properly · verb, piel perfect, 1st person common singular
quieted
וְדוֹמַ֗מְתִּיve.do.Mam.ti
H1826
to be dumb · conjunction + verb, piel perfect, 1st person common singular
myself
נַ֫פְשִׁ֥יnaf.Shi
H5315
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
weaned
כְּ֭גָמֻלKe.ga.mul
H1580
to treat a person (well or ill) · preposition + verb, qal passive participle, masculine singular absolute
mother
אִמּ֑וֹ'i.Mo
H517
a mother (as the bond of the family) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
soul
נַפְשִֽׁיnaf.Shi
H5315
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
child
כַּגָּמֻ֖לka.ga.Mul
H1580
to treat a person (well or ill) · preposition with the article + verb, qal passive participle, masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Mark 10:15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.
1 Corinthians 14:20 Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
Psalms 42:11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of…
Psalms 43:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my c…
Lamentations 3:26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
Matthew 18:3-4 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
John 14:1-2 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
Psalms 62:1 Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 131:1–end
Here are two things which will be comforts to us: -
I. Consciousness of our integrity. This was David's rejoicing, that his heart could witness for him that he had walked humbly with his God, notwithstanding the censures he was under and the temptations he was in.
1. He aimed not at a high condition, nor was he desirous of making a figure in the world, but, if God had so ordered, could have been well content to spend all his days, as he did in the beginning of them, in the sheep-folds. His own brother, in a passion, charged him with pride (Sa1 17:28), but the charge was groundless and unjust. God, who searches the heart, knew, (1.) That he had no conceited opinion of himself, or his own mer…
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself,.... Or "my soul" (o); behaved quietly and peaceably towards all men, even his inferiors in Saul's court and elsewhere, and had given no tokens of a restless, turbulent, and ambitious spirit; as well as behaved patiently under all his troubles and afflictions, reproaches and calumnies: or "if I have not" (p), being in the form of an oath or imprecation, as Kimchi and Aben Ezra observe; if I have not thus behaved, let it come to me so and so, or let me be as a weaned child. Noldius renders it by way of interrogation, "have I not composed and quieted myself?" &c. The Targum is,
"if I have not put the hand to the mouth, and caused my soul to be silent,…
Psalm 131:2-3
2. If I have not set and quieted my soul like one that is weaned from his mother, my soul is over me as a weaned child. 3. Israel shall hope in Jehovah from henceforth, and for ever.
2. If I have not set, etc. He here employs a figure which appropriately explains what he meant, and likens himself to a weaned child; by which is intended, that he dismissed all the anxieties which disquiet the man of ambition, and was willing to be satisfied with small things. This assertion, which some might be inclined to disbelieve, he makes with an oath, expressed in that particular form of which I have elsewhere taken notice, in which the imprecation is not directly brought forward, but le…
The Church Fathers
Then he goes on: Like a weaned child upon his mother's breast, so will you reward my soul. We are told that when Isaac was weaned Abraham made a feast because now that he was weaned he was on the verge of boyhood and was passing beyond milk food. The Apostle feeds all that are imperfect in the faith and still babes in the things of God with the milk of knowledge. Thus to cease to need milk marks the greatest possible advance. Abraham proclaimed by a joyful feast that his son had come to stronger meat, and the Apostle refuses bread to the carnal-minded and those that are babes in Christ. And so the Prophet prays that God, because he has not lifted up his heart, nor walked amid things great and wonderful that are above him, because he has not been humble-minded but did lift up his soul, may reward his soul, lying like a weaned child upon his mother: that is to say that he may be deemed worthy of the reward of the perfect, heavenly and living bread, on the ground that by reason of his works already recorded he has now passed beyond the stage of milk.
"If I had not lowly thoughts, but have lifted up my soul, as one taken from his mother's breast, such the reward for my soul" [Psalm 131:2]. He seemeth as it were to have bound himself by a curse: ...as though he had been going to say, Let it so happen to me. "As one taken away from his mother's breast, may be my soul's reward." Ye know that the Apostle saith to some weak brethren, "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." [1 Corinthians 3:2] There are weak persons who are not fit for strong meat; they wish to grasp at that which they cannot receive: and if they ever do receive, or seem to themselves to receive what they have not received, they are puffed up thereby, and become proud thereupon; they seem to themselves wise men. Now this happeneth to all heretics; who since they were animal and carnal, by defending their depraved opinions, which they could not see to be false, were shut out of the Catholic Church. ... ...It has been evidently explained, my brethren, where God would have us to be humble, where lofty. Humble, in order to provide against pride; lofty, to take in wisdom. Feed upon milk, that thou mayest be nourished; be nourished, so that thou mayest grow; grow, so that thou mayest eat bread. But when thou hast begun to eat bread, thou wilt be weaned, that is, thou wilt no longer have need of milk, but of solid food. This he seemeth to have meant: "If I had not lowly thoughts, but have lifted up my soul:" that is, if I was not an infant in mind, I was in wickedness. In this sense, he said before, "Lord, my heart was not lifted up, nor mine eyes raised on high: I do not exercise myself in great matters, nor in wonderful things above me." Behold, in wickedness I am an infant. But since I am not an infant in understanding, "If I had not lowly thoughts, but have lifted up my soul," may that reward be mine which is given unto the infant that is weaned from his mother, that I may at length be able to eat bread. ...For it is not an infant, but a grown child that is taken away from milk; he who is weak in his earliest infancy, which is his true infancy, is upon his mother's breast: if perchance he hath been taken away from the milk, he perisheth. It is not without a reason then that it is added, "Upon his mother's breast." For all may be weaned by growing. He who groweth, and is…
Dictionary and topics
Ambition · Saints avoid — Saints avoid
Children · Weaning of — Weaning of
Humility · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Simplicity · Exemplified: David — Exemplified: David
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The psalmist calmed and quieted himself, surrendering his ambitions and taming his ego (Gal 2:20). • like a weaned child: The psalmist sees himself as a contented child.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 131:1
Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
Lord, my heart is not haughty. The Psalm deals with the Lord, and is a solitary colloquy with him, not a discourse before men. We have a sufficient audience when we speak with the Lord, and we may say to him many things which were not proper for the ears of men. The holy man makes his appeal to Jehovah, who alone knows the heart: a man should be slow to do this upon any matter, for the Lord is not to be trifled with; and when anyone ventures on such an appeal he should be sure of his case. He begins with his heart, for that is the centre of our nature, and if prid…