The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Two Paths
Psalm 1:1–6 — The Two Paths. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
1Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or set foot on the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’aš·rê- hā·’îš ’ă·šer lō hā·laḵ ba·‘ă·ṣaṯ rə·šā·‘îm lō ‘ā·māḏ ū·ḇə·ḏe·reḵ ḥaṭ·ṭā·’îm lō yā·šāḇ ū·ḇə·mō·wō·šaḇ lê·ṣîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"O the blessednesses of the-man who has-not walked in the-counsel-of wicked-ones, and-in the-way-of sinners has-not stood, and-in the-seat-of mockers has-not sat."
Where the English smooths the original
The word translated "blessed" is a very expressive one. The original word is plural, and it is a controverted matter whether it is an adjective or a substantive. Hence we may learn the multiplicity of the blessings which shall rest upon the man whom God hath justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness he shall enjoy. We might read it, "Oh, the blessedness!"
When men are living in sin they go from bad to worse. At first they merely walk in the counsel of the careless and ungodly, who forget God - the evil is rather practical than habitual - but after that, they become habituated to evil, and they stand in the way of open sinners who wilfully violate God's commandments; and if let alone, they go one step further, and become themselves pestilent teachers and tempters of others, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful.Spurgeon's reading of the descending triad walk→stand→sit.
Blessed. —The Hebrew word is a plural noun, from the root meaning to be “straight,” or “right.” Literally, Blessings to the man who, &c. Walketh . . . standeth . . . sitteth. —Better, went, stood, sat. The good man is first described on the negative side.
The three appellations form a climax: impii corde, peccatores opere, illusores oreLatin: "the impious in heart, sinners in deed, scoffers in mouth" — the gradation read inward to outward.
2But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
kî ’im ḥep̄·ṣōw bə·ṯō·w·raṯ Yah·weh ū·ḇə·ṯō·w·rā·ṯōw yeh·geh yō·w·mām wā·lā·yə·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"But rather, in the-law-of YHWH is his-delight, and-in his-law he-murmurs day and-night."
Where the English smooths the original
"His delight is in the law of the Lord." He is not under the law as a curse and condemnation, but he is in it, and he delights to be in it as his rule of life; he delights, moreover, to meditate in it, to read it by day, and think upon it by night. He takes a text and carries it with him all day long; and in the night-watches, when sleep forsakes his eyelids, he museth upon the Word of God.Spurgeon's Treasury note runs across vv. 1–2 as one block, stored under Psalm 1:1; this contiguous excerpt is its comment on v. 2.
Meditate. —Literally, murmur (of a dove, Isaiah 38:14 ; of men lamenting, Isaiah 16:7 ; of a lion growling, Isaiah 31:4 ; of muttered charms, Isaiah 8:19 ). (Comp. Joshua 1:8 , which might have suggested this).
The Hebrew word tôrâh has a much wider range of meaning than law , by which it is always rendered in the A.V. It denotes (1) teaching, instruction , whether human ( Proverbs 1:8 ), or divine; (2) a precept or law ; (3) a body of laws , and in particular the Mosaic law , and so finally the Pentateuch .
this is noted as the peculiar character of a good man, that he delighteth himself not only in the promises, which a bad man may do, Matthew 13:20 , but even in the commands of God
3He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hā·yāh kə·‘êṣ šā·ṯūl ‘al- pal·ḡê mā·yim ’ă·šer yit·tên pir·yōw bə·‘it·tōw wə·‘ā·lê·hū lō- yib·bō·wl wə·ḵōl yaṣ·lî·aḥ ’ă·šer- ya·‘ă·śeh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"And-he-shall-be like a-tree transplanted over channels-of water, which gives its-fruit in-its-season, and-its-leaf does-not wither; and-all that he-does he-makes-to-prosper."
