PSALM CXIX. 96.

"I have seen an end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is exceeding broad."

FEW passages are more frequently cited than this, and generally it is cited for one specific and exclusive purpose---to verify the doctrine of the continued conscious sinfulness in this life of all saints and believers in Jesus from the beginning to the end of time. This knowledge the sacred writer obtained, it is assumed, by looking into the commandment, and viewing its broadness, or the extent of its requirements. By looking into " the commandment" he saw that all human perfection would contain in it the element of conscious sin. Let us now look directly into the passage itself, and endeavour first to ascertain its real meaning, and then to determine its applications.

The Reader will observe that the words "but" and " is" are in this passage put in italics to indicate that there are no such words in the original. Leaving out these, the verse would read thus: "I have seen an end of all perfection; thy commandment exceeding broad "---that is, "Thy commandment," how "exceeding broad" it is! This does and must give the more exact import of the original.

The original word rendered "end" has, according to the highest authorities and Scripture usage, among others, two distinct and separate meanings---namely, the termination or boundaries of objects---and filling out, completion, consummation, or fulfilment. In this second sense the word is employed (Hab. ii. 3, and Daniel viii. 17) to represent the filling out, completion, consummation or fulfilment of prophecy. The same idea the Saviour represents in the words, " One jot or tittle shall not pass from the law until all be fulfilled," and "the Scripture must be fulfilled"---that is, whatever is affirmed in " the law" or "Scripture " shall and must be filled out, accomplished, consummated. Understanding the word " end" in the first sense (that of limitation, the meaning of the passage would be this: "I have seen the limit or boundary of all perfection; all comes within the broad circle of Thy commandment." In other words still, perfection in no form can extend beyond the broadness or limitless application of Thy commandment. Understood in the second sense--- that of filling out, completion, consummation, or fulfilment---the passage would mean this: "I have seen the filling out or consummation of all perfection." This I perceive in "Thy commandment." How "exceedingly broad" it is! Perfection can exist nowhere, in men or in angels, in any creature, in time or eternity---perfection which is not implied and included in "Thy commandment." In. that commandment, therefore, we perceive the completion or consummation of all perfection.

Let us now consider the original term here rendered perfection. This word, Tich-lah, is found nowhere in the Scriptures but in this single passage, and is derived from a word now obsolete, a word whose meaning is unknown, or a mere matter of opinion. As regards the real meaning of the word here, authorities differ, some rendering it "perfection," and others, "hope, confidence." There is one other word, and only one, Tach-leeth, which was derived from the same root as Tich-lah. The word Tach-leeth is used five times in the Old Testament. We will refer to all these passages. "From the door of the house of Eliashib even to the end (extremity) of the House of Eliashib (Zech. iii. 21). Here the word means boundary or limit. "Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" (Job. xi. 7). Here the word represents completeness or perfection of creature knowledge, and not the character of God. It would be equally proper to ask, Canst thou find out the material creation to perfection? as to put the same question in respect to God.

"He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end," that is, as Genesis renders it, unto the end of light with darkness, i.e., where the light terminates in darkness" (Job xxvi. 10). "He (God) searcheth out all perfection, the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death" (Job xxviii. 3). The obvious meaning here is: God searcheth even to all extremities, that is, to the deepest recesses of the earth. In other words, the term Tach-leeth, perfection, here represents the absolute knowledge which God has of His own works. ' I hate them with a perfect hatred" (Ps. cxxix. 22). In this passage the term perfect represents the intensity of the hatred, and not its moral character, as Satan hates holiness and holy beings with a "perfect hatred." It will be seen clearly that the only known word derived from the same root as, and consequently having a similar meaning to, Tich-Iah, never represents the idea of personal holiness or moral perfection. The Septuagint renders the passage thus: "I have seen the boundaries of all completions, or completed things; Thy commandment, how exceeding broad!" The word which, in this version, represents the original word rendered perfection in the passage under consideration, is often used in the Septuagint, the Greek testament, and by Greek authors; but in no case does it represent the idea of personal holiness, or moral perfection. We find in the first verse of this Psalm the original word commonly employed in the Scriptures to represent moral perfection. "Blessed are the undefiled (perfect, according to the marginal reading and common usage) in the way." If the sacred writer intended to represent the same idea in Verse 96, why did he not employ the same word here? In that case his meaning could not have been misunderstood. Why did he, on the other hand, employ a word nowhere else found in the Bible, and one which, according to the usage of the only known word which was derived from the same root, never has any such meaning. If then, the word Tich-lah, in the passage under consideration, means perfection, it represents the idea, not in any restricted form, as pertaining, for example, to the moral and spiritual attainments of men, but in its strictly universal meaning. The passage under consideration admits of but three constructions, one of which must be true. We give the first two in the words of Prof. Perowne.

1. "There is nothing upon earth to which there does not (as I have seen) cleave some defect." This does not accord with what the Psalmist says elsewhere of the perfection of the Divine works. It also implies a degree of knowledge impossible to creature3. No finite mind can have such an omniscience of the works of God as to perceive that they are all defective, or of the moral attainments of all the saints of God as to see them all mingled with sin. The sacred writer here speaks, not of what he has heard, but of what he has " seen."

2. "But perhaps the clause," adds Professor Perowne, "should rather be rendered: 'I have seen an end, a limit, to the whole range or compass of things; "a meaning which may be defended by the use of the similar word in Job xxvi. 10, and xxviii. 3: and which harmonises with the next clause: Thy commandment is exceeding broad'---has no limits, whilst all other things are bounded by narrow limits." This construction is perfectly consistent with the meaning, as far as can be ascertained, of every word found in the passage before us, and is wholly free from all the objections which lie against that first given. While finite minds cannot comprehend the works of God, such minds can and do know that all created objects, and all attainments of created beings, have their limits on the one band, while God's commandment has no limits on the other. This construction, therefore, can by no possibility be shown to be false.

