[1] I agree with Vitringa, Dreschler, and others in regarding
verse 16 as the prophet's own prayer to Jehovah. We
_"bind"--tie together_--what we wish to keep from getting
separated and lost; we _"seal"_ what is to be kept secret,
and only opened by a person duly qualified. And so the
prophet here prayed that Jehovah would take his testimony
with regard to the future, and his intimation, which was
designed to prepare for the future that _testimony_ and
_thorah_ which the greatest mass, in their hardness, did
not understand, and in their self-hardening despised, and
lay them up well secured and well preserved, as if by bond
and seal, in the hearts of those who receive the prophet's
words with loving obedience. For it would be all over with
Israel unless a community of believers should be preserved,
and all over with the community if the word of God, which
was the ground of their life, should be allowed to slip out
of their hearts.--_Delitzsch._