Psalm 18:41

They cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the LORD, but he answered them not.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(41) Cried.—Sam. 22 has “looked.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

18:32, and the following verses, are the gifts of God to the spiritual warrior, whereby he is prepared for the contest, after the example of his victorious Leader. Learn that we must seek release being made through Christ, shall be rejected. In David the type, we behold out of trouble through Christ. The prayer put up, without reconciliation Jesus our Redeemer, conflicting with enemies, compassed with sorrows and with floods of ungodly men, enduring not only the pains of death, but the wrath of God for us; yet calling upon the Father with strong cries and tears; rescued from the grave; proceeding to reconcile, or to put under his feet all other enemies, till death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed. We should love the Lord, our Strength, and our Salvation; we should call on him in every trouble, and praise him for every deliverance; we should aim to walk with him in all righteousness and true holiness, keeping from sin. If we belong to him, he conquers and reigns for us, and we shall conquer and reign through him, and partake of the mercy of our anointed King, which is promised to all his seed for evermore. Amen.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

They cried - They cried out for help, for mercy, for life. In modern language, "they begged for quarter." They acknowledged that they were vanquished, and entreated that their lives might be spared.

But there was none to save them - To preserve their lives. No help appeared from their own countrymen; they found no mercy in me or my followers; and God did not interpose to deliver them.

Even unto the Lord - As a last resort. People appeal to everything else for help before they will appeal to God; often when they come to Him it is by constraint, and not willingly; if the danger should leave them, they would cease to call upon Him. Hence, since there is no real sincerity in their calling upon God - no real regard for his honor or his commands - their cries are not heard, and they perish. The course of things with a sinner, however, is often such that, despairing of salvation in any other way, and seeing that this is the only true way, he comes with a heart broken, contrite, penitent, and then God never turns away from the cry. No sinner, though as a last resort, who comes to God in real sincerity, will ever be rejected.

But he answered them not - He did not put forth his power to save them from my sword; to keep them alive when they were thus vanquished. Had they cried unto him to save their souls, he would undoubtedly have done it; but their cry was for life - for the divine help to save them from the sword of the conqueror. There might have been many reasons why God should not interpose to save them from the regular consequences of valor when they had been in the wrong and had begun the war; but there would have been no reason why he should not interpose if they had called upon him to save them from their sins. There may be many reasons why God should not save sinners from the temporal judgments due to their sins - the intemperate from the diseases, the poverty, and the wretchedness consequent on that vice - or the licentious from the woes and sorrows caused by such a course of life; but there is no reason, in any case, why God should not save from the eternal consequences of sin, if the sinner cries sincerely and earnestly for mercy.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

40. given me the necks—literally, "backs of the necks"; made them retreat (Ex 23:27; Jos 7:8).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He speaks of his Israelitish enemies, who in their distresses prayed to God for help against him.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They cried, but there was none to save them,.... It is in 2 Samuel 22:42; "they looked"; that is, they looked round about, here and there, to see if there were any near at hand to help and deliver them; they cried in their distress, and because of the anguish of their spirits, and for help and assistance, but in vain; they cried, as Jarchi thinks, to their idols, as Jonah's mariners cried everyone to their god; and, if so, it is no wonder there was none to save; for such are gods that cannot save: but it follows,

even unto the Lord, but he answered them not; as Saul, for instance, 1 Samuel 28:6; so God deals with wicked men, often by way of righteous retaliation; see Proverbs 1:28.

Geneva Study Bible

They {f} cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the LORD, but he answered them not.

(f) They who reject the cry of the afflicted, God will also reject them when they cry for help, for either pain or fear causes those hypocrites to cry.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

41. They cried] Cp. Psalm 18:6. The Heb. text in 2 Sam. has they looked for help (Isaiah 17:7-8), but the LXX supports the reading cried, which is certainly right. There is only the difference of one letter in the consonants of the two words (ישועו—ישעו).

Even unto the Lord] At first sight this might seem to indicate that the foes referred to were Israelites. But it is better to understand it of the heathen. After vainly seeking help from their own gods, in the extremity of their despair they cry to Jehovah. Cp. 1 Samuel 5:12; Jonah 3:7 ff.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 41. - They cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the Lord, but he answered them not. It seems strange, at first sight, that the heathen enemies of David should "cry unto the Lord," i.e. to Jehovah; and hence some have been driven to suppose that a victory over domestic enemies is here interpolated into the series of foreign victories. But it seems better to explain, with Hengstenberg and the 'Speaker's Commentary,' that the heathen did sometimes, as a last resort, pray to a foreign god, whom they seemed to find by experience to be more powerful than their own (see Jonah 1:14). Jehovah was known by name, as the God of the Israelites, to the surrounding nations. Mesha mentions him upon the Moabite Stone; and Sennacherib declared, by the mouth of Rabshakeh, "Am I come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord (Jehovah) said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it" (2 Kings 18:25). Psalm 18:41

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

(Heb.: 18:42-43) Their prayer to their gods, wrung from them by their distress, and even to Jahve, was in vain, because it was for their cause, and too late put up to Him. על equals על; in Psalm 42:2 the two prepositions are interchanged. Since we do not pulverize dust but to dust, כּעפר is to be taken as describing the result: so that they became as dust (cf. Job 38:30, כּאכן, so that it is become like stone, and the extreme of such pregnant brevity of expression in Isaiah 41:2) before the wind (על־פּני as in 2 Chronicles 3:17, before the front). The second figure is to be explained differently: I emptied them out (אריקם from הריק) like the dirt of the streets, i.e., not merely: so that they became such, but as one empties it out, - thus contemptuously, ignominiously and completely (cf. Isaiah 10:6; Zechariah 10:5). The lxx renders it λεανῶ from הרק (root רק to stretch, make thin, cf. tendo tenius, dehnen dnn); and the text of 2 Samuel 22 present the same idea in אדיקם.