Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 116:3

"The cords of death compassed me, And the pains of Sheol gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow." — Psalms 116:3 (ASV)

The sorrows of death – What an expression! We know of no more intense sorrows pertaining to this world than those we associate with the dying struggle, whether our views regarding the reality of such sorrows are correct or not.

We may be – we probably are – mistaken regarding the intensity of suffering as usually experienced in death. Still, we dread those sorrows more than anything else, and all that we dread may be experienced then.

Those sorrows, therefore, become the representation of the most intense forms of suffering. The psalmist says he experienced such sorrows on the occasion to which he refers. In his case, there seem to have been two things combined, as they often are:

1. Actual suffering from some bodily malady that threatened his life (Psalms 116:3, Psalms 116:6, Psalms 116:8–10);
2. Mental sorrow produced by the remembrance of his sins and the apprehension of the future (Psalms 116:4).

See the notes at Psalms 18:5.

And the pains of hell – This refers to the pains of Sheol (Hades, the grave). See the note at Psalms 16:10, the notes at Job 10:21-22, and the note at Isaiah 14:9.

It signifies the pain or suffering connected with going down to the grave, or the descent to the underworld – the pains of death. There is no evidence that the psalmist here refers to the pains of hell as we understand the term (as a place of punishment), or that he meant to say that he experienced the sorrows of the damned. The sufferings to which he referred were those of death: the descent to the tomb.

Got hold upon me – The margin, as in Hebrew, reads, "found me." They discovered me, as if they had been searching for me and had at last found my hiding place.

Those sorrows and pangs, ever in pursuit of us, will soon find us all. We cannot long escape the pursuit. Death tracks us and is on our heels.

I found trouble and sorrow – Death found me, and I found trouble and sorrow. I did not seek it, but in what I was seeking, I found this.

Whatever we fail to find in the pursuits of life, we shall not fail to find the troubles and sorrows connected with death. They are in our path wherever we turn, and we cannot avoid them.