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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 107:17 - 107:17
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Others were brought to the brink of the grave by severe sickness; but when they draw nigh in earnest prayer to Him who appointed that they should suffer thus on account of their sins, He became their Saviour. אֱויל (cf. e.g., Job 5:3), like נָבָל (vid., Psa 14:1), is also an ethical notion, and not confined to the idea of defective intellect merely. It is one who insanely lives only for the passing hour, and ruins health, calling, family, and in short himself and everything belonging to him. Those who were thus minded, the poet begins by saying, were obliged to suffer by reason of (in consequence of) their wicked course of life. The cause of their days of pain and sorrow is placed first by way of emphasis; and because it has a meaning that is related to the past יִתְעַנּוּ thereby comes all the more easily to express that which took place simultaneously in the past. The Hithpa. in 1Ki 2:26 signifies to suffer willingly or intentionally; here: to be obliged to submit to suffering against one's will. Hengstenberg, for example, construes it differently: “Fools because of their walk in transgression (more than 'because of their transgression'), and those who because of their iniquities were afflicted - all food,” etc. But מִן beside יִתְעַנּוּ has the assumption in its favour of being an affirmation of the cause of the affliction. In Psa 107:18 the poet has the Book of Job (Job 33:20, Job 33:22) before his eye. And in connection with Psa 107:20, ἀπέστειλεν τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἰάσατο αὐτοὺς (lxx), no passage of the Old Testament is more vividly recalled to one's mind than Psa 105:19, even more than Psa 147:18; because here, as in Psa 105:19, it treats of the intervention of divine acts within the sphere of human history, and not of the intervention of divine operations within the sphere of the natural world. In the natural world and in history the word (דָּבָר) is God's messenger (Psa 105:19, cf. Isa 55:10.), and appears here as a mediator of the divine healing. Here, as in Job 33:23., the fundamental fact of the New Testament is announced, which Theodoret on this passage expresses in words: Ὁ Θεὸς Λόγος ἐνανθρωπήσας καὶ ἀποσταλεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος τὰ παντοδαπὰ τῶν ψυχῶν ἰάσατο τραύματα καὶ τοὺς διαφθαρέντας ἀνέῤῥωσε λογισμούς. The lxx goes on to render it: καὶ ἐῤῥύσατο αὐτοὺς ἐκ τῶν διαφθορῶν αὐτῶν, inasmuch as the translators derive שְׁחִיתֹותָם from שְׁחִיתָה (Dan 6:5), and this, as שַׁחַת elsewhere (vid., Psa 16:10), from שָׁחַת, διαφθείρειν, which is approved by Hitzig. But Lam 4:20 is against this. From שָׁחָה is formed a noun שָׁחוּת (שְׁחוּת) in the signification a hollow place (Pro 28:10), the collateral form of which, שָׁחִית (שְׁחִית), is inflected like חֲנִית, plur. חֲנִיתֹות with a retention of the substantival termination. The “pits” are the deep afflictions into which they were plunged, and out of which God caused them to escape. The suffix of וירפאֵם avails also for יְמַלֵּט, as in Gen 27:5; Gen 30:31; Psa 139:1; Isa 46:5.