Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 107:27

"They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, And are at their wits` end." — Psalms 107:27 (ASV)

Reel to and fro. —Or more exactly, spin round and round.

Are at their wit’s end. —An admirable paraphrase of the Hebrew, “all their wisdom swallows itself up.” The poet, from the expressions employed, is possibly writing under the influence of Psalm 22:14; but he has evidently himself been to sea and experienced the dangers and discomforts he so graphically describes. Ovid (Trist. i. 2) has been quoted in illustration:

“Me miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum
Jamjam tacturos sidera summa putes.
Quantæ diducto subsidunt æquore valles:
Jamjam tacturas Tartura nigra putes
Rector in incerto est, nec quid fugiatve petatve
Invenit: ambiguis ars stupet ipsa malis.”

See on this passage Addison in Spectator, No. 489.