I will instruct thee and teach thee the way in which thou shalt go; I will counsel [thee] with mine eye upon thee.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Be ye not as a horse, as a mule, which have no understanding whose trappings must be bit and bridle, for restraint, or they will not come unto thee.
Verse 8 promises God's guidance, and verse 9 warns that He can also lead a person the way a rider leads a stubborn animal. So the question is what we will be under His hand — a creature that reads a look, or one that needs a bit in its mouth.
The picture uses two animals, and they fail in opposite ways.
If we lack in this discernment, is it not because we are like the horse or the mule? (v. 9). They need a bit and bridle to control them. The horse may be too eager to rush forward, and the mule too stubborn to move when it should. So we may too easily lean on our own instincts, either too forward or too backward, instead of depending on the Lord.
Translators render the closing clause in more than one way:
But on our side, we must never assume that we have the spiritual understanding that lets us profit from the guidance He gives. We may well be just like a horse or a mule. Another rendering of the verse is, "whose trappings must be bit and bridle, for restraint, or they will not come to you." A bit and bridle are always uncomfortable and sometimes painful. The horse is often pulled up with a nasty jerk, but that is because it does not understand its master's thoughts.
Verses 8 and 9 set out two methods, and the difference between them is the state of our will. (The quote below uses an older wording of verse 8; the ESV reads, "I will counsel you with My eye upon you.")
The Lord guides us — or rather controls us — in another way, by the circumstances He arranges, so that we may not go wrong, even though we have no understanding. And we should be thankful that He does. But this is only how you treat a horse or a mule. If your will is subject to Mine, He says, "I will guide you with My eye" — but if you are not subject, I must hold you in with "bit and bridle." That is clearly a very different thing.
Many people treat shifting circumstances as God's main way of showing them the road. Commentators warn that this is not the same as being guided by God.
Whoever lets circumstances guide him always acts in the dark about the will of God. There is nothing moral in it; it is an outside force that pushes him along... The point is not to let circumstances direct you, but to let God direct you in them. That means staying near enough to God to judge at once what you should do, as soon as the circumstances arise.
Another writer puts the loss in a picture:
A Christian so guided is like a vessel at sea without rudder or compass; she is at the mercy of the waves and the winds.
The bit is not God's first choice. It becomes necessary where our own will is still at work.
Now we are often like the horse, or the mule, every one of us — and this, because our souls have not been ploughed up. When there is anything in which the will of man is at work, the Lord deals with us, as with the horse or the mule, holding us in. When every part of the heart is in contact with Himself, He guides us with His "eye."
When the bridle does come, it is mercy, not abandonment. One writer sees it in David's own life:
Among these reefs he would certainly have gone down if God had left him to his own strength. So God, no longer able to lead him by His eye, used the "bit and bridle" of Psalm 32:9 — a series of circumstances that went against the will of His servant — to keep him from a fall he could never undo.
The warning has a goal behind it, and it is not a tighter rein.
And how many of God's people have lives so little yielded to Him that circumstances must govern them, instead of the eye of God. His desire for us is not the drudgery of a stopped will, but the freedom of a changed one.
- The offer. God's first method is a look. He counsels the one who stays near enough to catch it.
- The warning. The horse rushes ahead, the mule will not move. Both run on instinct instead of dependence, so both need a bit in the mouth.
- The downgrade. Guidance by circumstances is that bit. It is real, but it works from outside and leaves you in the dark.
- The cause. God reaches for the bit where our own will is still at work. He guides a heart wholly in touch with Him by His eye.
- The mercy. Even the bridle is kindness — it held David back from ruin — but God's desire is not a stopped will, it is a changed one.