Where the English smooths the original
"And he shall be like a tree planted;" not a wild tree, but "a tree planted," chosen, considered as property, cultivated and secured from the last terrible uprooting, for "every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up:" Matthew 15:13 . "By the rivers of water;" so that even if one river should fail, he hath another. The rivers of pardon and the rivers of grace, the rivers of the promise and the rivers of the communion with Christ, are never-failing sources of supply.
It is not outward prosperity which the Christian most desires and values; it is soul prosperity which he longs for. We often, like Jehoshaphat, make ships to go to Tarshish for gold, but they are broken at Ezion-geber; but even here there is a true prospering, for it is often for the soul's health that we should be poor, bereaved, and persecuted.Spurgeon's caution against reading "prosper" as worldly success.
The green foliage is an emblem of faith, which converts the water of life of the divine word into sap and strength, and the fruit, an emblem of works, which gradually ripen and scatter their blessings around; a tree that has lost its leaves, does not bring its fruit to maturity.
The word "rivers" does not here quite express the sense of the original. The Hebrew word פלג peleg, from פלג pâlag, to cleave, to split, to divide), properly means divisions; and then, channels, canals, trenches, branching-cuts, brooks. The allusion is to the Oriental method of irrigating their lands by making artificial rivulets to convey the water from a larger stream, or from a lake.
4Not so the wicked! For they are like chaff driven off by the wind.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
lō- ḵên hā·rə·šā·‘îm kî ’im- kam·mōṣ ’ăšer- tid·də·p̄en·nū rū·aḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"Not so the-wicked-ones! But rather like-the-chaff which wind drives-it-away."
Where the English smooths the original
Here is their character - "they are like chaff," intrinsically worthless, dead, unserviceable, without substance, and easily carried away. Here, also, mark their doom - "The wind driveth away;" death shall hurry them with its terrible blast into the fire in which they shall be utterly consumed.
they are כּמּץ, like chaff (from מוּץ to press out), which the wind drives away, viz., from the loftily situated threshing-floor ( Isaiah 17:13 ), i.e., without root below, without fruit above, devoid of all the vigour and freshness of life, lying loose upon the threshing-floor and a prey of the slightest breeze-thus utterly worthless and unstable.
Withered and worthless, restless and unquiet, without form or stability, blown about by every wind, and, at length, finally dispersed from the face of the earth, by the breath of God’s displeasure, and driven into the fire which never shall be quenched. Their seeming felicity hath no firm foundation, but quickly vanishes, and flies away, as chaff before the wind.
The chaff may be, for a while, among the wheat, but He is coming, whose fan is in his hand, and who will thoroughly purge his floor.Henry's note covers vv. 4–6 as one block; this line is its comment on the chaff of v. 4.
5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘al- kên rə·šā·‘îm lō- yā·qu·mū bam·miš·pāṭ wə·ḥaṭ·ṭā·’îm ba·‘ă·ḏaṯ ṣad·dî·qîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"Therefore wicked-ones will-not rise in the-judgment, nor sinners in the-assembly of righteous-ones."
Where the English smooths the original
Sinners cannot live in heaven. They would be out of their element. Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise. Heaven would be an intolerable hell to an impenitent man, even if he could be allowed to enter; but such a privilege shall never be granted to the man who perseveres in his iniquities.
Shall not stand. —Properly, shall not rise. Probably like our phrase, “shall not hold up his head.” Will be self-convicted, and shrink away before God’s unerring scrutiny, like the man without a wedding garment in our Lord’s parable ( Matthew 22:12 ).
Not, before a human tribunal: nor merely in the last judgement, (as the Targum and many interpreters understand it): but in every act of judgement by which Jehovah separates between the righteous and the wicked, and vindicates His righteous government of the world.
wheat and chaff lie in one floor; wheat and tares grow in one field; good and bad fishes are comprehended in one net; good and bad men are contained in the visible church;” but let us wait with patience God’s time of separation.Benson is quoting Bishop George Horne's Commentary on the Psalms within his own note.
