Psalms 19:1

PSALM 19 THE ARGUMENT The design of this Psalm is to adore and magnify the name of God, for the discovery of his wisdom, and power, and goodness, both by his great and glorious works of creation and providence, and especially by his word and the Holy Scripture; which he prefers before the former. The heavens declare the glory of God, Psalms 19:1. So do night and day, Psalms 19:2,3, and the sun, Psalms 19:4. The perfection, purity, and extent of God's law; its effects, Psalms 19:7. He prayeth against presumptuous sins, Psalms 19:13. The heavens; these visible heavens, so vast and spacious, richly adorned with stars, so various and admirable in their course or station, so useful and powerful in their influences. Declare; not properly, but objectively, as the earth, and trees, and stars are said to speak, Job 12:8, Job 38:7 Isaiah 55:12; they demonstrate or make it evident and undeniable to all men of sense or reason; they are as a most legible book, wherein even he that runs may read it. The glory of God, i.e. his glorious being or existence, his eternal power and Godhead, as it is particularly expressed, Romans 1:20; his infinite wisdom and goodness; all which are so visible in them, that it is ridiculous to deny or doubt of them, as it is esteemed ridiculous to think of far meaner works of art, as a house or a book, &c., that they were made without an artist, or without a hand. The firmament; or, the expansion, i.e. all this vast space extended from the earth to the highest heavens, with all its goodly furniture, the same thing which he called heavens. Showeth his handywork; the excellency of the work discovers who was the author of it, that it did not come by chance, nor spring of itself, but was made by the Lord God Almighty.