Psalm 61:2

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) From the end. of the earth . . .—A hyperbolic expression for a great distance. Isaiah (Isaiah 5:26) uses the expression of Assyria, and it would be natural in an exile’s mouth, but must not be pressed to maintain any theory of the psalm’s date.

When my heart is overwhelmed.—Literally, in the covering of my heart, the verb being used (Psalm 65:13) of the valleys covered with corn, and metaphorically, as here, of “the garment of heaviness,” which wraps a sad heart (Psalms 102 title; Isaiah 57:16). (Comp. Tennyson’s “muffled round with woe.”)

Lead me to the rock . . .—Literally, upon the rock lead me, which is probably a constructio prægnans for lead me to the rock too high for me to climb by myself, and place me there. The elevated rock is a symbol of security, which cannot be obtained without the Divine help. Others take the expression as figurative for a difficulty which it needs God’s help to surmount.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 61:2-3. From the end of the earth — Or rather, of the land, to which, it seems, David had been driven by the violence of his enemies; will I cry unto thee — And not to other gods, but to thee only. It is our happiness that, wherever we are, we may have liberty of access to God, and may find a way open to a throne of grace. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I — Convey to a place of safety, where mine enemies cannot approach to hurt me: take me under thy peculiar care and protection. He alludes to their custom of securing themselves in rocks. God’s power and promise are a rock that is higher than we. In these we must take refuge, and in these must we abide. Christ is the rock of our salvation, and they, and only they, are safe that are in him. But we cannot get upon this rock unless God lead us by his power. I will put thee in the cleft of the rock — We should therefore, by faith and prayer, put ourselves under the divine conduct, that we may be taken under the divine protection. For thou hast been a shelter to me — I have found in thee a rock higher than I, therefore I trust thou wilt still lead me to that rock. Our past experience of the benefit of trusting in God, as it should engage us still to keep close to him, so it should encourage us to hope that it will not be in vain. Thou hast been my strong tower from the enemy, and thou art as strong as ever, and thy name as much a refuge for the righteous as ever it was, Proverbs 18:10.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

61:1-4 David begins with prayers and tears, but ends with praise. Thus the soul, being lifted up to God, returns to the enjoyment of itself. Wherever we are, we have liberty to draw near to God, and may find a way open to the throne of grace. And that which separates us from other comforts, should drive us nearer to God, the fountain of all comfort. Though the heart is overwhelmed, yet it may be lifted up to God in prayer. Nay, I will cry unto thee, for by that means it will be supported and relieved. Weeping must quicken praying, and not deaden it. God's power and promise are a rock that is higher than we are. This rock is Christ. On the Divine mercy, as on a rock, David desired to rest his soul; but he was like a ship-wrecked sailor, exposed to the billows at the bottom of a rock too high for him to climb without help. David found that he could not be fixed on the Rock of salvation, unless the Lord placed him upon it. As there is safety in Him, and none in ourselves, let us pray to be led to and fixed upon Christ our Rock. The service of God shall be his constant work and business: all must make it so who expect to find God their shelter and strong tower. The grace of God shall be his constant comfort.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee - This language is derived from the idea that the earth is one extended plain, and that it has limits or boundaries. Such language is common in the Scriptures, and indeed is in constant use now, even although we know that the earth is globular, and that there are no parts which can properly be called "the ends of the earth." The meaning is plain. The psalmist was far from the place where he was accustomed to live; or, in other words, he was in exile or in banishment. The language agrees well with the supposition that the psalm was composed when David was driven from his home and his throne by Absalom, and was in exile beyond the Jordan, 2 Samuel 17:22. Compare Psalm 42:1-11.

