Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, else they come not near unto you.
All Commentaries on Psalms 32:9 Go To Psalms 32
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Do not. This may be spoken by God, or by the psalmist; as an admonition to hear the counsel of those divinely commissioned. (Calmet)
Who come. Protestants, "lest they come near "(Haydock) and threaten to bite or to run over thee. (Calmet)
But the Hebrew may have the sense of the Vulgate, qui non accedunt. (St. Jerome)
It may be a prayer, that God would offer a sort of violence to restrain the sallies of the sinner, (Haydock) and to convert him; (Worthington) or God threatens the obstinate with rigour of his justice. Many delude themselves, thinking that he will always treat them with lenity, and be ready to receive them. (Berthier) (Isaias xxxvii. 29.) But the prophet admonishes them not to follow their senses alone, nor to imitate brute beasts, as he had done with regard to Baths bee and Urias. (Menochius)
The bit (camus) was a sort of muzzle, "to hinder horses from biting. "(Xenophon)
