Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
Stand in awe, and sin not. Septuagint and Ephesians 4:26 translate "Be ye angry, and sin not." х Rigzuw (H7264)] usually means 'tremble' (cf. Psalms 18:7), or else "be wroth" (Isaiah 28:21). The former accords with the English version, "Stand in (trembling) awe of God as the Avenger of my cause, "and sin not" by persisting in your revolt. Compare Psalms 2:10-12, exactly parallel as to the Antitype, Christ. Henystenberg takes it as Septuagint, and as Ephesians 4:26 quotes it - i:e., 'Sin not through anger:' I would indeed permit your anger, if the only effect were the injury which might thereby alight upon me; but since in this revolt you cannot be angry without sinning,. I warn you to abstain from it. The blustering passion of the enemy stands in contrast to "be still:" this antithesis confirms the rendering, "Be ye angry," etc. In Ephesians 4:26, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" answers to "commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still" (the opposite of 'wrath'): see my note there. David forbids "anger" in the case of the revolt altogether; but in such a way as to imply (as Paul uses the text) that cases might occur where "anger" has legitimate scope. Paul takes that particular application of the verse which the Spirit suggested as there needed, though a distinct aspect from that which it bears here: for Scripture has many-sided aspects. David exhorts the revolters to that which he experienced the blessedness of himself-namely, meditation on one's ways before God in the stillness of night, upon one's bed. It is this which gives him such composure and holy confidence. Without the least bitterness, he urges them to "commune with their own heart," in the retirement of the bedchamber, alone with God, when conscience may put their bad enterprise in its true light; and to "be still" or 'silent,' apart from the tumultuous passions which their communings with their fellow-rebels excited.