5. Then he goes on: Like a weaned
child upon his mother’s breast, so wilt thou reward my
soul. We are told that when Isaac was weaned Abraham made a
feast because now that he was weaned he was on the verge of boyhood and
was passing beyond milk food. The Apostle feeds all that are
imperfect in the faith and still babes in the things of God with the
milk of knowledge. Thus to cease to need milk marks the greatest
possible advance. Abraham proclaimed by a joyful feast that his
son had come to stronger meat, and the Apostle refuses bread to the
carnal-minded and those that are babes in Christ. And so the
Prophet prays that God, because he has not lifted up his heart, nor
walked amid things great and wonderful that are above him, because he
has not been humble-minded but did lift up his soul, may reward his
soul, lying like a weaned child upon his mother: that is to say
that he may be deemed worthy of the reward of the perfect, heavenly and
living bread, on the ground that by reason of his works already
recorded he has now passed beyond the stage of milk.