6For the LORD guards the path of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
kî- Yah·weh yō·w·ḏê·a‘ de·reḵ ṣad·dî·qîm wə·ḏe·reḵ rə·šā·‘îm tō·ḇêḏ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
"For YHWH is-knowing the-way-of righteous-ones, but the-way of wicked-ones will-perish."
Where the English smooths the original
Or, as the Hebrew hath it yet more fully, "The Lord is knowing the way of the righteous." He is constantly looking on their way, and though it may be often in mist and darkness, yet the Lord knoweth it. If it be in the clouds and tempest of affliction, he understandeth it.
the wicked, he ploughs the sea, and though there may seem to be a shining trail behind his keel, yet the waves shall pass over it, and the place that knew him shall know him no more for ever. The very "way" of the ungodly shall perish.Lightly trimmed at the front from "... but as for the wicked, he ploughs the sea"; the excerpt is a contiguous run.
Knoweth — i.e., recogniseth with discriminative discernment and appreciation. (Comp. Psalm 31:7 ; Psalm 144:3 ; Exodus 2:25 ; also John 10:14 .
For Jahve knoweth the way of the righteous, יודע as in Psalm 37:18 ; Matthew 7:23 ; 2 Timothy 2:19 , and frequently. What is intended is, as the schoolmen say, a nosse con affectu et effectu, a knowledge which is in living, intimate relationship to its subject and at the same time is inclined to it and bound to it by love.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The Psalter does not open with a law but with a beatitude. The first word, ’ašrê, is not the verb “is blessed” but a noun in the construct plural — Spurgeon: “the original word is plural… we might read it, 'Oh, the blessedness!'” The blessings are heaped, not counted. And the blessed man is sketched first by what he has not done. Ellicott catches the tense: “Better, went, stood, sat… the good man is first described on the negative side.” Three verbs descend — walk, stand, sit — paired with three companies, the wicked, sinners, mockers. Nearly every voice sees a hardening gradation; Spurgeon traces it plainly: “At first they merely walk in the counsel of the careless and ungodly… after that… they stand in the way of open sinners… and… they sit in the seat of the scornful.” Keil & Delitzsch fix it in a Latin triad — impii corde, peccatores opere, illusores ore, “impious in heart, sinners in deed, scoffers in mouth.” The blessed life begins, then, with a holy refusal.
Against the triple “not” stands one positive center, hinged on the strong adversative kî ’im — Ellicott: “a strong contrast, 'nay but,' 'on the contrary.'” The man’s delight (Poole notes the diagnostic: a bad man may relish the promises, but the blessed man delights “even in the commands of God”) is in the LORD’s tôrâh — a word, Cambridge insists, “much wider… than law,” reaching from “teaching, instruction” to the whole Pentateuch. And he meditates: but the Hebrew yehgeh is no silent thought. Ellicott renders it “murmur (of a dove… of a lion growling… of muttered charms),” and adds the decisive cross-reference — “Comp. Joshua 1:8, which might have suggested this.” It is the same charge once laid on Joshua at the Jordan, now opened to every blessed soul “day and night.”
The fruit of v. 2 is the tree of v. 3 — and the link is grammatical, not merely thematic: K&D marks wəhāyāh as “the praet. consec.: he becomes in consequence of this.” The tree is šāṯūl, not the ordinary “planted” but transplanted, set firm — Spurgeon: “not a wild tree, but 'a tree planted,' chosen… cultivated.” Barnes corrects the picture of the water: not natural “rivers” but engineered “channels, canals, trenches… the Oriental method of irrigating their lands.” K&D reads the emblem whole: “The green foliage is an emblem of faith… and the fruit, an emblem of works.” And Spurgeon guards the last clause from the prosperity gospel: “It is not outward prosperity… it is soul prosperity which he longs for… Our worst things are often our best things.”
