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PSALM 26

A Psalm of David.

1. Judge me, O jehovah, for I have walked in mine integrity, and in jehovah have I trusted; I shall not slide.
2. Prove me, O jehovah, and try me; explore my reins and my heart.
3. For your mercy is before mine eyes, and I have walked in your truth.
4. I have not sat with lying men, neither have I gone with dissemblers.
5. For I have hated the assembly of evil doers, and will not sit with the wicked.
6. I will wash my hands in innocence; and will compass your altar, O jehovah.
7. That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and recount all your wondrous works.
8. jehovah, I love the habitation of your house, and the place of the tabernacle of your glory.
9. Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with men of blood;
10. In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes.
11. But I walk in mine integrity; redeem me, and be merciful to me.
12. My foot stands in an even place; in the congregations will I bless jehovah.

Verse 2. Prove me, O jehovah, and try me, explore my reins, and my heart. Inasmuch as truths are separated from falsities, and goods from evils, by temptations, therefore it is here said, try me. AE 167.

Verse 8. jehovah, I love the habitation of your house. Habitation signifies heaven, where the lord is; it also signifies the good of love and faith, for these constitute heaven; and whereas all good is from the lord, and heaven is called heaven from love and faith in the lord; hence, also, habitation, in the supreme sense, signifies the lord, as is evident from Isaiah 63:15, Psalm 26:8, and in other places; hence it is manifest, that the tabernacle was called the sanctuary and habitation of jehovah from this ground, that things above mentioned were representative. AC 9481.

Verses 6, 7. I will wash my hands in innocence, and will compass your altar, O jehovah, that I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, etc. To wash the hands in innocence, signifies to be purified from evils and falses; to compass your altar, O jehovah, signifies conjunction with the Lord by worship, grounded in the good of love, which worship, since it is performed by truths derived from good, therefore it is added, that I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, etc. AE 391.

Verse 2. Explore my reins (kidneys), and my heart. To search and to prove the kidneys, denotes to explore the truths of faith; and to search and prove the heart, denotes, to explore the goods of love, for the heart denotes the good of love, and the truths of faith are signified by the kidneys. AC 10032.

Innocence is the very essential principle of love and charity, consequently of good, and consists in knowing, acknowledging, and believing, not with the mouth, but with the heart, that nothing but evil is from self, and that all good is from the lord; when man is in this confession of faith from the heart, then the lord flows in with good and truth, and insinuates into him a celestial proprium, which is bright and shining; it is impossible for any one to be in true humiliation, unless he be in this acknowledgement and faith from the heart, for in this case he is in self-annihilation, yea, in self-aversion, and thereby in absence from himself, and thus in a state of receiving the divine principle of the lord; hence it is, that the lord with good flows in into an humble and contrite heart. AC 3994; see also AC 3183, 3519, 5608.

All the rites of the ancient Church were representative of the lord, as were also the rites of the Jewish Church; but the principal representative afterwards was the altar, also the burnt-offering, which, being made of clean beasts and clean birds, represented, as it signified the clean beasts, the goods of charity, and the clean birds, the truths of faith. AC 921. See also AC 1298, 2777, 2814, 2832.