Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
now he compares God to a shield, intimating that he will come between us and all our enemies to preserve us from their attacks.
Psalm 91:5-8
5. Thou shalt not fear for the terror of the night; for the arrow that flieth by day; 6. For the destruction that walketh in darkness; for the pestilence 1058 which wasteth at noon-day. 1059 7. A thousand 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 truth which 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, that those whom God has taken under his care are in a state of the most absolute safety. Even those who have reached the most advanced experience find nothing more difficult than to rely upon Divine deliverance; and more especially when, overtaken by some of the many forms in which danger and death await us in this world, doubts will insinuate themselves into our hearts, giving rise to fear and disquietude. There was reason, therefore, why the Psalmist should enter upon a specification of 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 of different kinds, and our fears are apt at such a season to magnify any sound or disturbance. The arrow, rather than another weapon, is instanced as flying by day, for the reason apparently that it shoots to a greater distance, and with such swiftness, that we can with difficulty escape it. The verse which follows states, though in different words, the same truth, that there is no kind of calamity which the shield of the Almighty cannot ward off and repel.
7 A thousand shall fall at thy side. 1060 He proceeds to show that, though the state of all men may to appearance be alike, the believer has the
"Car ceste est la vraye cognoissance, laquelle nous pouvons bailler aux autres de main en main, quand nous mettons en avant ce que Dieu nous a revele, non point des levres taut seulement: mais aussi du profond du coeur." — Fr.
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 escaped the divine poet in enumerating the sources of danger to human life." This wind being hot and burning in its effects, when it blows at noon-day, must be still more fatal.