Verse 4. — I will lay my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with rebukes. 35. From considering God's hidden judgments the elect are kindled to penitence. — To lay one's cause before God is, within the secret of the mind, through the contemplation of faith, to open the eyes of our consideration unto the awful examination of His Majesty; to mark what a sinful man deserves, and to consider how terrible that Judge, now hidden and silent, will afterward appear. Hence it comes to pass that the soul is more subtly recalled to knowledge of itself, and the more it sees its hidden Judge to be the more terrible, the more fearfully it is straitened concerning its own deeds. Anxiously it trembles, it pursues its faults with laments, and repenting rebukes what it remembers itself to have been.
Whence now also, after it was said: I will lay my cause before Him, it is rightly subjoined: I will fill my mouth with rebukes. For he who lays his cause before himself in the sight of God fills his mouth with rebukes, because while he contemplates the subtle examination of the awful Judge against himself, he pursues himself with the reproach of bitter penitence. But often, while we neglect to weigh our faults, we know not what reproof of them may follow in the judgment; whereas while we pursue them by repenting, we discover what the Judge may be able to say to us concerning them in His examination. Whence it is aptly further subjoined: