Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 19:5

"Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course." — Psalms 19:5 (ASV)

Which is. Better: and he is. The suddenness of the Eastern sunrise is finely caught in the image of the uplifted tent-curtain and the appearance of the radiant hero (“strong man; ” Hebrew, gibbor. Compare to Judges 5:31).

This lack of twilight, this absence of silent preparation for the supreme moment, distinguishes Eastern songs of sunrise from the poetry of the West. In these Eastern songs, there are no musterings of “mute companies of changeful clouds,” no “forerunners of the light,” no “grey lines fretting the clouds as messengers of day.”

Unheralded, unannounced, the sun leaps forth in all his splendor—a young bridegroom with the joy of the wedding day still on his countenance, a hero leaping forth on his path of conquest and glory.

How different the suggested feeling of this is from the wistful tenderness of Milton’s dawn coming forth “with pilgrim steps in amice grey;” or Shakespeare’s “morn in russet clad,” that “walks over the dew” of the high eastern hill.

Chamber. Hebrew: chuphah, a marriage chamber or bed (Joel 2:16). In later Hebrew, it refers to the canopy carried over the wedded pair, or even the marriage itself.

Rejoiceth. Literally: leaps for joy.

A race. Better: his race, that is, his daily course or journey.