Psalms 26:9 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

My soul, i.e. my life, as it is explained in the next clause. Do not bind me up in the same bundle, nor put me into the same accursed and miserable condition, with them. Seeing I have had so great an antipathy against them in the whole course of my life, Psalms 26:4,5, let me not die their death; as Balaam on the contrary desired to die the death of the righteous, Numbers 23:10. And seeing I have loved thy house and worship, and endeavoured to serve thee acceptably, not only with ceremonial cleanness, but with moral purity of heart and life, Psalms 26:6-8, do not deal with me as thou wilt with those that are filled with ungodliness and unrighteousness; do not destroy me with them, the righteous with the wicked, Genesis 18:23, but save me in the common calamity, as thou hast promised and used to do in like cases. The Hebrew word asaph, rendered gathering, is oft put for taking away, as Genesis 30:23 Isaiah 4:1 Jeremiah 8:13, Jeremiah 16:5, and that by destruction and death, as 1 Samuel 15:6 Isaiah 57:1 Jeremiah 8:13 Ezekiel 34:29 Hosea 4:3. The ground of which phrase may be either, because by death men's souls or spirits are gathered and returned to God, Ecclesiastes 12:7, who had dispersed them all the world over; or because the several sorts of men, good and bad, which live here together promiscuously, are there severed, and all of one sort of them gathered together unto their fathers or peoples, as it is expressed, Genesis 15:15 Numbers 20:24 2 Kings 22:20: compare Hebrews 12:23. With sinners; profligate and obstinate sinners, as the following words describe them, such being oft called sinners by way of eminency, as 1 Samuel 15:18 Psalms 1:1, Psalms 104:35 Isaiah 1:28, Isaiah 33:14.