Introduction
A Song of degrees of David.
The absence of any local allusions, and the very general terms in which the author clothes his description, adapt this psalm to the public use of the Church in all ages on any occasion of marked deliverance from great danger. The danger was imminent, the distress overwhelming, the deliverance sudden and timely, and indisputably from “Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.” The Hebrew title ascribes it to David, but the Septuagint and the earlier versions, except the Chaldee, make it anonymous. The spirit, boldness, and language are Davidic, and it might well enough suit the perils of his Aramaic and Edomitish wars, to which, if he wrote it, it should be assigned. But another event of great moment to the Jewish nation, more perfectly suiting the exigence and escape herein described, seems to be entitled to the higher claim their deliverance from the decree of Haman. Esther 3:0, and sequel. This gives the psalm the postexilic data to which modern commentators generally incline. The supposed Aramaic word-forms are disputed, and we pass them over. If David wrote it, as Hengstenberg and others contend, and as is, after all, possible, it was placed here among psalms of later date, undoubtedly, because it suited the struggling nation in its often-checked, imperilled efforts to reconstruct after the exile, (see besides the above, Nehemiah 4:7-15,) and because it was suitable to be placed for all time among those national ballads which celebrate the crises of their history. It is not improbable that Mordecai, or a devout Levite, may have remodelled it from the form of an old Davidic production originally penned for another occasion.
Be the first to react on this!
