II Samuel 22:47

47 Jehovah liveth, and blessed is my rock, And the God of my refuge of salvation is exalted. 48 The God who giveth me vengeance, And bringeth nations under me; 49 Who leadeth me out from mine enemies, And exalteth me above mine adversaries, Delivereth me from the man of violence. The formula חי־יהוה does not mean "let Jehovah live," for the word יחי would be used for that (vid., Sa2 16:16; Sa1 10:24), but is a declaration: "the Lord is living." The declaration itself is to be taken as praise of God, for "praising God is simply ascribing to Him the glorious perfections which belong to him; we have only to give Him what is His own" (Hengstenberg). The following clauses also contain simply declarations; this is evident from the word ירוּם, since the optative ירם would be used to denote a wish. The Lord is living or alive when He manifests His life in acts of omnipotence. In the last clause, the expression צוּר (rock) is intensified into ישׁעי צוּר אלהי (the God of my refuge, or rock, of salvation), i.e., the God who is my saving rock (cf. Sa2 22:3). In the predicates of God in Sa2 22:48, Sa2 22:49, the saving acts depicted by David in vv. 5-20 and 29-46 are summed up briefly. Instead of מוריד, "He causes to go down under me," i.e., He subjects to me, we find in the psalm ויּדבּר, "He drives nations under me," and מפלטי instead of מוציאי; and lastly, instead of חמס אישׁ in the psalm, we have here חמסים אישׁ, as in Psa 140:2. Therefore the praise of the Lord shall be sounded among all nations.

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…