Psalms 91

The occasion and date of this psalm cannot be affirmed, as no historical allusion appears in it. The object, however, is clear, namely, to encourage trust in God in all dangers, offering assurance of safety to all who make him their refuge. Internal evidence offers a strong probability that it was written by Moses after the date of Psalms 90:0, (which see) to allay distrust and apprehensions which would be likely to arise after the fatal decree of Numbers 14:29-30. Several commentators are of this opinion. Many of the dangers enumerated specially belong to the desert of Arabia and to the history of the Israelites while there. Still, like all Scripture, it is adapted to common use, and whatever be the form of danger, in any place or age, the principles of trust, of patient waiting, and the doctrine of the special care of God for his children, equally apply; and it is in this higher and general sense that the psalm is chiefly to be taken.

The change of person, from the third to the first, in Psalms 91:2, and again to the second in Psalms 91:3, returning to the first abruptly in Psalms 91:9, (“ my refuge,”) and resuming it again in Psalms 91:14, has led many to divide the psalm into responsive choruses of three voices. It seems more natural, however, as Hengstenberg suggests, to consider the writer, in Psalms 91:2; Psalms 91:9, as speaking from the depths of his own experience, and in the other places as speaking from the heart of the righteous man. In impassioned style such changes are not rare.

The last three verses, however, must be understood as spoken in the person of God. “It is one of the freshest and most beautiful psalms, resembling the second part of Isaiah in its light winged, richly coloured, and transparent diction.” Delitzsch.