brought out of this wilderness, not that he might see his friends again, and be restored to the pleasures and gayeties of the court, but that he might have access to the sanctuary; not to see the priests there, and the ceremonies of the worship, but to see the power and glory, that is, the glorious power, or powerful glory, of God, which is put for all his attributes and perfections: that he might increase in his acquaintance with them, and have the suitable impressions of them made upon his heart: in other words, so to behold the glory of the Lord as to be changed into the same image, 2 Corinthians 3:18. The phraseology of the psalmist should be observed here; he does not say, to see thy power and glory as I have seen them, but as I have seen thee. We cannot, indeed, see the essence of God, but we see him, in the sense meant by the psalmist, in seeing by faith his gracious and glorious perfections. With the remembrance of these sights David here pleaseth himself: those were precious minutes which he spent in communion with God: he loved to recollect and dwell upon them: of these he lamented the loss, and to these he longed to be restored. Reader, are thy views and feelings of this kind? Dost thou thus esteem, desire, and delight in God's ordinances? Art thou thus pained when deprived of them, and thus delighted when privileged with the enjoyment of them? And dost thou thus desire, and expect, and seek, and find the presence of God in them? “The true Christian,” says Dr. Horne, “dedicates to God ‘the sweet hour of prime,' he opens the eyes of his understanding, together with those of his body, and awakes each morning to righteousness. He arises with an inextinguishable thirst after those comforts which the world cannot give, and has immediate recourse, by prayer, to the fountain of the water of life; ever longing to behold the divine power and glory in the sanctuary above, of which he has been favoured with some glimpse in the services of the church below.”