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19.Blessed be the Lord, etc. David would have us to understand, that in recounting the more particular deliverances which God had wrought, he did not mean to draw our minds away from the fact, that the Church is constantly and at all times indebted for its safety to the Divine care and protection. He adds, Blessed be God daily And he intimates, that deliverances might be expected from him with great abundance of every blessing. Some read, he will load, others, he will carry; (40) but it is of little importance which reading we adopt. He points at the fact, that God extends continued proofs of his kindness to his people, and is unwearied in renewing the instances of it. I read this Lord in the second part of the verse, for the letter ה, he, prefixed in the Hebrew, has often the force of a demonstrative pronoun; and he would point out, as it were with the finger, that God in whom their confidence ought to be placed. So in the next verse, which may be read, this our God is the God of salvation What is here said coincides with the scope of what immediately precedes, and is meant to convey the truth that God protects his Church and people constantly. In saying this God, he administers a check to the tendency in men to have their minds diverted from the one living and true God. The salvation of God is set before the view of all men without exception, but is very properly represented here as something peculiar to the elect, that they may recognize themselves as continually indebted to his preserving care, unlike the wicked, who pervert that which might have proved life into destruction, through their unthankfulness. The Hebrew word in the 20th verse is salvations, in the plural number, to convince us that when death may threaten us in ever so many various forms, God can easily devise the necessary means of preservation, and that we should trust to experience the same mercy again which has been extended to us once. The latter clause of the verse bears the same meaning, where it is said, that to the Lord belong the issues of death Some read, the issues unto death, (41) supposing that the reference is to the ease with which God can avenge and destroy his enemies; but this appears a constrained interpretation. The more natural meaning obviously is, that God has very singular ways, unknown to us, of delivering his people from destruction. (42) He points at a peculiarity in the manner of the Divine deliverances, that God does not generally avert death from his people altogether, but allows them to fall in some measure under its power, and afterwards unexpectedly rescues them from it. This is a truth particularly worthy of our notice, as teaching us to beware of judging by sense in the matter of Divine deliverances. However deep we may have sunk in trouble, it becomes us to trust the power of God, who claims it as his peculiar work to open up a way where man can see none.
(40) “ word עמם,amas, which we translate to load, signifies to lift, bear up, support, or, to bear a burden for another Hence it would not be going far from the ideal meaning to translate, ‘ be the Lord, day by day, who bears our burthens for us.’” —Dr Adam Clarke Boothroyd, on the contrary, asserts, that “ an active verb it signifies ‘ load, to lay a burthen on another,’ but in no instance to bear or support one, 1Kg_12:2.”
(41) The Septuagint has, Τοῦ Κυρίου διέξοδοι τοῦ θανάτου, “ the Lord belong the passages of death,” expressing the ways by which death goes out upon men to destroy them. The Vulgate has, “exitus mortus,” “ goings out of death;” and the Chaldee Paraphrast, “ before the Lord, death, and the going out of the soul to suffocation, do contend or fight against the wicked.” Hammond follows the LXX. He observed, that the original words “ literally be rendered goings forth to death, and must signify the several plagues and judgments inflicted by God on impenitent enemies, the ways of punishing and destroying the Egyptians and Canaanites, drowning in the sea, killing by the sword, infesting by hornets, etc.; and these are properly to be attributed and imputed to God, as the deliverances of the Israelites, his people, in the former part of the verse; and to this sense the consequents incline, verse 21, ‘ God shall wound.’ Horsley reads the verse,
“ that is our God is a God of salvation,
And for death are the goings forth of the Lord Jehovah;
“i. e. ,” says he, “ Jehovah takes the field, deadly is the battle to his enemies.”
(42) Agreeably to this, Hewlett observes, that the “issues of death mean the many providential escapes and deliverances from death;” and Boothroyd reads,
“ to Jehovah we owe our escapes from death.”
The Syriac version has, —
“ Lord God is the Lord of death and of escaping.”