So brutish was I, and ignorant; I wasasa beast before thee.
So foolish was I. He, though a saint of God, had acted as if he had been one of the fools whom God abhorreth. Had he not even envied them?—and what is that but to aspire to be like them? The wisest of men have enough folly in them to ruin them unless grace prevents. And ignorant.
Placing himself at the end, the poet sees the ungodly come to terrible destruction in a moment; it is finished with them. Frightful occurrences clear them out of the way. They are as a dream upon waking, forgotten for their nothingness. Before God the boastful evildoer is but a phantom, an unsubstantial shadow. When He arouses Himself to judgment, He will despise their shadowy image and cast it from Him in contempt.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 73:19-22
So foolish was I,.... To envy the prosperity of the wicked, which is of so short a continuance; to arraign the providence and perfections of God, and to conclude so hastily that there was nothing in religion: and ignorant; or, "I knew not" (w); what he attempted to know, Psa 73:16, nor the end of the wicked, till he went into the sanctuary of the...