Psalms 63:9

9. But those He turns from these soul yearnings and sweet thoughts of God to the stern battle of life before him. The strong adversative force of the conjunction, joined to the pronoun, brings out the sharp contrast between him and his enemies.

That seek my soul, to destroy it The order of the Hebrew words is, but they to destruction will seek after my soul, that is, to their own destruction, and so the parallel clause, they shall go, etc., shows that it is not what they intended for him, which is clearly enough implied, but what should overtake them, that he is speaking of. The word here rendered destruction radically denotes a loud noise, crash, and means tempestuous overthrow, ruin with a crash.

Lower parts of the earth Not a periphrasis for grave, as elsewhere and as in Ephesians 4:9, for in Psalms 63:10 he declares they shall be denied burial, and being a threatened punishment of bad men, it must be understood of punishment in sheol, or the future world, taking the phrase as synonymous with our Lord’s words, John 8:23: “Ye are ‘ εκ των κατω , ( from the beneath,)” using beneath as antithetic to “ τα ανω , ( the above,)” in the same connexion; and more sharply defined John 8:44, “Ye are ‘ εκ πατρος του διαβολους , ( from your father the devil.)” And this is further evidence by their condition after death, John 8:21, “Whither I go ye cannot come,” a denunciation conditioned on their “dying in their sins,” which shows that he is speaking of the future state. In the same verse (John 8:23) our Lord says, “Ye are ‘ εκ του κοσμου , ( from the world,)” but κοσμος , world, here is to be taken figuratively in the morally bad sense of a state of society at enmity with God, as in Joh 15:8-9 ; 1 John 2:15-16. Different is John 3:31, where εκ της γης , ( of the earth,) is to be understood of humble, imperfect, perishable origin. It is clear, therefore, that both the psalmist and the Saviour, in the words in question, use language Hebraistically of future punishment.