Psalms 107:28

107:23-32 Let those who go to sea, consider and adore the Lord. Mariners have their business upon the tempestuous ocean, and there witness deliverances of which others cannot form an idea. How seasonable it is at such a time to pray! This may remind us of the terrors and distress of conscience many experience, and of those deep scenes of trouble which many pass through, in their Christian course. Yet, in answer to their cries, the Lord turns their storm into a calm, and causes their trials to end in gladness.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,.... As in a storm seafaring persons are used to do; so did Jonah's mariners, though Heathens, everyone cried to his god. With the Romans (o) tempests were reckoned deities, and had temples erected, and sacrifices offered to them; but these persons were such as knew and owned the true Jehovah, and called upon him in their distress: so did the apostles of Christ. And he bringeth them out of their distresses; by stilling the winds and the waves, causing them to proceed on their voyage with pleasure, and landing them safe on shore, as follows. (o) Cicero, de Nat. Deor. l. 3. c. 20. Virgil. Aeneid. l. 5. v. 772. Horat. Epod. Ode 10. v. 23, 24. Ovid. Fast. 6. v. 193.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble ... - See Psalm 107:6 , Psalm 107:13 , Psalm 107:19 . Sailors pray. If they do not pray elsewhere, they often do in a storm, when in danger of being wrecked and lost. A storm at sea brings hundreds on their knees who never prayed before - for they feel that their only help is in God, and that it is a fearful thing to die. Then they do "right." They do what "ought" to be done. But they do then only what people ought always to do, for it is as plain a duty to pray when we are in safety as when we are in danger; when sailing on a smooth sea as in a storm; when on the land as on the ocean. People anywhere, and at any time may die; and people everywhere and at all times "should," therefore, call upon God. Storms, tempests, fire, disease, and danger, only impel people to do what they should do always from higher motives, and when their motives will be likely to be more disinterested and pure.

Others have returned to tell of the perils of the sea. Without any allegory (Hengstenberg) it speaks of those who by reason of their calling traverse (which is expressed by ירד because the surface of the sea lies below the dry land which slopes off towards the coast) the sea in ships (read boŏnijoth without the article), and that not as fishermen, but (as Luther has correctly understood the choice of the word) in commercial enterprises. These have seen the works and wonders of God in the eddying deep, i.e., they have seen with their own eyes what God can do when in His anger He calls up the powers of nature, and on the other hand when He compassionately orders them back into their bounds. God's mandate (ויּאמר as in Psalm 105:31 , Psalm 105:34 ) brought it to pass that a stormy wind arose (cf. עמד, Psalm 33:9 ), and it drove its (the sea's) waves on high, so that the seafarers at one time were tossed up to the sky and then hurled down again into deep abysses, and their soul melted בּרעה, in an evil, anxious mood, i.e., lost all its firmness. They turned about in a circle (יחוגּוּ( elc from חגג equals חוּג) and reeled after the manner of a drunken man; all their wisdom swallowed itself up, i.e., consumed itself within itself, came of itself to nought, just as Ovid, Trist. i. 1, says in connection with a similar description of a storm at sea: ambiguis ars stupet ipsa malis. The poet here writes under the influence of Isaiah 19:3 , Isaiah 19:14 .

But at their importunate supplication God led them forth out of their distresses ( Psalm 25:17 ). He turned the raging storm into a gentle blowing ( equals דּממה דּקּה, 1 Kings 19:12 ). הקים construed with ל here has the sense of transporting (carrying over) into another condition or state, as Apollinaris renders: αὐτίκα δ ̓ εἰς αὔρην προτέρην μετέθηκε θύελλαν. The suffix of גּלּיהם cannot refer to the מים רבּים in Psalm 107:23 , which is so far removed; "their waves" are those with which they had to battle. These to their joy became calm (חשׁה) and were still (שׁתק as in Jonah 1:11 ), and God guided them ἐπὶ λιμένα θελήματος αὐτῶν (lxx). מחוז, a hapax-legomenon, from Arab. ḥâz (ḥwz), to shut in on all sides and to draw to one's self (root Arab. ḥw, gyravit, in gyrum egit), signifies a place enclosed round, therefore a haven, and first of all perhaps a creek, to use a northern word, a fiord. The verb שׁתק in relation to חשׁה is the stronger word, like יבשׁ in relation to חרם in the history of the Flood.