Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

This strophe, consisting of only three lines, describes his happiness which he allows nothing to disturb. The signification: to be lasting (prop. stiff, strong) is secured to the verb חיל (whence חיל) by Job 20:21. He takes whatever ways he chooses, they always lead to the desired end; he stands fast, he neither stumbles nor goes astray, cf. Jer 12:1. The Chethמb דרכו (דּרכו) has no other meaning than that give to it by the Kerמ (cf. Psa 24:6; Psa 58:8). Whatever might cast a cloud over his happiness does not trouble him: neither the judgments of God, which are removed high as the heavens out of his sight, and consequently do not disturb his conscience (cf. Psa 28:5, Isa 5:12; and the opposite, Psa 18:23), nor his adversaries whom he bloweth upon contemptuously. מרום is the predicate: altissime remota. And הפיח בּ, to breathe upon, does not in any case signify: actually to blow away or down (to express which נשׁב or נשׁף would be used), but either to "snub," or, what is more appropriate to Psa 10:5, to blow upon them disdainfully, to puff at them, like הפּיח in Mal 1:13, and flare rosas (to despise the roses) in Prudentius. The meaning is not that he drives his enemies away without much difficulty, but that by his proud and haughty bearing he gives them to understand how little they interfere with him.