It will be given wherever that condition is fulfilled (ver. 64). § ט 65 Good hast Thou done with Thy servant, Jehovah, according to Thy word. 66 Good judgment and knowledge teach me, For I have believed Thy commandments. 67 Before I was afflicted, I went astray, But now have I observed Thy saying. 68 Good art Thou and doing good, Teach me Thy statutes. 69 The proud have trumped up a lie against me, I, I with all [my] heart will keep Thy precepts. 70 Gross as fat is their heart, I, I delight in Thy law. 71 Good for me was it that I was afflicted, That I might learn Thy statutes. 72 Good for me is the law of Thy mouth, Above thousands of gold and silver. The restrictions of the acrostic structure are very obvious in this section, five of the eight verses of which begin with "Good." The epithet is first applied in ver. 65 to the whole of God's dealings with the psalmist. To the devout soul all life is of one piece, and its submission and faith exercise transmuting power on pains and sorrows, so that the psalmist can say-- "Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, And all was for best." The epithet is next applied (ver. 66) to the perception (lit. taste) or faculty of discernment of good and evil, for which the psalmist prays, basing his petition on his belief of God's word. Swift, sure, and delicate apprehension of right and wrong comes from such belief. The heart in which it reigns is sensitive as a goldsmith's scales or a thermometer which visibly sinks when a cloud passes before the sun. The instincts of faith work surely and rapidly. The settled judgment that life had been good includes apparent evil (ver. 67), which is real evil in so far as it pains, but is, in a deeper view, good, inasmuch as it scourges a wandering heart back to true obedience and therefore to well-being. The words of ver. 67 are specially appropriate as the utterance of the Israel purified from idolatrous tendencies by captivity, but may also be the expression of individual experience. The epithet is next applied to God Himself (ver. 68). How steadfast a gaze into the depths of the Divine nature and over the broad field of the Divine activity is in that short, all-including clause, containing but three words in the Hebrew, "Good art Thou and doing good"! The prayer built on it is the one which continually recurs in this psalm, and is reached by many paths. Every view of man's condition, whether it is bright or dark, and every thought of God, bring the psalmist to the same desire. Here God's character and beneficence, widespread and continual, prompt to the prayer, both because the knowledge of His will is our highest good, and because a good God cannot but wish His servants to be like Himself, in loving righteousness and hating iniquity.