When my heart is overwhelmed - The word used here - עטף ‛âṭaph - means properly to cover, as with a garment, Psalm 73:6; then, with grain - as a field, Psalm 65:14; then, with darkness or calamity, Psalm 102 title; Isaiah 57:16. The meaning here is, that darkness or calamity seemed to have covered or enveloped his soul. He saw no light, he had no comfort. Compare Psalm 42:3, Psalm 42:6-7.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I-- To a rock; to some place of refuge; to some stronghold where I may be safe. The allusion is to God as such a rock or place of refuge. See the notes at Psalm 18:2. The idea is, that he had no strength in himself; that if he depended on himself, he could not be safe. He was, as it were, in a low vale, exposed to every enemy. He wished to be put in a place of safety. To such a place of safety - to Himself - he prayed that God would lead him. We need one much higher than we are to save us. A Saviour - a Redeemer - on the same level with ourselves could not help us. We must have one that is supreme over all things; one that is divine.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. heart is overwhelmed—literally, "covered over with darkness," or, "distress."

to the rock—(Ps 18:2; 40:2).

higher than I—which otherwise I cannot ascend.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Of the earth; or rather, of the land; to which David was driven by the tyranny of his enemies.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; convey me into some high and secure fortress, which I could not reach without thy succour, and where mine enemies cannot come at me. He alludes to their custom of securing themselves in rocks, 1 Samuel 13:6.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee,.... Where he now was, as is observed on the title; see Gill on Psalm 61:1, though he was distant from his own house, and from the house of God, he did not restrain prayer before him, but continued to cry unto him, and determined to do so; and as the people of God are sometimes forced to flee to distant parts, they have a God still to go to, who is a God afar off, as well as at hand. It may be the psalmist may represent the church in Gospel times, throughout the whole world, even at the further parts of it, in the isles afar off, where men may and do lift up holy hands to God without wrath and doubting:

when my heart is overwhelmed; or "covered" (x); with grief and sorrow for any trouble, outward or inward, and ready to sink, and fail and die. Sometimes the saints are overwhelmed with a sense of sin, are pressed down with the weight and burden of its guilt; their faces are covered with shame and confusion; and their hearts are swallowed up and overwhelmed with overmuch sorrow, both at the number of their sins, and at the aggravated circumstances of them; and especially when they are without a view of pardoning grace and mercy, Psalm 38:4, Lamentations 3:42; and sometimes they are overwhelmed with afflictive providences; the Lord causes all his waves and billows to go over them, and they are just ready to sink; and did he not stay his hand, and stop contending with them, the spirit would fail before him, and the souls that he has made, Psalm 42:6; and sometimes with divine desertions, which cause a "deliquium" of soul, and throw them into fainting fits, Sol 5:6; and sometimes through unbelieving frames; and did not the Lord appear to them, and strengthen their faith, and remove their unbelief, they would sink and die away, Psalm 77:2. And at all such times it is right to cry unto the Lord, and make the following request to him:

lead me to the rock that is higher than I; not the land of Israel, as Kimchi thinks, the psalmist being now in the low lands of the Philistines; nor Jerusalem, and the fort and hill of Zion; he being now at the extreme and lower parts of the land: this sense is too low. Some think that some great difficulty is meant; which seemed insuperable, and like a rock inaccessible, which he could not get up to, and upon, and get over; and therefore desires the Lord would lead him up it, and over it, before whom every rock, mountain, and hill, becomes a plain, Zechariah 4:7; but rather Christ is meant, the Rock of Israel, the Rock of our salvation, and our refuge. He is higher than David, and all the kings of the earth; higher than the angels in heaven, and than the heavens themselves, Hebrews 7:26; and who by his height is able to protect and defend his people from all their enemies; and by the shade he casts to refresh and comfort them; and by the sufficiency in him to supply all their wants; for he is as a rock impregnable, and well stored, Isaiah 33:16. And here gracious souls desire to be led by the Spirit of God always, and especially when in distressing circumstances; and he does lead them to his blood for pardon and cleansing, and to his righteousness for justification and acceptance with God, and to his fulness for fresh supplies.

(x) "quum tegitur", Michaelis.

Geneva Study Bible

From {a} the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is {b} higher than I.

(a) From the place where I was banished, being driven out of the city and temple by my son Absalom.

