Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 91

He ... I.—The particular difficulty of this psalm, its abrupt changes of person, is encountered at the beginning. A literal rendering of the text is: “He sitting in the hiding place of the Most High; In the shadow of the Almighty he lodges, I say to Jehovah, My refuge and my fortress, My God, I trust in Him.”

The change in the last clause presents no particular difficulty, as many similar instances occur. However, the transition from the third person in the first verse to the first person in the second is very awkward, and many solutions have been proposed to resolve it.

The best solution is to supply the word blessed: “Blessed is he that,” and so on. The different names for God used here should also be noted. By their accumulation, the psalmist makes the assurance doubly sure.

It would be very natural for a copyist to omit this word, due to potential confusion with the psalm’s numerical heading and the first letter of the word that now begins the psalm text.

Snare of the fowler. —The image of the net has occurred frequently before. (See Psalms 10:15 and elsewhere.) Here, as in Ecclesiastes 9:12, it is used generally of any unexpected peril to life.

Noisome pestilence. — Literally, pestilence of calamities, i.e., fatal. (See Psalms 57:1, where the same word “calamities” occurs.)

Feathers ... wings ... —For this beautiful figure, here elaborated, see Psalm 17:8, Note.

Terror by night. —Possibly a night attack by an enemy. (Compare Song of Solomon 3:8; Proverbs 3:23–26.) Compare Milton:

“To bless the doors from nightly harm.”

In this case the arrow flying by day would refer to dangers of actual battle. But it is quite possible that the latter may be merely the Oriental expression for the pestilence, since it is still so called by Arabians. “I desired to remove to a less contagious air. I received from Solyman the emperor this message: that the emperor wondered what I meant in desiring to remove my habitation. Is not the pestilence God’s arrow, which will always hit his mark?”—Quoted in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David, from Busbequin’s Travels.

Darkness ... noonday. —Night and noon are, in Eastern climates, the most unwholesome, the former from exhalations, the latter from the fierce heat.

Destruction. —From a root meaning “to cut off;” here, from parallelism, “deadly sickness.”