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When thou with rebukes dost correct man - תוכחות tochachoth signifies a vindication of proceedings in a court of law, a legal defense. When God comes to maintain the credit and authority of his law against a sinner, he "causes his beauty to consume away:" a metaphor taken from the case of a culprit, who, by the arguments of counsel, and the unimpeachable evidence of witnesses, has the facts all proved against him, grows pale, looks terrified; his fortitude forsakes him, and he faints in court.
Surely every man is vanity - He is incapable of resistance; he falls before his Maker; and none can deliver him but his Sovereign and Judge, against whom he has offended.
Selah - This is a true saying, an everlasting truth.
When thou with rebukes - The word here rendered “rebukes” means properly:
(a) proof or demonstration;
(b) confutation or contradiction;
(c) reproof or admonition by words;
(d) reproof by correction or punishment.
This is the meaning here. The idea of the psalmist is, that God, by punishment or calamity, expresses his sense of the evil of human conduct; and that, under such an expression of it, man, being unable to sustain it, melts away or is destroyed.
Dost correct man for iniquity - Dost punish man for his sin; or dost express thy sense of the evil of sin by the calamities which are brought upon him.
Thou makest his beauty - Margin: “That which is to be desired in him.” The Hebrew means “desired, delighted in;” then, something desirable, pleasant; a delight. Its meaning is not confined to “beauty.” It refers to anything that is to man an object of desire or delight - strength, beauty, possessions, life itself. All are made to fade away before the expressions of the divine displeasure.
To consume away like a moth - Not as a moth is consumed, but as a moth consumes or destroys valuable objects, such as clothing. See the notes at Job 4:19. The beauty, the vigor, the strength of man is marred and destroyed, as the texture of cloth is by the moth.
Surely every man is vanity - That is, he is seen to be vanity - to have no strength, no permanency - by the ease with which God takes away all on which he had prided himself. See the notes at Psalm 39:5.
Association with learned men is esteemed by some more highly than communion with the God of heaven. The statements of learned men are thought of more value than the highest wisdom revealed in the word of God. But while infidelity is proudly lifting up its head, Heaven looks down upon the vanity and nothingness of human reasoning; for man in and of himself is vanity. All the merit, all the moral dignity, of men has been theirs simply in and through the merits of Jesus Christ. What, then, are the speculations of the greatest minds of the greatest men that have ever lived? Yet men place their human reasonings before the revealed will of God, and present to the world that which they claim is higher wisdom than the wisdom of the Eternal. In their vain imaginations, they would bring down the economy of heaven to suit their own inclinations and desires. FE 331.1
The great God has a law by which to govern His kingdom, and those who trample upon that law will one day find that they are amenable to its statutes. The remedy for transgression is not to be found in declaring that the law is abolished. To abolish the law would be to dishonor it, and to cast contempt upon the Lawgiver. The only escape for the transgressor of law is found in the Lord Jesus Christ; for through the grace and atonement of the only-begotten Son of God, the sinner may be saved and the law vindicated. The men who parade before the world as wonderful specimens of greatness, and at the same time trample down the revealed will of God, robe man with honor and talk of the perfection of nature. They paint a very fine picture, but it is an illusion, a flattering deception; for they walk in the sparks of their own kindling. FE 331.2
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