John Calvin Commentary Psalms 119:89

"For ever, O Jehovah, Thy word is settled in heaven." — Psalms 119:89 (ASV)

Your word, O Jehovah, I endure for ever. Many explain this verse as if David cited the stability of the heavens as a proof of God’s truth. According to them, the meaning is that God is proved to be true because the heavens continually remain in the same state.

Others offer a still more forced interpretation: that God’s truth is more sure than the state of the heavens. But it appears to me that the prophet intended to convey a very different idea. Since we see nothing constant or of long permanence upon earth, he elevates our minds to heaven, so that they may fix their anchor there.

David, no doubt, might have said, as he has done in many other places, that the whole order of the world bears testimony to the steadfastness of God’s word—that word which is most true. But there is reason to fear that the minds of the godly would hang in uncertainty if they rested the proof of God’s truth upon the state of the world, in which numerous disorders prevail.

Therefore, by placing God’s truth in the heavens, he assigns it a dwelling place subject to no changes. In this way, no one may judge God’s word by the various changes he observes in this world, and heaven is tacitly set in opposition to the earth.

Consequently, our salvation—being secured in God’s word, as if it had been said—is not subject to change, as all earthly things are, but is anchored in a safe and peaceful haven. The Prophet Isaiah teaches the same truth in somewhat different words:

All flesh is grass, and all the godliness thereof is as the flower of the field, (Isaiah 40:6).

He means, according to the Apostle Peter’s exposition (1 Peter 1:24), that the certainty of salvation is to be sought in the word, and therefore, that those who settle their minds upon the world do wrong; for the steadfastness of God’s word far transcends the stability of the world.