John Calvin Commentary Psalms 107:35

"He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water, And a dry land into watersprings." — Psalms 107:35 (ASV)

He turneth the desert into a pool of water. This change, in contrast with the former, places the miraculous power of God in a more luminous position. Because, if the fields were ceasing to be as productive as in former times, worldly people, as was common in the past, would attribute this to the frequent crops that exhausted their productive power.

But how is it that parched ground becomes so fruitful that one would almost say that the atmosphere, as well as the nature of the soil, had undergone a change, unless it is that God has there put forth a wonderful display of His power and goodness? Therefore, the prophet very rightly says that the deserts were turned into pools of water, so that populous cities may rise up in waste and uncultivated places, where once there was not a single cottage.

For it is as improbable that the nature of the soil is changed as that the course of the sun and stars is changed. The clause, the hungry are filled, may mean either that they themselves, after considerable hardship, have obtained what may supply their need, or that those poor people, living in a country where they can no longer find daily bread, being constrained to leave it and to seek a new place to live, are bountifully supplied by God there.

I am rather disposed to think that this clause refers to what frequently occurs: namely, that the famishing, whose needs the world refuses to supply and who are expatriated, are comfortably accommodated in these desert places, where God blesses them with abundance.

The passage I have translated as fruit of the increase is considered by not a few Hebrew expositors to be a repetition of two synonymous terms; they advocate supplying a copulative conjunction, making it fruit and increase. But it was rather the prophet’s intention to refer to fruit yielded annually, as if he were saying that the fertility of these regions is not temporary, or only for a few years, but perennial. For תבואות, tebuaoth, is the term in Hebrew that denotes full-grown fruit annually produced by the earth.

And when he says that the new settlers sow and plant, he gives us to understand that, prior to their arrival, cultivation was unknown in these places and, consequently, in becoming so unusually fertile, they took on a totally different appearance.

And finally, he adds that it was entirely due to the divine blessing that those who were once oppressed by poverty and want are now daily increasing in the good things of this life.