Psalms 49:4 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

I will incline mine ear: this is another argument to persuade them to hearken to him: I will hearken what God by his Spirit speaks to me, and that and nothing else will I now speak to you; and therefore it is well worth your hearing. I also shall join with you in attending to it, that whilst I teach you, I myself may learn the same lesson. For as ministers now teach themselves whilst they teach others, so the holy prophets did ofttimes search into and study to find out the meaning of their own prophecies, as appears plainly from 1 Peter 1:10,11. The phrase is thought to be taken from the musicians, who lay their ear close to the instrument when they tune it, and by their ear try how the voice and instrument agree. To a parable; which properly is a figurative and allegorical speech, but is oft more largely taken for any excellent, and important, and withal dark or difficult, doctrine or sentence: see Numbers 23:7, Numbers 24:3,15 Psa 78:2, compared with Matthew 13:35. I will open, i.e. I will not smother it in my own breast, but publish it to the world. My dark saying; so he justly calls the following discourse, because the thing in question is and ever hath been thought difficult and hard to be understood.