The image of "the way" which is characteristic of Psalm xxv. reappears in a modified form in this psalm, which speaks of "walking in integrity" and truth and of "feet standing in an even place." Other resemblances to the preceding psalm are the use of "redeem," "be merciful"; the references to God's loving-kindness and truth, in which the psalmist walks, and to his own integrity. These similarities may or may not indicate common authorship, but probably guided the compilers in placing the psalm here. It has not clear marks of date or of the writer's circumstances. Its two ground tones are profession of integrity and of revulsion from the society of the wicked and prayer for vindication of innocence by the fact of deliverance. The verses are usually grouped in couples, but with some irregularity. The two key-notes are both struck in the first group of three verses, in which vv. 2 and 3 are substantially an expansion of ver. 1. The prayer, "Judge me," asks for a Divine act of deliverance based upon a Divine recognition of the psalmist's sincerity and unwavering trust. Both the prayer and its ground are startling. It grates upon ears accustomed to the tone of the New Testament that a suppliant should allege his single-eyed simplicity and steadfast faith as pleas with God, and the strange tone sounds on through the whole psalm. The threefold prayer in ver. 2 courts Divine scrutiny, as conscious of innocence, and bares the inmost recesses of affection and impulse for testing, proving by circumstances, and smelting by any fire. The psalmist is ready for the ordeal, because he has kept God's "loving-kindness" steadily in sight through all the glamour of earthly brightnesses, and his outward life has been all, as it were, transacted in the sphere of God's truthfulness; _i.e._, the inward contemplation of His mercy and faithfulness has been the active principle of his life. Such self-consciousness is strange enough to us, but, strange as it is, it cannot fairly be stigmatised as Pharisaic self-righteousness. The psalmist knows that all goodness comes from God, and he clings to God in childlike trust. The humblest Christian heart might venture in similar language to declare its recoil from evil-doers and its deepest spring of action as being trust. Such professions are not inconsistent with consciousness of sin, which is, in fact, often associated with them in other psalms (xxv. 20, 21, and vii. 11, 18). They do indicate a lower stage of religious development, a less keen sense of sinfulness and of sins, a less clear recognition of the worthlessness before God of all man's goodness, than belong to Christian feeling. The same language when spoken at one stage of revelation may be childlike and lowly, and be swelling arrogance and self-righteous self-ignorance, if spoken at another.