Psalm 32:7

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 32:7. Thou art my hiding-place — When by faith I have recourse to thee, I see all the reason in the world to be easy, and to think myself out of the reach of any real evil. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble — From the sting of it, and from the strokes of it, as far as is good for me. Thou shalt preserve me from such trouble as I was in while I kept silence, and did not confess my sins, and pray for forgiveness, Psalm 32:3. If, when God has pardoned our sins. he were to leave us to ourselves, we should soon relapse into sin, and contract fresh guilt, and thereby plunge ourselves again into the same gulf of distress and misery; therefore, when we have received the comfort of our remission, we must have recourse to the grace of God to be preserved from returning to folly again, and having our hearts again hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. God keeps his people from trouble, by keeping them from sin. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance — With such great deliverances on all sides as will give just occasion to sing thy praise. And my friends, also, shall compass me about in the great congregation, to join with me in songs of praise: they shall join their songs of deliverance with mine.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

32:3-7 It is very difficult to bring sinful man humbly to accept free mercy, with a full confession of his sins and self-condemnation. But the true and only way to peace of conscience, is, to confess our sins, that they may be forgiven; to declare them that we may be justified. Although repentance and confession do not merit the pardon of transgression, they are needful to the real enjoyment of forgiving mercy. And what tongue can tell the happiness of that hour, when the soul, oppressed by sin, is enabled freely to pour forth its sorrows before God, and to take hold of his covenanted mercy in Christ Jesus! Those that would speed in prayer, must seek the Lord, when, by his providence, he calls them to seek him, and, by his Spirit, stirs them up to seek him. In a time of finding, when the heart is softened with grief, and burdened with guilt; when all human refuge fails; when no rest can be found to the troubled mind, then it is that God applies the healing balm by his Spirit.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou art my hiding-place - See Psalm 9:9, note; Psalm 27:5, note. The idea is that he would be safe under the protection of God. The general allusion is to concealment from an enemy, but the immediate reference is to sin, and the consequences of sin. By fleeing to God he would be secure against all the evils which sin brings upon human beings.

Thou shalt preserve me from trouble - Particularly the trouble which comes from guilt; sadness and sorrow in the remembrance of sin; apprehension of the wrath of God in the world to come; the consequences of guilt in that unseen and eternal world.

Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance - With songs expressive of deliverance or salvation. It is not merely one song or a single expression of gratitude; in his pathway to another world he will be attended with songs and rejoicings; he will seem to be surrounded with songs He himself will sing. Others, redeemed like him, will sing, and will seem to chant praises because He is redeemed and forgiven. All nature will seem to rejoice over his redemption. Nature is full of songs. The birds of the air; the wind; the running stream; the ocean; the seasons - spring, summer, autumn, winter; hills, valleys, groves - all, to one redeemed, seem to be full of songs. The feeling that we are pardoned fills the universe with melody, and makes the heaven and the earth seem to us to be glad. The Christian is a happy man; and he himself being happy, all around him sympathizes with him in his joy.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. His experience illustrates the statement of Ps 32:6.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

i.e. With such great deliverances on all sides, as will give just occasion to sing forth thy praises.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou art my hiding place,.... In time of trouble; see Psalm 27:5; so Christ is said to be, Isaiah 32:2. "Thou shall preserve me from trouble"; not from having it; for in this world the saints must have tribulation, and through it enter the kingdom, but from being swallowed up with it; the Lord will bring them safe out of it, and of them it shall be said, "these are they that came out of great tribulation", Revelation 7:14;

thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance; or gird with gladness, as in Psalm 30:11; the meaning is, that God would give him abundant reason for praise and thankfulness; and an opportunity of attending him with songs of praise for deliverance out of the hands of his enemies, and from trouble; and that both in his house below, where the saints, his loving people and faithful subjects, would join with him, in the midst of whom he should stand encompassed with their songs of praise; or in heaven above, where he should sing the song of Moses, and of the Lamb, and be surrounded with the hallelujahs of angels and glorified saints; Aben Ebra interprets these songs of the voices of angels.

Selah; on this word; see Gill on Psalm 3:2.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. The Psalmist addresses Jehovah, appropriating to himself the promise of the preceding verse.

my hiding place] The same word as in Psalm 27:5; Psalm 31:20; Psalm 91:1.

thou shalt preserve me &c.] Thou wilt guard me (Psalm 12:7; Psalm 25:21; Psalm 31:23) from distress (Psalm 31:9); thou wilt compass me about with shouts (Psalm 32:11) of deliverance. Occasions for rejoicing arise wherever he turns: or possibly the glad shouts of the godly rejoicing at his deliverance are meant.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Thou art my hiding-place (comp. Psalm 17:8; Psalm 27:5; Psalm 31:20; Psalm 143:9); thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Hidden in God, there can no harm happen to him. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. "Songs of deliver-ante" are such songs as men sing when they have been delivered from peril. God will make such songs to sound in the psalmist's ears or in his heart. Psalm 32:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

For this mercy, which is provided for every sinner who repents and confesses his sin, let then, every חסיד, who longs for חסד, turn in prayer to Jahve לעת מצא, at the time (Psalm 21:10; 1 Chronicles 12:22; cf. בּעת, Isaiah 49:8) when He, and His mercy, is to be found (cf. Deuteronomy 4:29 with Jeremiah 29:13; Isaiah 55:6, בּהמּצאו). This hortatory wish is followed by a promissory assurance. The fact of לשׁטף מים רבּים being virtually a protasis: quam inundant aquae magnae (ל of the time), which separates רק from אליו, prohibits our regarding רק as belonging to אליו in this instance, although like אף, אך, גּם, and פּן, רק is also placed per hypallage at the head of the clause (as in Proverbs 13:10 : with pride there is only contention), even when belonging to a part of the clause that follows further on. The restrictive meaning of רק here, as is frequently the case (Deuteronomy 4:6; Judges 14:16; 1 Kings 21:25, cf. Psalm 91:8), has passed over to the affirmative: certo quum, etc. Inundation or flooding is an exemplificative description of the divine judgment (cf. Nahum 1:8); Psalm 32:6 is a brief form of expressing the promise which is expanded in Psalm 91. In Psalm 32:7, David confirms it from his own experience. The assonance in מצּר תּצּרני (Thou wilt preserve me, so that צר, angustum equals angustiae, does not come upon me, Psalm 119:143) is not undesigned; and after תצרני comes רני, just like כלו after בהיכלו in Psalm 29:9. There is no sufficient ground for setting aside רני, with Houbigant and others, as a repetition of the half of the word תצרני. The infinitive רן (Job 38:7) might, like רב, plur. רבּי, חק, plur. חקּי, with equal right be inflected as a substantive; and פּלּט (as in Psalm 56:8), which is likewise treated as a substantive, cf. נפּץ, Daniel 12:7, presents, as a genitive, no more difficulty than does דעת in the expression אישׁ דּעת. With songs of deliverance doth Jahve surround him, so that they encompass him on all sides, and on occasion of exulting meets him in whatever direction he turns. The music here again for the third time becomes forte, and that to express the highest feeling of delight.