(100) Ancients.--Or, more probably, as the LXX. and Vulg., and the old versions generally took it, old men.

Verse 100. - I understand more than the ancients; or, "the aged." Advanced age does not necessarily give wisdom (see Job 32:7-9). "Antiquity is no help against stupidity" (Luther). Because I keep thy precepts (comp. ver. 104 and John 7:17).

119:97-104 What we love, we love to think of. All true wisdom is from God. A good man carries his Bible with him, if not in his hands, yet in his head and in his heart. By meditation on God's testimonies we understand more than our teachers, when we understand our own hearts. The written word is a more sure guide to heaven, than all the fathers, the teachers, and ancients of the church. We cannot, with any comfort or boldness, attend God in holy duties, while under guilt, or in any by-way. It was Divine grace in his heart, that enabled the psalmist to receive these instructions. The soul has its tastes as well as the body. Our relish for the word of God will be greatest, when that for the world and the flesh is least. The way of sin is a wrong way; and the more understanding we get by the precepts of God, the more rooted will be our hatred of sin; and the more ready we are in the Scriptures, the better furnished we are with answers to temptation.I understand more than the ancients,.... Than those that had lived in ages before him; having clearer light given him, and larger discoveries made unto him, concerning the Messiah, his person and offices particularly, as it was usual for the Lord to do; or than aged men in his own time: for though wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, may be reasonably supposed to be with ancient men; who have had a long experience of things, and have had time and opportunity of making their observations, and of laying up a stock of knowledge; and this may be expected from them, and they may be applied to for it; yet this is not always the case; a younger man, as David was, may be endued with more knowledge and understanding than such; so Elihu; see Job 8:8, Job 32:6. Or, "I have got understanding by the ancients"; so Kimchi; though the other sense seems preferable;

because I keep thy precepts; keep close to the word; attend to the reading of it, and meditation on it; keep it in mind and memory, and observe to do the commands of it; and by that means obtained a good understanding, even a better one than the ancients; especially than they that were without it, or did not carefully attend unto it; see Psalm 111:10.