(8)"With recollections clear, august, sublime,

Of God's great Truth and Right immutable

She queened it o'er her weakness."--A. H. CLOUGH.

Verse 8. - Good and upright is the Lord. A transition. From prayer the psalmist turns to reflection, and meditates awhile (vers. 8-10) on the character and ways of God. God is, indeed, "good," as he has implied in the preceding verse - i.e., kind, tender, gentle, merciful; but he is also "upright" (יָשָׁר) - just, straight, strict, undeviating from the path of right. As Bishop Butler observes, "Divine goodness, with which, if I mistake not, we make very free in our speculations, may not be a bare single disposition to produce happiness, but a disposition to make the good, the faithful, the honest man happy" ('Anal.,' 1:2, p. 41) - s disposition, i.e., to be just as well as merciful to distribute happiness by the canon of right. Therefore will he teach sinners in the way. He will not abandon sinners - this is his "goodness;" but will reclaim them, chasten them, make them to walk in his way - this is his uprightness.

25:8-14 We are all sinners; and Christ came into the world to save sinners, to teach sinners, to call sinners to repentance. We value a promise by the character of him that makes it; we therefore depend upon God's promises. All the paths of the Lord, that is, all his promises and all his providences, are mercy and truth. In all God's dealings his people may see his mercy displayed, and his word fulfilled, whatever afflictions they are now exercised with. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth; and so it will appear when they come to their journey's end. Those that are humble, that distrust themselves, and desire to be taught and to follow Divine guidance, these he will guide in judgment, that is, by the rule of the written word, to find rest for their souls in the Saviour. Even when the body is sick, and in pain, the soul may be at ease in God.Good and upright is the Lord,.... He is essentially, originally, and independently good of himself in his own nature, and he is providentially good to all his creatures; and he is in a way of special grace and mercy good to his own people: and he is "upright", just in himself, righteous in all his ways and works, and faithful in all his promises; and the consideration of these excellent perfections of his encouraged the psalmist to entertain an holy confidence, that his petitions, respecting instruction and guidance in the ways of the Lord, Psalm 25:4; would be heard and answered, notwithstanding his sins and transgressions;

therefore will he teach sinners in the way; such who are in sinful ways, he will teach them by his word and Spirit the evil of their ways, and bring them out of them, and to repentance for them; and he will teach them his own ways, both the ways and methods of his grace, in saving sinners by Christ, and the paths of faith and duty in which he would have them walk; see Psalm 51:13.