The verse turns on two curt Hebrew words, lō’-kên, “Not so!” Spurgeon prefers the LXX/Vulgate doubling — “'Not so the ungodly, not so'… whatever good thing is said of the righteous is not true in the case of the ungodly.” Where the righteous had three verses of tree and water and fruit, the wicked get one stripped line and a single image: kammōṣ, chaff. K&D draws the antithesis exactly: chaff is “without root below, without fruit above… utterly worthless and unstable.” It is not bad grain but no grain — the husk the threshing-wind lifts off the floor. Benson hears the agent: they are “driven… by the breath of God’s displeasure,” and Henry sets the timetable: “The chaff may be, for a while, among the wheat, but He is coming, whose fan is in his hand.”
The “therefore” (‘al-kên) is a real inference — K&D: “just on account of their inner worthlessness… they do not stand.” The chaff-nature of v. 4 yields the chaff-doom of v. 5. The verb is yāqumū, and Ellicott presses its literal force: “shall not rise… 'shall not hold up his head.'” The men who once stood in sinners’ way cannot now rise in the judgment. Cambridge widens “the judgment” beyond any single courtroom: “every act of judgement by which Jehovah separates between the righteous and the wicked… a type and pledge of the great day.” And Spurgeon, on the “assembly of the righteous,” looks past every mixed earthly congregation — “The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat” — to the one above where “by no means” shall a single unrenewed soul be admitted: “Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.”
The Psalm closes by grounding everything in God. Spurgeon hears the participle: “the Hebrew hath it yet more fully, 'The Lord is knowing the way of the righteous'… He is constantly looking on their way.” And this “know” is not bare information. K&D: “a knowledge which is in living, intimate relationship… inclined to it and bound to it by love” — which is why the BSB can gloss yôḏêa‘ as “guards.” Geneva states the corollary bluntly: “to not know is to reprove and reject.” The whole Psalm has set two ways (dereḵ) side by side; now one is known and kept, and the other tō’ḇêḏ — “perishes,” a verb that means to wander off and be lost. The book that begins “O the blessednesses” ends on a single word of ruin.
Read under Sola Scriptura, and tested as fallible: Psalm 1 is the deliberate doorway to the whole Psalter, and it hands the reader a single binary — two men, two ways, two ends — with no third path. The structure is its argument: the righteous man earns three lush verses of refusal, delight, and fruit; the wicked are dispatched in a stripped negation and a puff of chaff. The pivot is not the man’s achievement but his roots — he is transplanted (šāṯūl) by water he did not dig, fed by channels (Barnes) he did not engineer, and his “prospering” (Spurgeon) is soul-health, not estate. The Psalm’s logic is therefore not moralism (“try harder”) but dependence: blessedness flows from a life rooted in God’s instruction and meditating on it day and night. And the final verse moves the whole weight off the men onto the LORD: the righteous endure not because their way is strong but because “the LORD is knowing” it (v. 6). The wicked’s way “perishes” because it is, in the end, unknown — left to itself, it wanders off into nothing. This reading is offered to be weighed against the text, not above it.
Interpretive line (not Scripture): “The blessed man is not the strong tree but the well-planted one — his fruit is the overflow of a root system he did not lay.”
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The signature parallel of the Psalm. Jeremiah 17:7–8 describes the man who trusts the LORD in nearly the same words: he is “transplanted (šāṯūl) by the waters… his leaf shall be green… nor shall cease from yielding fruit.” The link is verbal, resting on a rare shared verb — šāṯūl (H8362) occurs in only 10 verses — together with ‘āleh “leaf,” pərî “fruit,” and ‘êṣ “tree.” Ellicott names it directly: “its development in Jeremiah 17:7–8.” JFB simply writes “planted—(Jer 17:7,8).” The two passages are almost certainly drawing on one tradition; whether Psalm or prophet is prior is debated, but the verbal kinship is not.
