Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
21. And thou, O Jehovah my Lord! undertake for me, for thy name's sake; deliver me, because thy mercy is good; 22. Because I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. 23. I walk about as a shadow when it declineth. 313 I am tossed as the locust. 314 24. My knees are become feeble through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness. 25. But I became a reproach to them; when they see me they shake their head. 26. Help me, O Jehovah my God! save me according to thy mercy: 27. And they shall know that this is thy hand, and that thou, O Jehovah! hast done it.
21 And thou, O Jehovah my Lord! From the pouring out of complaints and imprecations against his enemies, the Psalmist passes to prayers; or rather, after having betaken himself to God as his guardian and deliverer, he appears to take occasion, from this circumstance, to encourage himself in prayer; even as all the pious reflections by which the faithful exercise and strengthen their faith, stimulate them to call upon the name of God. At the same time, he does not pique himself upon any service which he has rendered to God, as deserving of his help, nor does he rely upon his own worthiness, but he places all his confidence in the free grace and mercy of God. That integrity of which he was conscious, he placed in opposition to his enemies, for the purpose of making their iniquity more manifest; but he does not aspire after any recompense from God, because he adopts the
Horsley translates, "I am just gone, like the shadow stretched to its utmost length." The allusion is to the state of the shadows of terrestrial objects at sun-set, lengthening every instant, and growing faint as they lengthen, and in the instant that they shoot to an immeasurable length, disappearing. As a shadow, when it is extended by the sun's setting, is approaching to evanescence, so, saith the speaker in this psalm, I am fast disappearing; that is, am approaching the end of mortal life.
The Hebrew word for locust is in the singular number; but the Septuagint reads in the plural, and a plurality may be intended. Locusts are accustomed to fly in great numbers, and the swarms of them are sometimes so numerous in Eastern countries, that they fly in the air like a succession of clouds, forming enormous compact bodies. But when the wind blows briskly, locusts being weak and feeble creatures, these swarms are often tossed, broken into separate masses, thrown one upon another, and driven over the sea, into which they fall when no longer able to sustain their flight. — See Exodus 10:13, 19. So powerless was the speaker in this psalm before his persecuting enemies. He was driven by them from place to place, without the power to offer any resistance. Hammond, who considers the psalm as having been composed by David when forced to flee from Jerusalem by the rebellion of his son Absalom, after referring to this explanation of the metaphor, observes: "Another possible way there is of understanding the resemblance. The locust is but a large sort of grasshopper, which hath no set abiding-place or rest, but leaps to and fro, roves about the field: so we have the 'running to and fro of locusts,' Isaiah 33:4. And this uncertain, unsettled condition of those creatures, may be proper also to express David's condition in his flight, when he had not where to lay his head, but wandered from place to place uncertainly. But the former, that is founded in the bands of locusts, is fitter to express David and the company with him, his weak fugitive army, than that which is founded in the manner of the single locust or grasshopper."