Psalm 107:19

Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

107:17-22 If we knew no sin, we should know no sickness. Sinners are fools. They hurt their bodily health by intemperance, and endanger their lives by indulging their appetites. This their way is their folly. The weakness of the body is the effect of sickness. It is by the power and mercy of God that we are recovered from sickness, and it is our duty to be thankful. All Christ's miraculous cures were emblems of his healing diseases of the soul. It is also to be applied to the spiritual cures which the Spirit of grace works. He sends his word, and heals souls; convinces, converts them, makes them holy, and all by the word. Even in common cases of recovery from sickness, God in his providence speaks, and it is done; by his word and Spirit the soul is restored to health and holiness.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Then they cry unto the Lord... - See Psalm 107:6, note; Psalm 107:13, note. The meaning here is, that if the "sick" cry to the Lord, he hears them, and delivers them. This cannot mean that it "always" occurs, but it occurs "so often" as to show that God can and does interpose to save; "so often" as to encourage us thus to call upon him when we are sick; "so often" as to lay a proper foundation for praise. Many persons - very many - can recall such instances in their own lives, when they seemed to all human appearance to be drawing near to the gates of death, and when, in connection with prayer, their disease took a favorable turn, and they were restored again to health. Compare the notes at James 5:14-15.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18. near unto—literally, "even to"

gates—or, "domains" (Ps 9:13).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,.... A time of affliction is a time of trouble, and a proper season for prayer; and by it persons are brought to the throne of grace, when humbled under the mighty hand of God, to seek for relief. Hezekiah in his affliction prayed to the Lord, though Asa sought to the physicians only, and not to the Lord; this is to be understood of such who are convinced of their folly, brought to a sense of sin and danger, and therefore cry to the Lord for his sparing mercy, and pardoning grace.

And he saveth them out of their distresses: their afflictions, which were distressing to them, by removing their disorders and restoring them to health again; as follows.

Geneva Study Bible

Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19 - Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he sayeth them out of their distresses (see above, vers. 6 and 13). Psalm 107:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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. אויל (cf. e.g., Job 5:3), like נבל (vid., Psalm 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 יתענּוּ thereby comes all the more easily to express that which took place simultaneously in the past. The Hithpa. in 1 Kings 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 מן beside יתענּוּ has the assumption in its favour of being an affirmation of the cause of the affliction. In Psalm 107:18 the poet has the Book of Job (Job 33:20, Job 33:22) before his eye. And in connection with Psalm 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 Psalm 105:19, even more than Psalm 147:18; because here, as in Psalm 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 (דּבר) is God's messenger (Psalm 105:19, cf. Isaiah 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 שׁחיתותם from שׁחיתה (Daniel 6:5), and this, as שׁחת elsewhere (vid., Psalm 16:10), from שׁחת, διαφθείρειν, which is approved by Hitzig. But Lamentations 4:20 is against this. From שׁחה is formed a noun שׁחוּת (שׁחוּת) in the signification a hollow place (Proverbs 28:10), the collateral form of which, שׁחית (שׁחית), is inflected like חנית, plur. חניתות 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 וירפאם avails also for ימלּט, as in Genesis 27:5; Genesis 30:31; Psalm 139:1; Isaiah 46:5.