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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 9:13 - 9:13
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(Heb.: 9:14-15) To take this strophe as a prayer of David at the present time, is to destroy the unity and hymnic character of the Psalm, since that which is here put in the form of prayer appears in what has preceded and in what follows as something he has experienced. The strophe represents to us how the עֲנִיִּים (עֲנָוִים) cried to Jahve before the deliverance now experienced. Instead of the form חָנֵּנִי used everywhere else the resolved, and as it were tremulous, form חָנְנֵנִי is designedly chosen. According to a better attested reading it is חִֽנְנֵנִי (Pathach with Gaja in the first syllable), which is regarded by Chajug and others as the imper. Piel, but more correctly (Ewald §251, c) as the imper. Kal from the intransitive imperative form חֲנַן. מְרֹֽומֲמִי is the vocative, cf. Psa 17:7. The gates of death, i.e., the gates of the realm of the dead (שְׁאֹול, Isa 38:10), are in the deep; he who is in peril of death is said to have sunk down to them; he who is snatched from peril of death is lifted up, so that they do not swallow him up and close behind him. The church, already very near to the gates of death, cried to the God who can snatch from death. Its final purpose in connection with such deliverance is that it may glorify God. The form תְּהִלָּתֶיךָ is sing. with a plural suffix just like שִׂנְאָתֶיךְ Eze 35:11, אַשְׁמָתֵימו Ezr 9:15. The punctuists maintained (as עֲצָתַיִךְ in Isa 47:13 shows) the possibility of a plural inflexion of a collective singular. In antithesis to the gates of death, which are represented as beneath the ground, we have the gates of the daughter of Zion standing on high. צִיֹּון is gen. appositionis (Ges. §116, 5). The daughter of Zion (Zion itself) is the church in its childlike, bride-like, and conjugal relation to Jahve. In the gates of the daughter of Zion is equivalent to: before all God's people, Psa 116:14. For the gates are the places of public resort and business. At this period the Old Testament mind knew nothing of the songs of praise of the redeemed in heaven. On the other side of the grave is the silence of death. If the church desires to praise God, it must continue in life and not die.