Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 27:11 - 27:11
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
He is now wandering about like a hunted deer; but God is able to guide him so that he may escape all dangers. And this is what he prays for. As in Psa 143:10, מִישֹׁור is used in an ethical sense; and differs in this respect from its use in Psa 26:12. On שֹׁרֲרִים, see the primary passage Psa 5:9, of which this is an echo. Wily spies dodge his every step and would gladly see what they have invented against him and wished for him, realised. Should he enter the way of sin leading to destruction, it would tend to the dishonour of God, just as on the contrary it is a matter of honour with God not to let His servant fall. Hence he prays to be led in the way of God, for a oneness of his own will with the divine renders a man inaccessible to evil. נֶפֶשׁ, Psa 27:12, is used, as in Psa 17:9, and in the similar passage, which is genuinely Davidic, Psa 41:3, in the signification passion or strong desire; because the soul, in its natural state, is selfishness and inordinate desire. יָפֵחַ is a collateral form of יָפִיחַ; they are both adjectives formed from the future of the verb פּוּחַ (like יָרֵב, יָרִיב): accustomed to breathe out (exhale), i.e., either to express, or to snort, breathe forth (cf. πνεῖν, or ἐμπνεῖν φόνον and θόνοῦ, θυμον, and the like, Act 9:1). In both Hitzig sees participles of יָפַח (Jer 4:31); but Psa 10:5 and Hab 2:3 lead back to פּוּחַ (פִּיחַ); and Hupfeld rightly recognises such nouns formed from futures to be, according to their original source, circumlocutions of the participle after the manner of an elliptical relative clause (the ṣifat of the Arabic syntax), and explains יָפִיחַ כְּזָבִים, together with יְפֵחַ חָמָס, from the verbal construction which still continues in force.