Psalm 1:3 · Jeremiah 17:7 · Jeremiah 17:8
basis: shared lexemes incl. RARE H8362 shâthal (transplant, in 10 vv) + H5929 ʻâleh (leaf, in 13 vv), H6529 pƵrîy (fruit), H6086 ʻêts (tree) — Verifier-computed for Psalm 1:3 ↔ Jeremiah 17:8
The blessed man’s practice in v. 2 is, word for word, the charge the LORD gave Joshua on the brink of the Jordan: “this Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate (hāgâh) on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8). The shared hāgâh (“murmur, meditate,” H1897) is uncommon — 24 verses — and it travels here with tôrâh (law), yôwmām (day), and laylâh (night), the exact “day and night” formula. Ellicott flags it: “Comp. Joshua 1:8, which might have suggested this.” Cambridge and the Pulpit Commentary both note the resemblance. What was once a commission to a single captain becomes, in Psalm 1, the marked-out way of every blessed person.
Psalm 1:2 · Joshua 1:8
basis: shared lexemes incl. RARE H1897 hâgâh (meditate/murmur, in 24 vv) + H8451 tôwrâh, H3119 yôwmâm, H3915 layil (“day and night” formula) — Verifier-computed for Psalm 1:2 ↔ Joshua 1:8
The doom of the wicked in v. 4 — chaff the wind drives away — is a fixed scriptural emblem of sudden, rootless ruin. The image clusters on a rare noun: môṣ “chaff” (H4671) appears in only 8 verses, and Psalm 1:4 shares it with Job 21:18 (“as chaff that the storm carries away”), Isaiah 17:13, Hosea 13:3, and Zephaniah 2:2 — several also sharing rûaḥ “wind.” Barnes and the Pulpit Commentary both string these references together. K&D ties the picture precisely to the threshing-floor of Isaiah 17:13. The wicked are not merely judged; they are winnowed.
Psalm 1:4 · Job 21:18 · Isaiah 17:13 · Hosea 13:3
basis: shared RARE H4671 môts (chaff, in only 8 vv) + H7307 rûwach (wind) across Job 21:18 / Isaiah 17:13; H4671 + H3651 kên for Hosea 13:3 — Verifier-computed per pair
Ezekiel’s temple-vision trees, fed by the river flowing from the sanctuary, “shall not fade, neither shall its fruit fail” (Ezekiel 47:12) — the same picture as Psalm 1:3, and bound to it by shared vocabulary: ‘āleh “leaf” (H5929), nāḇêl “wither” (H5034), pərî “fruit” (H6529), and ‘êṣ “tree” (H6086). Both the un-withering leaf (nāḇêl, in 21 vv) and the leaf-word itself (‘āleh, in only 13 vv) are uncommon, which lifts this above generic tree-imagery. The Psalm individualizes what Ezekiel sees corporately and eschatologically: the same water-fed, never-fading life.
Psalm 1:3 · Ezekiel 47:12
basis: shared lexemes H5929 ʻâleh (leaf, in 13 vv), H5034 nâbêl (wither, in 21 vv), H6529 pƵrîy, H6086 ʻêts — Verifier-computed; tiered structural (shared motif of river-fed tree) rather than quotation, no citation claim
Psalm 1 is the Psalter’s entry into the wisdom “two ways” tradition that Proverbs develops: “the path (’ōraḥ/dereḵ) of the righteous is like the dawning light… the way (dereḵ) of the wicked is like darkness” (Proverbs 4:18–19). The shared frame is the contrasted dereḵ “way” (H1870) of righteous vs. wicked — the very pairing of Psalm 1:6 — with rāšāʻ “wicked” and the verb yāḏaʻ “know.” These are common words, so the link is thematic and structural, not a quotation: Psalm and Proverbs share a worldview and its vocabulary, not a borrowed line.
