John Calvin Commentary Psalms 73:26

"My flesh and my heart faileth; [But] God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." — Psalms 73:26 (ASV)

My flesh and my heart have failed. Some understand the first part of the verse as meaning that David’s heart and flesh failed him through the ardent desire with which he was motivated; and they think that by this he intends to testify the earnestness with which he applied his mind to God.

We encounter a similar form of expression elsewhere; but the clause immediately following, God is the strength of my heart, seems to require that it should be explained differently. I am rather inclined to think that there is here a contrast between the failing which David felt in himself and the strength with which he was divinely supplied; as if he had said, Separated from God I am nothing, and all that I attempt to do ends in nothing; but when I come to him, I find an abundant supply of strength.

It is highly necessary for us to consider what we are without God; for no one will cast himself wholly upon God, except the one who feels himself in a fainting condition and despairs of the sufficiency of his own powers. We will seek nothing from God but what we are conscious of lacking in ourselves.

Indeed, all people confess this, and most think that all that is necessary is that God should aid our weaknesses, or afford us help when we do not have the means of adequately relieving ourselves. But the confession of David is far more comprehensive than this when he lays, so to speak, his own nothingness before God.

He, therefore, very properly adds, that God is his portion. The portion of an individual is a figurative expression, used in Scripture to denote the condition or lot with which everyone is contented. Accordingly, God is represented as a portion because he alone is abundantly sufficient for us, and because in him the perfection of our happiness consists.

From this it follows, that we are guilty of ingratitude if we turn away our minds from him and fix them on any other object, as has been stated in Psalm 16:4, where David explains more clearly the meaning of the metaphor. Some foolishly assert that God is called our portion because our soul is taken from him.

I do not know how such a silly notion has found its way into their brains; for it is as far from David’s meaning as heaven is from the earth, and it involves the wild notion of the Manicheans, with which Servetus was bewitched. But it generally happens that people who are not versed in the Scriptures, nor imbued with sound theology, although well acquainted with the Hebrew language, still err and fall into mistakes even in first principles.

Under the word heart the Psalmist encompasses the whole soul. He does not, however, mean, when he speaks of the heart failing, that the essence or substance of the soul fails, but that all the powers which God in his goodness has bestowed upon it, and the use of which it retains only as long as he pleases, fall into decay.