Psalms 17:5

Hold up my goings in thy paths - David walked in God's ways; but, without Divine assistance, he could not walk steadily, even in them. The words of God's lips had shown him the steps he was to take, and he implores the strength of God's grace to enable him to walk in those steps. He had been kept from the paths of the destroyer; but this was not sufficient; he must walk in God's paths - must spend his life in obedience to the Divine will. Negative holiness ean save no man. "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire."

Hold up my goings in thy paths - He had been enabled before this to keep himself from the ways of the violent by the word of God Psalm 17:4; he felt his dependence on God still to enable him, in the circumstances in which he was placed, and under the provocations to which he was exposed, to live a life of peace, and to keep himself from doing wrong. He, therefore, calls on God, and asks him to sustain him, and to keep him still in the right path. The verb used here is in the infinitive form, but used instead of the imperative. DeWette. - Prof. Alexander renders this less correctly, "My steps have laid hold of thy paths;" for he supposes that a prayer here "would be out of place." But prayer can never be more appropriate than when a man realises that he owes the fact of his having been hitherto enabled to lead an upright life only to the "word" of God, and when provoked and injured by others he feels that he might be in danger of doing wrong. In such circumstances nothing can he more proper than to call upon God to keep us from sin.

That my footsteps slip not - Margin, as in Hebrew: "be not moved." The idea is, "that I may be firm; that I may not yield to passion; that, provoked and wronged by others, I may not be allowed to depart from the course of life which I have been hitherto enabled to pursue." No prayer could be more appropriate. When we feel and know that we have been wronged by others; when our lives have given no cause for such treatment as we receive at their hands; when they are still pursuing us, and injuring us in our reputation, our property, or our peace; when all the bad passions of our nature are liable to be aroused, prompting us to seek revenge, and to return evil for evil, then nothing can be more proper than for us to lift our hearts to God, entreating that he will keep us, and save us from falling into sin; that he will enable us to restrain our passions, and to subdue our resentments.