John Gill Commentary Psalms 57:8

"Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake right early." — Psalms 57:8 (ASV)

Awake up, my glory
Meaning his soul, whom Jacob calls his honour, (Genesis 49:6); it being the most honourable, glorious, and excellent part of man; is the breath of God, of his immediate production; is a spirit incorporeal and immortal; is possessed of glorious powers and faculties; had the image of God stamped upon it, which made man the glory of God, (1 Corinthians 11:7); and has the image of Christ on it in regenerated persons; and is that with which God and Christ are glorified; and is, upon all accounts, of great worth and value, even of more worth than the whole world:

And this sometimes in the saints is as it were asleep, and needs awaking; not in a literal sense; for it is incapable of natural sleep, being incorporeal; but in a figurative and spiritual sense, as when grace is dormant, and not in exercise; when the soul is backward to and slothful in duty, unconcerned about divine things, and lukewarm and indifferent to them; which is occasioned by prevailing corruptions and worldly cares; and sometimes it becomes dull, and heavy, and inactive, through an over pressure by sorrows and troubles, as the disciples of Christ were found sleeping for sorrow, (Luke 22:45);

Which seems to have been the case of the psalmist here; he had been in great distress, his soul was bowed down, (Psalms 57:6); he had hung his harp upon the willow, and could not sing one of the Lord's songs in the place and circumstances he was in; but now he calls upon his soul, and arouses all the powers and faculties of it, and stirs up himself to the work of praise, just as Deborah did, (Judges 5:12); some by his glory understand his tongue, as in (Psalms 16:9) compared with (Acts 2:26) (Psalms 30:12); and so may design vocal singing here, as instrumental music in the next clause:

awake, psaltery and harp ;
which, by a prosopopoeia, are represented as persons; as if they were animate, sensible, and living: these had been laid aside for some time as useless; but now the psalmist determines to take them up and employ them in the service of praising God: these are fitly put together, because psalms were sung to harps; and so with the Greeks a psalm is said to be properly the sound of the harp ^F19 ;

I [myself] will awake early ;
in the morning, when salvation and joy come; and so soon cause his voice to be heard, as in prayer, so in praise; or "I will awaken the morning": so Jarchi; be up before the sun rises, the morning appears, or day dawns: this is taking the wings of the morning, and even preventing that. The Targum is,

``I will awake to the morning prayer.''

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FOOTNOTES:

• F19: Scholia in Aristoph. Aves, p. 551.