Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 119:96

"I have seen an end of all perfection; [But] thy commandment is exceeding broad." — Psalms 119:96 (ASV)

I have seen. —The exact thought of the psalmist here is doubtful, and it offers such a wide application, embracing so many truths of experience, that possibly he had more than one meaning in his mind. Keeping as close to the context as possible, the meaning will be: “To all perfection (or apparent perfection) a limit is visible, but the Divine Law is boundless both in its scope and its requirements.” This, translated into the language of modern ideas, merely says that the actual can never correspond with the ideal:

“Who keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears ?”

But in the word end in Hebrew, as in English, there is a limitation in time, as in space (Job 28:3; compare Symmachus, “I have seen the end of all settled things”), and the Prayer Book version may indeed convey the psalmist’s thought as indicating the difference between mere change and progress.

“The old order changes, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
TENNYSON: Morte d’Arthur.