Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.
Ver. 2. Keep my commandments, and live.] "Live," i.e., live happily. I am the Lord that teacheth thee to profit, therefore keep my commandments; Isa 48:17 as if God should say, It is for thy profit that I command thee, and not for mine own. "In doing thereof there is great reward," saith David, Psa 19:11 and present reward, saith Solomon here, Do it and live. In the court of earthly princes there is αναβολη και μεταβολη delays and changes. Men are off and on in their promises; they are also slow and slack in their performances. But it is otherwise here: the very "entrance of thy word giveth light," Psa 119:130 and the very onset of obedience giveth life. It is but "Hear, and your soul shall live," Isa 55:3 "Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me." Rev 22:12
And my law as the apple of thine eye.] With all chariness and circumspection. The least mote offends the eye, and the least deviation violates the law. Sin is homogeneous, all of a kind, though not all of the same degree; as the least pebble is a stone, as well as the largest rock, and as the drop of a bucket is water, as well as the main ocean. Hence the least sins are in Scripture reproached by the names of the greatest. Malice is called man slaughter, lust adultery, &c.; concupiscence is condemned by the law, even the first motions of sin, though they never come to consent. Rom 7:7 Inward bleeding may kill a man. De minutis non curat lex, saith the civilian; but the law of God is spiritual, though we be carnal. And as the sunshine shows us atoms and motes, that till then we discerned not, so doth the law discover and censure smallest failings. It must therefore be kept curiously, even "as the apple of the eye," as that little man a in the eye, that cannot be touched but he will be distempered. Careful we must be even in the minutula legis, the punctilios of duty. Men will not lightly lose the least ends of gold. b
a אישׁון ab אישׁ
b Neque enim auri tantum massas tollunt, sed et bracteolas.