4). He Points Out To Them The Way To True Life (12-14).
M ‘What man is he who desires life,
And loves many days, that he may see good?'
N Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking guile.
S Depart from evil, and do good,
Seek peace, and pursue it.'
The Psalmist now raises the question as to how a man may enjoy a long and true life. This is the Old Testament equivalent to the quest for eternal life, the life that is God-given (compare Psalms 16:11, ‘you will show me the path of life, in your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures for evermore'; Psalms 30:5, ‘in His favour is life'). And he then describes the kind of man who will find that life. The idea in mind here is found in Leviticus 18:5, ‘You shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments, which if a man do, he will live in them. I am YHWH.' The thought was to have the quality of life that would extend life. Such a person would both live long and see much good. The words are literally, ‘loving days for seeing good'. They want to live long for the good that they can do.
He then outlines in detail something of what such living would involve. They were to keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking guile. In other words, their tongues were to speak in openness and honesty and for men's genuine good. Their ‘yes' was to be ‘yes, and their ‘no' was to be ‘no' (Matthew 5:37). There must be no deceitfulness and lying, no tale-bearing, no backbiting and cruelty of word. Every word should be surrounded by love. This emphasis on spoken words becomes a New Testament theme. ‘The tongue -- is a little member -- which is set on fire by Hell' (James 3:5-6). So ‘let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer every man' (Colossians 4:6). Because ‘for every idle word that men shall speak, they will give account of them in the Day of Judgment' (Matthew 12:36).
They were to ‘depart from evil and do good'. Compare Isaiah 1:16-17, ‘wash yourselves thoroughly, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well'. It is not enough just to ‘stop sinning'. The real test of whether we have become His is whether our lives make a positive contribution towards good. ‘By their fruits you will know them' (Matthew 7:16; Matthew 7:20). For ‘to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin' (James 4:17).
‘Seek peace, and pursue it.' Finally they were to search out peace, and then chase it as hard and as persistently as they could like the hunter his prey. All dissension, all disharmony, and all bitterness was to be disposed of and removed. ‘Let us follow after things which make for peace' (Romans 14:19). ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God' (Matthew 5:9).