Here is David's experience of benefit by the word. 1. As a means of his sanctification: "Thy word has quickened me. It made me alive when I was dead in sin; it has many a time made me lively when I was dead in duty; it has quickened me to that which is good when I was backward and averse to it, and it has quickened me in that which is good when I was cold and indifferent." 2. Therefore as a means of his consolation when he was in affliction and needed something to support him: "Because thy word has quickened my at other times, it has comforted me then." The word of God has much in it that speaks comfort in affliction; but those only may apply it to themselves who have experienced in some measure the quickening power of the word. If through grace it make us holy, there is enough in it to make us easy, in all conditions, under all events.

I remembered thy judgments of old, O Lord,.... Either the judgments of God executed on wicked men; as the bringing a flood on the world of the ungodly; the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah; the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea; the cutting off of the Canaanites, and dispossessing them of their land: or the providential dispensations of God towards his own people; who sometimes chastises and corrects them, and brings them very low, and then raises them up again, as in the case of Job. These things the psalmist called to remembrance, and revolved them in his mind, which gave him pleasure and comfort:

and have comforted myself; with such thoughts as these, that that God, who had cast down the mighty from their seats, and had scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts, and destroyed them, could easily rebuke the proud that had him in derision; and he that had shown himself so good and gracious to his people, when brought low, could raise him out of his afflictions and distresses.