Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 18:41

"They cried, but there was none to save; Even unto Jehovah, but he answered them not." — Psalms 18:41 (ASV)

They cried - They cried out for help, for mercy, for life. In modern language, “they begged for quarter.” They acknowledged that they were vanquished and pleaded that their lives might be spared.

But there was none to save them - To preserve their lives. No help appeared from their own countrymen; they found no mercy in me or my followers; and God did not intervene to deliver them.

Even to the Lord - As a last resort. People appeal to everything else for help before they will appeal to God. Often, when they come to Him, it is out of necessity and not willingly; if the danger were to leave them, they would cease to call upon Him.

Therefore, since there is no real sincerity in their calling upon God—no real regard for His honor or His commands—their cries are not heard, and they perish. The path of a sinner, however, is often such that, despairing of salvation in any other way and seeing that this is the only true way, he comes with a heart broken, contrite, and penitent; and then God never turns away from his cry. No sinner, even as a last resort, who comes to God in real sincerity will ever be rejected.

But He did not answer them - He did not use His power to save them from my sword or to keep them alive when they were thus defeated. Their cry was for life—for divine help to save them from the conqueror's sword.

Had they cried to Him to save their souls, He undoubtedly would have done it. There might have been many reasons why God would not intervene to save them from the natural consequences of their actions in war, especially when they had been in the wrong and had started the conflict. However, there would have been no reason for Him not to intervene if they had called upon Him to save them from their sins.

There may be many reasons why God might not save sinners from the temporal judgments due to their sins—the intemperate from the diseases, the poverty, and the wretchedness resulting from that vice, or the licentious from the woes and sorrows caused by such a course of life. However, there is no reason, in any case, why God would not save them from the eternal consequences of sin, if the sinner cries sincerely and earnestly for mercy.