Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 32:8

"I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee." — Psalms 32:8 (ASV)

I will instruct you - Many interpreters have understood this to refer to God, as if he were now introduced as speaking and saying that he would be the guide of those who submitted to him in this way and who sought him by penitence and confession.

But it is more natural to regard the psalmist as still speaking. He refers to his own experience as qualifying him to give counsel to others, showing them how they might find peace and with what views and feelings they should come before God if they wished to secure his favor.

He had himself learned by painful experience, and after much delay, how the favor of God was to be obtained and how deliverance from the distressing consciousness of guilt was to be secured. He now regards himself as qualified to teach others who are weighed down with the same consciousness of guilt and who are seeking deliverance, how they may find peace.

It is an instance of one who, by personal experience, is fitted to give instruction to others. In what follows, the psalmist does merely what every converted person is qualified to do, and should do, by imparting valuable knowledge to those who are inquiring how they must be saved.

Compare Psalms 51:12-13.

And teach you in the way which you shall go - This refers to the way you are to take to find pardon and peace, or the way to God.

I will guide you with my eye - The margin reads, “I will counsel you, my eye shall be upon you.” The margin expresses the sense of the Hebrew.

The literal meaning is, “I will counsel you; my eye shall be upon you.” DeWette, “my eye shall be directed toward you.”

The idea is that of one who is telling another what way to take to reach a certain place. He says he will watch him or keep an eye upon him, so that he will not let him go wrong.