Division 5 (He)
A prayer for divine teaching, and an opened understanding, “to go in the path” of the Lord, apart from covetousness and vanity.
(vv. 33-34) The desire of the soul to be taught by the Lord the way of His statutes― “Teach me, O LORD.” Teaching, however, is not enough; we need the opened heart as well as the opened Scriptures, hence the prayer, “Give me understanding” (cf. Luke 24:27, 45; 2 Tim. 2:7).
(vs. 35) Further we are dependent upon the Lord for any practical results that may follow divine teaching. So the prayer follows, “Make me to go.” Well indeed for every saint to pray these three prayers, and in their divine order, “Teach me O LORD,” “Give me understanding,” and “Make me to go.”
(vv. 36-37) Following upon these requests, the psalmist remembers the two great hindrances to a walk of practical godliness:—the root of evil within—covetousness; and the incitement to evil from without, the vanity on every hand. The godly man prays that his heart may be kept from covetousness, and his eyes from beholding vanity.
(vv. 38-40) Thus kept from evil within and vanity without, he prays to be established in the truth, and devoted to God, walking in His fear, and kept from any occasion of reproach in himself. In the knowledge that God’s judgments are good, the godly man, with deep longing after the Lord’s precepts, desires to be energized in the path of righteousness.