Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvintrusting in God we shall enjoy safety and security; now he compares God to a shield, intimatingthat he will come between us and all our enemies to preserve us from their attacks.Psalm 91:5-85. Thou shalt not fear for the terror of the night; for the arrow that flieth by day; 6. For thedestruction that walketh in darkness; for the pestilence 577 which wasteth at noon-day. 578 7. Athousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; it shall not come nigh thee. 8.Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.5 Thou shalt not fear for the terror of the night. The Psalmist continues to insist upon the truthwhich I have just adverted to, that, if we confide with implicit reliance upon the protection of God,we will be secure from every temptation and assault of Satan. It is of importance to remember, thatthose whom God has taken under his care are in a state of the most absolute safety. Even those whohave reached the most advanced experience find nothing more difficult than to rely upon Divinedeliverance; and more especially when, overtaken by some of the many forms in which danger anddeath await us in this world, doubts will insinuate themselves into our hearts, giving rise to fearand disquietude. There was reason, therefore, why the Psalmist should enter upon a specificationof different evils, encouraging the Lord’s people to look for more than one mode of deliverance,and to bear up under various and accumulated calamities. Mention is made of the fear of the night,because men are naturally apprehensive in the dark, or because the night exposes us to dangers ofdifferent kinds, and our fears are apt at such a season to magnify any sound or disturbance. Thearrow, rather than another weapon, is instanced as flying by day, for the reason apparently that itshoots to a greater distance, and with such swiftness, that we can with difficulty escape it. The versewhich follows states, though in different words, the same truth, that there is no kind of calamitywhich the shield of the Almighty cannot ward off and repel.7 A thousand shall fall at thy side. 579 He proceeds to show that, though the state of all menmay to appearance be alike, the believer has the special privilege of being exempted from evils ofan imminent and impending nature; for it might be objected that he was but man, and, as such,exposed with others to death in its thousand different forms. To correct this mistake, the Psalmistdoes not hesitate to assert that, when universal ruin prevails around, the Lord’s children are theobjects of his distinguishing care, and are preserved amidst the general destruction. The lesson is577 “Car ceste est la vraye cognoissance, laquelle nous pouvons bailler aux autres de main en main, quand nous mettons enavant ce que Dieu nous a revele, non point des levres taut seulement: mais aussi du profond du coeur.” — Fr.578 The original word, which Calvin renders “the pestilence,” is rendered in the Syriac “the blowing wind.” Fry’s version has“the blast.” “The simoon, or hot wind of the desert,” he observes, “a phenomenon in those regions too remarkable to have escapedthe divine poet in enumerating the sources of danger to human life.” This wind being hot and burning in its effects, when it blowsat noon-day, must be still more fatal.579 “Verses 5 and 6. Jos. Scaliger explains, in Epis. 9, these two verses thus: — Thou shalt not fear, , from consternation bynight, , from the arrow flying by day, , from pestilence walking at evening, , from devastation at noon Under these fourhe comprehends all the evils and dangers to which man is liable. And as the Hebrews divide the four and twenty hours of dayand night into four parts, namely, evening, midnight, morning, and mid-day, so he understands the hours of danger to be dividedaccordingly: in a word, ‘that the man, who has made God his refuge,’ is always safe, day and night, at every hour, from everydanger.” — Bythner290