Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 18

I will love thee.—Better, Dearly do I love thee. The line is missing in Samuel.

My strength. —This strikes the keynote of the whole poem. The strong, mighty God is the object in David’s thought throughout. It is a warrior’s song, and his conception of Jehovah is a warrior’s conception.

Rock. —It is better here to use cliff, keeping “rock” for the next clause. In the first figure the ideas of height and shelter, and in the second the ideas of broad-based and enduring strength, are predominant.

Fortress. —Properly, mountain castle. We have the joint figure of the lofty and precipitous cliff with the castle on its crest, a reminiscence—as, in fact, is every one of these epithets in this “towering of epithets”—of scenes and events in David’s early life.

My God ... —It is better to render this as, my God, my rock, I trust in Him. God is here El, “the strong one.” In Samuel, it is God of my rock.

Horn of my salvation. —The allusion seems to be not to a means of attack, like the horn of an animal, but to a mountain peak (called “horn” in all languages—for instance, κέρας, Xenophon, Anabasis 5.6; “Cornua Parnassi,” Statius, Thebaid 5.532; and so in Hebrew, Isaiah 5:1 (see margin)), such as often afforded David a safe retreat. Render as “my peak of safety.”

High tower. —The Septuagint and Vulgate have “helper.” (Compare to Psalm 9:9.) The word comes in so abruptly that doubtless the addition in Samuel, and my refuge, my Saviour, thou savest me from violence, was part of the original hymn, completing the rhythm.

Presents a slight verbal variation from Samuel.

The sorrows of death. —The Hebrew word can mean either birth pangs (Septuagint and Acts 2:24, where see Note, New Testament Commentary), or cords. The figure of the hunter in the next verse, the snares of death, determines its meaning there to be cords (see margin). It is best, therefore, to keep the same rendering here; but there can be little doubt that the version in Samuel, breakers, or waves, is the true one, from the parallelism—

Waves of death compassed me,
And billows of Belial terrified me.

For Belial, see Deuteronomy 13:13. Here the parallelism fixes its meaning as ruin. For the ideas of peril and destruction, connected by the Hebrews with waves and floods, compare Psalm 18:16, also Psalm 32:6, Psalms 42:7, and Psalm 69:1. Doubtless, the tradition of the Flood and of the Red Sea helped to strengthen the apprehensions natural in a country where the river annually overflowed its banks, and where a dry ravine might at any moment become a dangerous flood.

The hatred of the sea arose from quite another cause—namely, the dread of it as a highway for invasion.

Hell. —Heb., sheôl. (See Note on Psalms 6:5.)

Prevented — i.e., suddenly seized upon. The poet seems to feel the cords already tightening on his limbs. He is not dead yet, but like those who go down to sheôl. This verse has one verbal difference from Samuel.