Verse 1. Here we advance another step. Not only is it necessary to renounce and shun evil (i. 10) and to listen to the voice of Wisdom and go in quest of her (i. 20; ii. 1-4), but it is also requisite to hold her fast under trial and tribulation (ver. 11), and to practise her rules by love to God and man (verses 9, 27, 30).--_Wordsworth._
"My law." He who made us knows what is good for us. Submission to His will is the best condition for humanity. Our own will leads to sin and misery. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. . . . Silently to forget God's law is a much more common thing amongst us than blasphemously to reject it.--_Arnot._
Where love makes the impression, care locks it up. . . . Philo saith, "Thou forgettest God's law, because thou forgettest thyself." For didst thou remember thine own condition, how very nothing thou art, thou couldst not forget His law whose excellency exceedeth all things; and therefore to fasten His law in our hearts, God saith no more than that it is _my law_, as if the strength of that reason were sufficient to strike them into us not to be forgotten.--_Jermin._
We should be able to say to Wisdom as Cœnis did to her lady Antonia, "You need not, madame, bid me do your business, for I so remember your commands, as I need never be reminded of them."--_Trapp._
The mental faculties have a close relation and a mutual dependence upon each other. There are, without doubt, original diversities in the power of memory. But memory depends greatly on _attention_, and attention depends not less upon the interest which the mind feels on the subject. He who feels no interest will not attend, and he who does not attend will not remember.--_Wardlaw._
Verse 2. _Length of days_ is the promise to the righteous--whether for earth or for heaven as their Father deems fittest for them. In itself, the promise, as regards this life, has no charm. . . . But _peace added_ forms the sunshine of the toilsome way.--_Bridges._
The original is "length of days and years of lives." They are lives which religion promiseth, one on earth, another in heaven: here such a long life as short days can make up, but there days shall be years: there shall be but one day, lengthened into eternity.--_Jermin._