of the judicial decision recorded in writing, Job 13:26). Because Jahve before all else requires obedience to His will, David comes with the document of this will, the Tôra, which prescribes to him, as a man, and more especially as the king, the right course of conduct. Thus presenting himself to the God of revelation, he can say in Psa 40:9, that willing obedience to God's Law is his delight, as he then knows that the written Law is written even in his heart, or, as the still stronger expression used here is, in his bowels. The principal form of מעי, does not occur in the Old Testament; it was מעים (from מע, מעה, or even מעי), according to current Jewish pronunciation מעים (which Kimchi explains dual); and the word properly means (vid., on Isa 48:19) the soft parts of the body, which even elsewhere, like רחמים, which is synonymous according to its original meaning, appear pre-eminently as the seat of sympathy, but also of fear and of pain. This is the only passage in which it occurs as the locality of a mental acquisition, but also with the associated notion of loving acceptance and cherishing protection (cf. the Syriac phrase סם בגו מעיא, som begau meajo, to shut up in the heart = to love). That the Tôra is to be written upon the tables of the heart is even indicated by the Deuteronomion, Deu 6:6, cf. Pro 3:3; Pro 7:3. This reception of the Tôra into the inward parts among the people hitherto estranged from God is, according to Jer 31:33, the characteristic of the new covenant. But even in the Old Testament there is among the masses of Israel “a people with My law in their heart” (Isa 51:7), and even in the Old Testament, “he who hath the law of his God in his heart” is called righteous (Psa 37:31). As such an one who has the Tôra within him, not merely beside him, David presents himself on the way to the throne of God.
Verses 10-11
The self-presentation before Jahve, introduced by אז אמרתּי, extends from הנה to מעי; consequently בּשּׂרתּי yltn joins on to אמרתי, and the אכלא which stands in the midst of perfects describes the synchronous past. The whole is a retrospect. בּשּׂר, Arab. bššr (root בש), starting from its sensible primary signification to scrape off, scratch off, rub smooth, means: to smooth any one (glätten), Engl. to gladden one, i.e., vultum ejus diducere, to make him joyful and glad, more especially to cheer
