A Prayer of David in Extremity of Danger
Explanation of the Psalm
1–2 We learn nothing more from these two verses, but that David put up a certain prayer to God, but the several expressions in them are worth attention. “With my voice,” intimating that David did not pray with his lips alone, as they do who do not attend to, or understand what they are about; but he prayed “with his voice,” that was formed in his heart, and sent forth through the organs he got for the purpose. “I cried.” We have already explained, that such expression implies, crying with earnestness. “I made supplication,” is an explanation of the nature of his cry, viz., that he cried not by way of reproach or blasphemy, but in prayer and invocation. “In his sight I pour out my prayer,” implying his prayer was put up from the cave when he was flying from Saul, where God alone beheld him, and as if he foresaw the monition of Christ, who advises us to pray in our closed chamber; and with that, as is principally intended here, to signify that the cry was principally in the interior, where God alone can hear or see it. “And before him I declare my trouble,” is no more than an explanation of “in his sight I pour out my prayer.”
3 He now tells why and when he declared his trouble before God. It was when he was at death’s door, “when my spirit failed me,” when he was lurking in the cave, and in great danger for his life. This is more applicable to Christ in the garden, or on the cross. “Then thou knewest my paths.” When my spirit failed me, I prayed to you, who well “knew my paths,” my thoughts, actions, and desires, and how unjustly I was suffering so much persecution. “In this way wherein I walked, they have hidden a snare for me.” He tells us that such persecution commenced by his enemies privately plotting against him, and then, that they had recourse to open violence. Saul frequently sought David’s death privately by sending him to fight where he expected he would be slain; but when he did not succeed in that, he openly attacked him. And so with the Pharisees, who frequently sought to take advantage of our Lord in his language; but when his wisdom proved superior to their malice, they openly charged him and demanded his crucifixion. “In this way wherein I walked” in the way of justice and of God’s commandments, in the very path you know so well. “They have hidden a snare for me.” To give an example. Saul promised his daughter in marriage to David, on condition of his killing two hundred Philistines, with whom God’s people were then, justly, at war; and he did so, in the hope of David being killed in the battle. David, however, through God’s assistance, in obedience to the king, set out to battle, and killed the two hundred Philistines. Thus, the Pharisees watched Christ, to see would he heal on the sabbath, that they may afterwards be able to say, “This man is not of God who keepeth not the sabbath,” and thus they, too, “hid snares in the way” of the commandments of God. Christ, however, did work in curing on the sabbath, and showed that he did not violate the sabbath thereby, inasmuch as it was only servile works, and not works of charity, that were forbidden on the sabbath. They also “hid snares in his way,” when they brought the adulteress before him saying, “Moses ordered such one to be stoned, what say you?”
4 This refers to the violence offered him; for his enemies, on seeing that their private plots against him did not succeed, had recourse to open violence. Under such persecution, he says, “I looked to the right,” for help from my friends, “and beheld,” to see was any friend or companion coming to my aid, “and there was no one that would know me,” not one that would dare to acknowledge his having the slightest knowledge of me. This applies to David, who, when persecuted by Saul, flew for protection, to King Achis, who refused to receive him, whereon he had to hide himself in a cave. It applies much more forcibly to Christ, who, in his passion, saw many on his left hand, his enemies and accusers, and not one on his right hand, his friends and acquaintances. For, as the Gospel has it, “And all his acquaintance stood afar off,” and Peter himself the principal one among them, swore with an oath, “I know not the man;” and with just reason, therefore, might the Lord say, “There was no one that would know me.” “Flight hath failed me.” He was now reduced to such extremities that, so far from having any hope of external aid, he was even unable to run away, and thus save himself by flight. “Flight hath failed me,” and I, therefore, have no means of escape, “and there is no one that hath regard to any soul,” not one having the least concern for me, or caring to save me from utter destruction. David complained of his being unable to fly away by reason of his inability; but Christ was unable to do so because be would not do so, and because both he and his Father had interdicted it. Flight fails the one who will not fly as effectually as the one who cannot fly. And, in fact, not one appeared: “to have regard” to Christ’s life in order to save it, though he said, “I lay down my life;” and again, “The good shepherd layeth down his life for his sheep;” and though he said to his Father, “My Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”
5 Having now no hope whatever of any aid from man, he has recourse to God, to whom “nothing is difficult;” and being a spiritual man, fully aware that God sometimes afflicts his friends in their pilgrimage, with a view to crown them with additional glory in their country, he says, “I cried to thee O Lord; I said: Thou art my hope,” down here in my pilgrimage; “my portion”—in other words, my inheritance “in the land of the living.”
6 He now uses two arguments to move God to deliver him because he is brought very low, and his enemies are made very strong. “Attend to my supplication,” and hear me at last, “for I am brought very low,” grievously depressed and afflicted. “Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than I.” They have become so much stronger and more powerful than I that they must easily overcome me. However true this may have been of David lurking in a cave while his enemy, Saul, was at the head of a powerful army, it is more literally true of Christ, who could truly say, “I am brought very low,” because “he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.” He was also “brought very low,” when he, that had the right of sitting on the cherubim, hung between two robbers. Truly, also, were his enemies “stronger than him” when “their hour came,” and “power was given to darkness,” so as to appear, for a while, to eclipse the sun of justice itself.
7 As regards David, St. John Chrysostom says, “the prison” means the troubles and afflictions that caused him to hide himself in the cave, so that the meaning would be, Bring me clear of those afflictions, so that I may be able to leave this cave, and, upon being set at liberty, that I may praise thy name. “The just wait for me;” for they all expect you, in your providence, will free me, innocent as I am. Still, perhaps, David, holy as he was, and devoured with great lights from God, had loftier aspirations, and, in his desire to be freed from his mortality, as he would from a prison, said, with the Apostle, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” for they who thus ascend to the dwelling of those who praise the Lord forever and ever are those who really praise his name, which is confirmed by the subsequent sentence, “the just wait for me until thou reward me;” for the souls of the holy prophets in Limbo were waiting for the just Prophet, to see him rewarded; and so were the holy Angels in heaven, who were looking out for the true and eternal happiness to be secured by his merits. As regards Christ, he prays “to be brought out of the prison” of the flesh, and, through his resurrection, to put on his spiritual body, to praise the name of the Lord; so that he, who had had so much labor in preaching to the people, may thenceforth be at rest in praising his Father. A number of the holy fathers agree in saying that the words, “the just wait for me until thou reward me,” are most applicable to Christ, because all the just, including all from the very beginning of the world, as well as the Apostles and the other faithful then alive, waited most ardently for the resurrection and the glorification of Christ, because they were all to receive from “the fullness of his glory;” for, as St. John says, “For as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified,” so we, too, can say, the souls of the saints had not ascended from the prison of Limbo to the kingdom of heaven, because Christ, the King of Glory, had not yet entered into his glory.