Psalms 119:100

I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.

I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. Obedience is the key to the true knowledge of God and the highest things (). The ancients or elders, by reason of lengthened experience and observation, were, in the East, before the days of many books, considered the repositories of knowledge. Their knowledge is natural; mine is revealed, and therefore far exceeds theirs. 'Antiquity is no help against stupidity, where it does not accord with the commandments of God' (Luther). Compare Job 32:7. The three classes - "mine enemies ... my teachers ... the ancients" - though wise in their own eyes and those of the world, are all my inferiors in wisdom, because my wisdom is that of God's Word, loved and practiced. The Bible does not startle men with declared anticipations of discoveries in physics not yet made by men of science; but the reverent man of science finds in it his newest discovery sufficiently provided for by tacit anticipation. The Bible is the true history of the world, past, present, and to come.