(b) To which without your help I cannot attain.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. From the end of the earth] Perhaps, from the end of the land. But Jerusalem, the dwelling-place of God, is for him the centre of the earth. He measures his distance from it not by miles but by the intensity of his yearning to be there, in the place where the visible pledges of God’s Presence were to be found.

will I cry] R.V., will I call.

is overwhelmed] Or, fainteth (Psalm 142:3).

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I] Lead me up upon a rock that is too high for me to reach by my own unaided efforts. ‘Rock’ denotes an asylum to be reached, not an obstacle to be surmounted (Psalm 27:5). God Himself is such a Rock of refuge (Psalm 62:2; Psalm 62:6-7). David’s wanderings may have suggested the metaphor (1 Samuel 24:2; 1 Chronicles 11:15).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee. Eastern hyperbole may call the Trans-Jordanic territory "the end of the earth," but certainly the expression would be more natural in the mouth of an exile in Assyria, Media, or Babylon. When my heart is overwhelmed; or, "when my heart fainteth" (comp. Psalm 107:5). Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; rather, that is too high for me - that I cannot reach unaided. Some regard the "rock" as Mount Zion; but others, more reasonably, explain it as "God himself" (see Psalm 62:2, 6, 7). "Let thy grace lead me to thee" (Kay). Psalm 61:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Hurled out of the land of the Lord in the more limited sense

(Note: Just as in Numbers 32:29. the country east of Jordan is excluded from the name "the land of Canaan" in the stricter sense, so by the Jewish mind it was regarded from the earliest time to a certain extent as a foreign country (חוצה לארץ), although inhabited by the two tribes and a half; so that not only is it said of Moses that he died in a foreign land, but even of Saul that he is buried in a foreign land (Numeri Rabba, ch. viii. and elsewhere).)

into the country on the other side of the Jordan, David felt only as though he were banished to the extreme corner of the earth (not: of the land, cf. Psalm 46:10; Deuteronomy 28:49, and frequently), far from the presence of God (Hengstenberg). It is the feeling of homelessness and of separation from the abode of God by reason of which the distance, in itself so insignificant (just as was the case with the exiles later on), became to him immeasurably great. For he still continually needed God's helpful intervention; the enveloping, the veiling, the faintness of his heart still continues (עטף, Arab. ‛tf, according to its radical signification: to bend and lay anything round so that it lies or draws over something else and covers it, here of a self-enveloping); a rock of difficulties still ever lies before him which is too high for his natural strength, for his human ability, therefore insurmountable. But he is of good courage: God will lead him up with a sure step, so that, removed from all danger, he will have rocky ground under his feet. He is of good courage, for God has already proved Himself to be a place of refuge to him, to be a strong tower, defying all attack, which enclosed him, the persecuted one, so that the enemy can gain no advantage over him (cf. Proverbs 18:10). He is already on the way towards his own country, and in fact his most dearly loved and proper home: he will or he has to (in accordance with the will of God) dwell (cf. the cohortative in Isaiah 38:10; Jeremiah 4:21) in God's tabernacle (vid., on Psalm 15:1) throughout aeons (an utterance which reminds one of the synchronous Psalm 23:6). With גּוּר is combined the idea of the divine protection (cf. Arabic ǵâr ollah, the charge or proteg of God, and Beduinic ǵaur, the protecting hearth; ǵawir, according to its form equals גּר, one who flees for refuge to the hearth). A bold figure of this protection follows: he has to, or will trust, i.e., find refuge, beneath the protection of God's wings. During the time the tabernacle was still being moved from place to place we hear no such mention of dwelling in God's tabernacle or house. It was David who coined this expression for loving fellowship with the God of revelation, simultaneously with his preparation of a settled dwelling-place for the sacred Ark. In the Psalms that belong to the time of his persecution by Saul such an expression is not yet to be found; for in Psalm 52:7, when it is desired that Doeg may have the opposite of an eternal dwelling-place, it is not the sacred tent that is meant. We see also from its second part that this Psalm 61:1-8 does not belong to the time of Saul; for David does not speak here as one who has drawn very near to his kingly office (cf. Psalm 40:8), but as one who is entering upon a new stage in it.