John Calvin Commentary Psalms 116:1

"I love Jehovah, because he heareth My voice and my supplications." — Psalms 116:1 (ASV)

I have loved, because Jehovah will hear the voice of my supplication. At the very beginning of this psalm, David declares that he was attracted by the sweetness of God’s goodness to place his hope and confidence in him alone. This abrupt way of speaking, I have loved, is more emphatic, intimating that he could receive joy and rest nowhere but in God.

We know that our hearts will always be wandering after fruitless pleasures and harassed with care, until God unites them to himself. David affirms this disorder was removed from him because he felt that God was indeed favorable towards him. And, having found by experience that, in general, those who call upon God are happy, he declares that no allurements will draw him away from God.

When, therefore, he says, I have loved, it means that, without God, nothing would be pleasant or agreeable to him. This teaches us that those who have been heard by God, but do not place themselves entirely under his guidance and guardianship, have derived little advantage from the experience of his grace.

The second verse also refers to the same subject, except that the latter clause has a very appropriate meaning, which expositors overlook. The phrase, during my days I will call upon him, is uniformly understood by them to mean, I, who until now have been so successful in addressing God, will pursue the same course all my life.

But it should be considered whether it may not be equally appropriate for the days of David to be regarded as indicating a suitable time for asking for assistance—the season when he was under great pressure from hardship. I am not prevented from adopting this meaning, because it may be said that the prophet uses the future tense of the verb אקרא, ekra.

In the first verse also, the term, he shall hear, is to be understood in the past tense as he has heard. In that case, the copulative conjunction would need to be taken as an adverb of time, meaning when, a circumstance by no means unusual among the Hebrews.

The passage can be understood very well as follows: Because he has bowed his ear to me when I called upon him in the time of my adversity, and even at the season, too, when I was reduced to the direst difficulties. If any are disposed to prefer the former interpretation, I will not argue with them about it.

The following context, however, appears to support the latter meaning, in which David energetically begins to point out what those days were. And, with the intention of magnifying God’s glory as it deserves, he says that there was no way of his escaping from death, for he was like one among enemies, bound with fetters and chains, from whom all hope of deliverance was cut off.

He acknowledges, therefore, that he was subjected to death, that he was overtaken and seized, so that escape was impossible. And as he declares that he was bound by the cords of death, so he, at the same time, adds that he fell into tribulation and sorrow. Here he confirms what he said previously, that when he seemed to be most forsaken of God, that was truly the proper time, and the right season for him to devote himself to prayer.