Blessed is the man. — Or collective, men, as the suffix, their hearts, shows.
Ways. — From a root meaning to cast up — and so highways marked by the heaps of stone piled up at the side (Isaiah 57:14). In Jeremiah 18:15 mere footways or bypaths are contrasted, and so the highway lends itself as a metaphor for the way of peace and righteousness (Proverbs 12:28), as it is taken here by the Chaldee and some modern expositors. But this moral intention is secondary to the actual desire to join the pilgrim band towards Sion, and this the verse describes in words which are echoed exactly in our own Chaucer:
“So pricketh hem Nature in her corages (in their hearts)
Than longen folk to go on pilgrimages.”
The well-known and deeply loved route to the sacred shrine is in their minds, their hearts are set upon it.