3. The third, and what we regard as the true construction is this: "I have seen the consummation of all perfection; Thy command is exceeding broad." Nothing can exceed, in perfection, the law, or "commandment" of God, expressing, as it does, in its limitless applications, the responsibilities and duties of all moral agents, in all circumstances and relations of existence in time and to eternity, and determining with equal absoluteness the moral character and deserts of all their moral states and actions. This law is as eternal as "the eternal years of God," as immutable as its author, and as universal in its applications as the possibilities of moral conduct. This construction, like that just considered, accords with the known meaning and usage of all the words found in the passage under consideration, and best accords, as we judge, with the true and full idea of the perfection of the law, or "commandment," of God, and with what is elsewhere affirmed on the same subject. The deduction which follows from the fact that one of these two last constructions must be true, and neither can be proved false; the deduction, we say, is this, that no foundation at all exists in this passage for the doctrine of the continued conscious sin of all believers in Jesus. No idea can be more foreign from this passage than is this doctrine. Let us, for a few moments, consider the manner in ; which this doctrine is deduced from this passage.

The following addition is commonly made to the first clause of this verse, namely, "I have seen an end of all (human) perfection," that is, I have, by looking into the law of God, and contemplating its broadness, or the extent and limits of the commandment, had a perception and knowledge of the fact that no human being, no worshipper of God, and no believer in Jesus, ever did, or ever will, from the beginning to the end of time, attain to a state of conscious freedom from actual and known sin.

In view of such an interpretation, we ask, in the first place, why the term human is put in here? There is nothing in the verse itseIf, or in the context, to authorise the insertion of any such word. The declaration "all perfection," is strictly and absolutely universal in its form, and no person has a right to restrict its meaning or application. We might as properly affirm that the Psalmist intended to say, I have seen an end of all Jewish, heathen, or angelic, as of human, perfection, and in one case we should be just as far from the central and exclusive idea in the writer's mind, as in either of the others. Nor, as we have seen, can the original word, here rendered perfection, be made to bear any such restricted meaning as this, to wit, to represent the moral and spiritual state and attainments of any one class of creatures. On the other hand, no evidence at all can be adduced that it does represent any such attainments at all.

Besides, the term "end," from its literal meaning, viz., termination, determines in itself nothing whatever of the actual or possible extent or limits of the moral and spiritual attainments of any being, or class of beings, where the term perfection is employed to represent such attainments. Literally rendered and expounded, that is, according to one of the meanings of the term end, the clause before us would mean this: I have seen the end, the limit, or boundary of all perfection, that is, such perfection can ever extend beyond the broad limits of God's commandment. "The law of the Lord is perfect," and must, by its exceeding broadness, include and require perfection in all its actual and possible forms. To see the end, that is, the extent and limits of human perfection, is one thing; to perceive that such perfection is marred with conscious sin, is quite another. An angel may say, "I have the end (the extent and limits) of all (angelic) perfection, perfection being limited in all finite beings. Thy commandment is exceeding broad." Such declaration, which would be strictly true, would by no means imply that such perfection is marred at all by conscious sin. No such inference as is attempted to be drawn from this passage can, without a palpable violation of all the laws of language, be forced from it.

The exposition under consideration, we remark, in the last place, carries upon its surface its own refutation. Said exposition affirms that the Psalmist saw, in the "extent and limits of God's commandment," the certain and inevitable continued conscious sin and shortcomings, not only of all saints under the Old, but all believers in Jesus under the New, Dispensation. In looking into the "commandment" of God, we can discern what creatures ought to be, and to do. "By the law," also, "is the knowledge of sin" where sin exists. The possibilities of faith, however, we are to determine, not by looking at the "commandment," whatever the broadness of its requirements may be, but at the extent and limits of the revealed grace of God for our sanctification. Nothing can be more absurd than the assumption that by looking into the "commandment" we can determine anything whatever in regard to the extent and limits of the grace of God, the fulness of Christ, and the power of the Eternal Spirit, for accomplishing in us "the will of God, even our sanctification." What Christ has specifically revealed Himself as able to do for us, what provisions He has revealed Himself as having made for our present holiness, what He has promised to do for us in the matter, provided "He be enquired of by us to do it for us," and what power the Father and Son have given to the Eternal Spirit to work mightily within us, here, and not by looking at the "commandment," do we determine the extent and limits of the possibilities of faith. A wider and more palpable misapprehension of a text of Scripture is hardly conceivable than is involved in the exposition of Psalm cxix. 96, the exposition which we have now refuted.

We have, in the case before us, a palpable example of the manner in which a false doctrine may veil from the fund the most glorious revelations of God. Few passages in the whole compass of Holy Writ, and none, those excepted which open upon our vision "the image of the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ," disclose to the mind a more glorious aspect of the wisdom and glory of God than does the passage before us. Think, Reader, of the exceeding broadness of the commandment, the boundless extent and adaptations of its applications, and the absolute perfection of all its revelations of right, duty, and moral desert. Like its Author, this law is infinite. There are two revelations of God upon which pure finite mind will expand through eternal ages--- "the consummation of all perfection revealed in 'the commandment," on the one hand, arid "the grace of God which bringeth salvation" on the other. How much of the glory and wisdom of God does the individual perceive in Psalm cxix. 96, the individual who approaches it under the influence of the doctrine to which we have referred? "Just this and nothing more," the validity of the doctrine of the conscious lifelong sinfulness of every believer in Jesus. To all the transcendant glory revealed in the passage, his vision is perfectly veiled. When will the Eternal Spirit "open the eyes of the understanding" of His people, to read "the mind of the Spirit" in His own Word?