Matthew Poole and continuators on Psalms 89:2

2 For I have said , Mercy shall be built up for ever : thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens

Within my self. I have been assured in my own mind.

As thou hast laid a sure foundation of mercy to Davids Family by that everlasting Covenant which thou hast made and established with it; so I concluded, That thou wouldst carry on the same project of mercy towards it, that thou wouldest build it up and not destroy it.

So the sence may be this, Thou sittest in the Heavens, and there thou didst make this everlasting and unchangeable Decree and Covenant concerning David and his House, and from thence thou beholdest and orderest all the affairs of his lower World, and therefore, I doubt not, thou wilt so order these matters as to accomplish thine own counsel and word. But the Hebrew words are by some others, and may very well be translated thus, with (as the Hebrew prefix Beth is oft rendred) the very heavens, i. e. as firmly and durably as the Heavens themselves, as with the sun in the Hebrew Text, Psal. 72. 5. is by most Interpreters rendred, as long as the sun endureth, as our translation hath it. And so this phrase in this last branch of this Verse answers to for ever in the former; as it is also in the foregoing Verse, and so in v. 4. in both which Verses for ever in the first clause is explained thus in the latter, to all generations.

Marginal references: Psal. 119. 8[illegible: 1+ letters].