Psalm 1:6 · Psalm 1:1 · Proverbs 4:18 · Proverbs 4:19
basis: shared H1870 derek (way, common — 626 vv), H7563 râshâʻ, H3045 yâdaʻ — Verifier-computed for Psalm 1:6 ↔ Proverbs 4:19; common lexemes → thematic, not verbal
Keil & Delitzsch, commenting on v. 6, explicitly cross-lists the Hebrew yôḏêaʻ “knows” (H3045) with the New Testament’s knowing/not-knowing: “yôḏaʻ as in Psalm 37:18; Matthew 7:23; 2 Timothy 2:19.” In Matthew 7:23 the Lord says to the false, “I never knew you”; 2 Timothy 2:19 declares, “the Lord knows those who are His.” This is a cross-Testament link (Hebrew ↔ Greek), so it cannot rest on a shared Strong’s number — the connection is conceptual: the same covenantal “knowing-with-love” that decides who stands. Recorded as structural/conceptual, on the authority of K&D’s own cross-reference, not asserted as quotation.
Psalm 1:6 · Matthew 7:23 · 2 Timothy 2:19
basis: cross-Testament (Hebrew H3045 yâdaʻ ↔ Greek γινώσκω): NO shared Strong’s possible across testaments — link is conceptual (covenantal 'knowing'), recorded on K&D's explicit cross-reference at Ps 1:6
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Gill records that “some have interpreted this psalm of Christ, and think it is properly spoken of him.” The portrait of v. 1–3 — a man who never once walked, stood, or sat with the wicked, whose whole delight was the law of God, who bore fruit in season and never withered — is fulfilled without remainder in only one Man. Where every other reader can claim, at best, Spurgeon’s “sort of negative purity,” Christ alone is the tree that never failed. Read so, Psalm 1 is not first a demand but a description — of Him — into whom the believer is, in Gill’s words, “grafted.”
Psalm 1:1 · Psalm 1:2 · Psalm 1:3
Both Spurgeon and Gill note that the Psalter’s first word, ’ašrê (“blessed”), is the very note on which the Lord begins the Sermon on the Mount: “this psalm begins in like manner as Christ’s sermon on the mount, Matthew 5:3” (Gill); “see how this Book of Psalms opens with a benediction, even as did the famous Sermon of our Lord upon the Mount” (Spurgeon). The LXX renders ’ašrê with μακάριος, the exact word of the Beatitudes — a verbal bridge across the Greek of Matthew and the Greek Psalter. Christ takes up the Psalter’s opening blessing and unfolds it.
Psalm 1:1 · Matthew 5:3
The Psalm’s close, “the LORD knows the way of the righteous” (v. 6), reaches its sharpest point in the Gospel: the chaff of v. 4 is gathered up by the One “whose fan is in his hand” (Matthew 3:12), and the “knowing” of v. 6 becomes the dread word of Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you.” Henry already reads the chaff this way — “He is coming, whose fan is in his hand, and who will thoroughly purge his floor” — a figural (typological) reading in which the threshing-floor of Psalm 1 is the judgment seat of Christ. Offered as figural, not as a verbal quotation of the Psalm.
Psalm 1:4 · Psalm 1:6 · Matthew 3:12 · Matthew 7:23
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Two honesty notes left visible on purpose. (1) The cross-Testament “the LORD knows those who are His” thread (Ps 1:6 → Matthew 7:23; 2 Timothy 2:19) is recorded as structural/thematic, not verbal: a Hebrew–Greek pair can share no Strong’s number, so the link cannot be a “verbal” one even though Keil & Delitzsch themselves draw it. It rests on K&D’s cross-reference and the conceptual identity of covenantal “knowing,” nothing stronger. (2) The BSB glosses yôḏêaʻ (H3045, “knows”) in v. 6 as “guards,” and ʻāmāḏ / the verbs of standing as “set foot” in v. 1 — interpretive renderings, flagged in the divergences, not the literal sense; the parses (Berean/Strong’s) are followed, not overridden. (3) Several voices quote within their notes — Benson quotes Bishop Horne at v. 5, and JFB’s introduction is heavily compiled — these are marked in editorial notes where they bear on attribution. The Treasury of David comment on vv. 1–2 is a single block in Spurgeon; it has been split between the two verses at its natural seam, with each excerpt remaining a contiguous substring.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)