II Samuel 22:25

25 Thus Jehovah repaid me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes. 26 Towards the pious Thou showest thyself pious, Towards the perfectly innocent Thou showest thyself innocent. 27 Towards the genuine Thou showest thyself genuine, And towards the perverse Thou showest thyself crooked. 28 And afflicted people Thou helpest, And Thine eyes are against the haughty; them Thou humblest. The motive for deliverance, which was expounded in Sa2 22:21-24, is summed up briefly in Sa2 22:25; and then in Sa2 22:26 and Sa2 22:27 it is carried back to the general truth, that the conduct of God towards men is regulated according to the conduct of men towards God. The vav cons. in ויּשׁב expresses the logical consequence. כּברי is used instead of ידי כּבר in Sa2 22:21, which is repeated in the psalm simply for the sake of variation. The truth that God treats every man in accordance with his conduct towards Him, is expounded in four parallel clauses, in which the conduct of God is expressed in verbs in the Hithpael, formed from the adjectives used to describe the conduct of men towards God. To the חסיד, the pious or devoted to God, He also shows himself pious; and innocent, blameless, to the תמים גּבּור, the man strong in innocence, who walks in perfect innocence. נבר, a Niphal participle, from בּרר, he who keeps himself pure, strives after purity of walk. תּתּבר, an anomalous contraction of תּתבּרר (Ps.), analogous to the formation of נבר for נברר. The form תּתּפּל for תּתפּתּל, to show one's self perverse of crooked, is still more anomalous. God shows himself so towards the perverse, by giving him up to his perverseness (Rom 1:28). This general truth is applied in Sa2 22:28 to the congregation of God, in the contrast which it presents of humble and haugh…

This chapter is a psalm, a psalm of praise; we find it afterwards inserted among David's psalms (Ps. 18) with some little variation. We have it here as it was first composed for his own closed and his own harp; but there we have it as it was afterwards delivered to the chief musician for the service of the church, a second edition with some amendments; for, though it was calculated primarily for David's case, yet it might indifferently serve the devotion of others, in giving thanks for their deliverances; or it was intended that his people should thus join with him in his thanksgivings, because, being a public person, his deliverances were to be accounted public blessings and called for public acknowledgments. The inspired historian, having largely related David's deliverances in this and the foregoing book, and one particularly in the close of the foregoing chapter, thought fit to record this sacred poem as a memorial of all that had been before related. Some think that David penned this psalm when he was old, upon a general review of the mercies of his life and the many wonderful preservations God had blessed him with, from first to last. We should in our praises, look as far back as we can, and not suffer time to wear out the sense of God's favours. Others think that he penned it when he was young, upon occasion of some of his first deliverances, and kept it by him for his use afterwards, and that, upon every new deliverance, his practice was to sing this song. But the book of Psalms shows that he varied as there was occasion, and confined not himself to one form. Here is, I. The title of the psalm (Sa2 22:1). II. The psalm itself, in which, with a very warm devotion and very great fluency and copiousness of expression, 1. He gives glory to God. 2. He takes comfort i…