2 Samuel 22:40

22:1-51 David's psalm of thanksgiving. - This chapter is a psalm of praise; we find it afterwards nearly as Ps 18. They that trust God in the way of duty, shall find him a present help in their greatest dangers: David did so. Remarkable preservations should be particularly mentioned in our praises. We shall never be delivered from all enemies till we get to heaven. God will preserve all his people, 2Ti 4:18. Those who receive signal mercies from God, ought to give him the glory. In the day that God delivered David, he sang this song. While the mercy is fresh, and we are most affected with it, let the thank-offering be brought, to be kindled with the fire of that affection. All his joys and hopes close, as all our hopes should do, in the great Redeemer.

2 Samuel DAVID’S HYMN OF VICTORY2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:51 . The Davidic authorship of this great hymn has been admitted even by critics who are in general too slow to recognise it. One of these says that ‘there is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in the psalm apply so closely as to David.’ The favourite alternative theory that the speaker is the personified nation is hard to accept. The voice of individual trust and of personal experience sounds clear in the glowing words. Two editions of the hymn are preserved for us,-in Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50 and 2 Samuel 22:1 - 2 Samuel 22:51 . Slight variations exist in the two copies, which may probably be merely accidental. Nothing important depends on them. The text begins with the closing words of a description of God’s arming the singer for his victories, and goes on to paint the tumult of battle and the rout of the foe { 2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:43 }; then follows triumphant expectation of future wider victories { 2 Samuel 22:44 - 2 Samuel 22:46 }; and that leads up to the closing burst of grateful praise { 2 Samuel 22:47 - 2 Samuel 22:51 }. I. We are not to forget that what is described in 2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:43 is a literal fight, with real swords against very real enemies. We may draw lessons of encouragement from it for our conflict with spiritual wickednesses, but we must not lose sight of the bloody combat with flesh and blood which the singer had waged.

He felt that God had braced his armour on him, had given him the impenetrable ‘shield’ which he wore on his arm, and had strengthened his arms to bend the ‘bow of steel.’ We see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe, crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. ‘I did beat them small as the dust of the earth.’ His blows fell like those of a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. ‘I did stamp them as the mire of the streets,’-a vivid picture of trampling down the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50 gives the less picturesque variant, ‘did cast them out.’ In their despair the fugitives shriek aloud for God’s help, and the Psalmist has a stern joy in knowing their cries to be unheard. Now, such delight in an enemy’s despair and destruction, such gratification at the vanity of his prayers, are far away from being Christian sentiments, and the gulf is not wholly bridged by the consideration that David felt himself to be God’s Anointed, and enmity to him to be, consequently, treason against God. His feelings were most natural and entirely consistent with the stage of revelation in which he lived. They were capable of being purified into that triumph in the victory of good and the ruin of evil without which there is no vigorous sympathy with Christ’s conflict. They kindle, by their splendid energy and condensed rapidity, an answering glow even in readers so far away from the scene as we are.

This song, which is found with scarcely any material variation as Psalm 18 , and with the words of this first verse for its title, belongs to the early part of David's reign when he was recently established upon the throne of all Israel, and when his final triumph over the house of Saul, and over the pagan nations 2 Samuel 22:44-46 , Philistines, Moabites, Syrians, Ammonites, and Edomites, was still fresh 2 Samuel 21 . For a commentary on the separate verses the reader is referred to the commentary on Psalm 18 . The last words of David - i. e., his last Psalm, his last "words of song" 2 Samuel 22:1. The insertion of this Psalm, which is not in the Book of Psalms, was probably suggested by the insertion of the long Psalm in 2 Samuel 22. David the son of Jesse said ... - The original word for "said" is used between 200 and 300 times in the phrase, "saith the Lord," designating the word of God in the mouth of the prophet. It is only applied to the words of a man here, and in the strikingly similar passage Numbers 24:3-4, Numbers 24:15-16, and in Proverbs 30:1; and in all these places the words spoken are inspired words. The description of David is divided into four clauses, which correspond to and balance each other.

CHAPTER 22 2Sa 22:1-51. David's Psalm of Thanksgiving for God's Powerful Deliverance and Manifold Blessings. The song contained in this chapter is the same as the eighteenth Psalm, where the full commentary will be given [see on [278]Ps 18:1, &c.]. It may be sufficient simply to remark that Jewish writers have noticed a great number of very minute variations in the language of the song as recorded here, from that embodied in the Book of Psalms—which may be accounted for by the fact that this, the first copy of the poem, was carefully revised and altered by David afterwards, when it was set to the music of the tabernacle. This inspired ode was manifestly the effusion of a mind glowing with the highest fervor of piety and gratitude, and it is full of the noblest imagery that is to be found within the range even of sacred poetry. It is David's grand tribute of thanksgiving for deliverance from his numerous and powerful enemies, and establishing him in the power and glory of the kingdom.