20 He has not done this for just any nation. They don't know his ordinances. Praise Yah!
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
He hath not dealt so with any nation - He has favored Israel more than any other people by giving them his revealed truth. This was so. There was no nation in the ancient world so favored as the Hebrew people in this respect. There is no nation now so favored as the nation that has the revealed will of God - the Bible. The possession of that book gives a nation a vast superiority in all respects over all others. In laws, customs, morals, intelligence, social life, purity, charity, prosperity, that book elevates a nation at once, and scatters blessings which can be derived from nothing else. The highest benevolence that could be shown to any nation would be to put it in possession of the word of God in the language of the people.
And as for his judgments, they have not known them - Other nations are ignorant of his laws, his statutes, his revealed will. They are consequently subjected to all the evils which arise from ignorance of those laws. The fact that the ancient people of God possessed them was a sufficient reason for the Hallelujah with which the psalm closes. The fact that we possess them is a sufficient reason why we should re-echo the shout of praise, and cry Hallelujah.
And as for his judgments - The wondrous ordinances of his law, no nation had known them; and consequently, did not know the glorious things in futurity to which they referred.
He hath not dealt so with any nation: and [as for his] judgments, they have not (n) known them. Praise ye the LORD.
(n) The cause of this difference is God's free mercy, which has elected his in his Son Christ Jesus to salvation: and his just judgment, by which he has appointed the reprobate to eternal damnation.
He hath not dealt so with any nation,.... Or "every nation" (b); or all the nations under the heavens; only with the Jewish nation: these only for many hundreds of years were favoured with the divine revelation, with the word and ordinances of God; with the law, and with the Gospel, and with the service and worship of God; as well as with promises and prophecies of Christ, and good things to come by him. These were not communicated to anyone nation or body of people besides them; only now and then, to one here and there among the Gentiles: the Gospel was first preached to them at the coming of Christ, and after them to the Gentiles, when rejected by them;
and as for his judgments, they have not known them; by which are meant, not the providential dispensations of God, which are unsearchable, and past finding out, till made manifest; nor punishments inflicted on wicked men, unobserved by them; but the word of God, and the ordinances of it, which the Gentile world for many ages were unacquainted with; see Psalm 19:9;
praise ye the Lord: as literal Israel had reason to do, for those distinguishing instances of his favour and goodness; and as the spiritual Israel of God everywhere have; and particularly our British ones, who are highly favoured with the privileges of having the word of God purely and powerfully preached, and his ordinances truly and duly administered; at least in some parts of it, and that more than in any other nation under the heavens.
(b) "omni genti", Pagninus, Montanus, Gejerus; "omni nationi", V. L.
*More commentary available at chapter level.