Reading Psalm 22:22-31 and commenting on 22 through 28,

 

Psalm 22:22 ¶  I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23  Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24  For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25  My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26  The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. 27  All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28  For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations. 29  All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30  A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31  They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

 

Here, David starts with an evangelistic promise, that he will declare God to his people and praise God in the midst of the congregation. This is a commitment for David, a man after God’s own heart. Then, we have the declaration that those that fear the Lord should praise Him speaking to all of Israel.

 

Verse 24 underscores God’s compassion for the sick and those tormented by physical handicap. God does not prevent them from appealing to Him. He hears them.

 

David promises in verse 25 that he will praise God in the great congregation which must mean the whole of Israel. See here other references in Psalms that may give light to this phrase and I think it may refer to temple worship.

 

Psalm 22:22 ¶  I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

 

Psalm 35:18  I will give thee thanks in the great congregation: I will praise thee among much people.

 

Psalm 40:9  I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O LORD, thou knowest. 10  I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation.

 

Psalm 111:1 ¶  Praise ye the LORD. I will praise the LORD with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation.

 

Psalm 56:12  Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.

 

Psalm 65:1 ¶  «To the chief Musician, A Psalm and Song of David.» Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed.…13 ¶  I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee my vows,…16  Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.

 

Psalm 116:14  I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people. 15  Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. 16  O LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. 17  I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD. 18  I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people, 19  In the courts of the LORD’S house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.

 

Psalm 118:19 ¶  Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD:

 

By the structure of verse 26 it appears to me that David is saying that the meek, in this case those who seek the Lord and as a consequence praise Him, but that they not only will be filled and satisfied but that their heart shall live for ever. There is a lot to unpack in this verse.

 

Notice how meek is used in the following verse;

 

Numbers 12:3  (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)

 

Now why is an Egyptian prince who murders a man and also then leads a couple of million people on a forty year long journey through a wilderness called meek?

 

We know meek is used of the poor.

 

Isaiah 29:19  The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

 

But in reference to Moses and to Christ it must be said to be subordinate to God the Father. Christ, in His humanity showed us that He was not above obeying the Father’s will as our example.

 

Matthew 11:29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

 

So, meekness for those who seek and praise God reflects their submission to Him.

 

The mention of heart as in your heart shall live forever is significant. We think of the heart figuratively as from where our emotions come although we know the heart is affected by emotions but doesn’t create them. Still, we do not make rational decisions without emotion being involved. Our reason is dependent upon both the mind and the heart. Our ability to choose is profoundly affected by it. And so, our thoughts can be considered to be products of not only the mind but the heart as well.

 

Genesis 6:5  And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

 

Notice some other statements about our spiritual heart, the one you can’t see, like our minds.

 

Genesis 17:17  Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

 

1Samuel 2:35  And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind: and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed for ever.

 

The error of Modernism is to read the heart and mind as two completely different things because they are, well, different words referring to different organs, one of which we know does not generate thoughts in its physical self. This is proof the Holy Spirit is talking about heart as it is used in common speech as in when we say someone is, “following their heart.”

 

your heart shall live for ever from David’s perspective suggests a temporal long, time as in the preservation of the lives of those that seek God or can even be thought of as eternity. Neither John Gill nor Matthew Henry sought to give this phrase a meaning in context. They forwarded it to a prophecy of Christians and Christ.

 

In verses 27 and 28 it is clear that David is making a prophetic statement but for someone who would have no idea of people in South America or distant Asia it is also clear that he is referring to the world he knows, the world of northeastern Africa and the Near East. Keep in mind that when ancient Greek and Roman writers talked about the world or the earth they were referring to the Mediterranean World and certainly no further afield than the western kingdoms of India.

 

29  All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30  A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31  They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

 

In the latter part of this chapter from David’s context is reflected his assurance of God, the great leveler of all social classes, will prevail. He will have those who will serve him, most notably in this context, Israel, understood then to be His firstborn.

 

Exodus 4:22  And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:

 

Prophetically speaking this is still in the context of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and the eventual faith of Christianity.

 

Christ declared God to the Jews Himself and to the Gentiles mostly through His Apostles in so many verses there is no need to post them here if you have read the Gospels. Verse 26 shows us that those that seek the Lord will live forever. This is a promise of eternal life.

 

John 10:28  And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

 

The meek will seek God, eat, and be satisfied. Notice this verse;

 

Matthew 5:6  Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

 

Verse 27 and 28 appear to belong to the millennial reign of Christ. And this does seem to be, for us in prophecy, a reference to the entire world as we know it, as the Holy Spirit knows it, the whole earth.

 

Revelation 11:15  And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

 

Psalm 2:8  Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

 

Psalm 72:8  He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.

 

Psalm 72:11  Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.

 

Psalm 86:9  All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name.

 

Psalm 98:3  He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

 

Isaiah 45:22  Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

 

Isaiah 49:6  And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth…12  Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim. (This is understood to be a reference to China. We get the word Sinology which internet sources note was coined in 1838 from the Latin and Greek words for China which may have been their derivations of the Qin or Ch’in dynasty, founded much later than this writing in the 200s BC but from the Southwestern Chinese state of Qin or Ch’in, founded at about a hundred years after David’s kingdom but a hundred years or so before Isaiah’s writings. This is a clear revealing that there must have been trade or contact with western China in Isaiah’s time, which was in the 700s BC around the time of the founding of the city of Rome.)