Psalms 40:7

7. Then said I Christ still speaks, (see Psalms 40:6.) The language is slightly historic, but passes over into the typically predictive. “Then” is emphatic. With David it was after the revelation and spiritual discernment of the insufficiency of animal sacrifice to atone for his crimes. With Christ it points to the date when, “ εισερχομενος εις τον κοσμον λεγει , coming into the world, he said,” etc. Hebrews 10:5. In David’s agony of repentance he had obtained deeper views of sin. He had passed beyond the reach of atonement under the law, but with a “crushed and contrite heart” appealed to a higher power and provision of pardon. See on Psalms 51:16. In these depths, but especially after his conscious restoration, he was lifted up to the spiritual height of antitypical vision to behold the “one offering” to which animal sacrifice could only point. His “ears being now opened” to receive a profounder subjective sense of law and sin, he obtains also a clearer ectypal view of the true atoning Sacrifice. But this faint trace of historic application falls far below the energy and dignity of the style, which finds its fulness of import only in Christ. Lo,

I come The verb is in the preterite, Lo, I have come. This was Christ’s profession as to the import and end of his incarnation and all his subsequent work. He came to fulfil the will of God, which involved obedience “unto death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:8. Compare, also, John 6:38. This prophetic application of the text must be given if we pay any respect to the laws of typical Messianic prediction, or the inspired authority of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 10:5-10, where see note.

Volume of the book The roll of the book, that is, the Torah, or law of Moses. Its general import, not any particular passage, is here alluded to. See Luke 24:44. Books anciently were written on skins, or papyrus, and rolled, not bound, as now.

It is written of me See Deuteronomy 18:15, and compare Luke 24:27; John 1:45; John 5:46-47; Acts 3:22