John Calvin Commentary Psalms 119:109

"My soul is continually in my hand; Yet do I not forget thy law." — Psalms 119:109 (ASV)

My soul is continually in my hand. He declares that no calamities, afflictions, or dangers which he had experienced had withdrawn him from the service of God and the observance of his law. To bear his soul in his hand, is equivalent to his being in danger of his life, so that the soul was, as it were, abandoned to the wind.

Thus Job (Job 13:14), when he pines in his miseries and is looking for death every moment and dreading it, complains that his soul was in his hand, as if he had said, 'It is plucked from its own dwelling-place and is under the dominion of death.' This form of expression is therefore unfortunately distorted into an absurd meaning by ignorant people, who understand the prophet as intimating that it was in his own power to govern his life as he pleased.

So far from intending to convey such an idea, by this circumstance he commends his own piety, declaring that although he was tossed among shipwrecks, and death in a hundred forms hovered before his eyes, so that he could not rest securely for a single moment, yet he had not forsaken the love and study of the Divine law.

Here, again, it is good to notice the severe and arduous conflicts by which the fathers under the law were tried, so that dangers and fears may not frighten us, or by the weariness they produce, deprive us of courage, nor, as a result, prevent the remembrance of the Divine law from remaining impressed on our hearts.