John Calvin Commentary Psalms 119:76

"Let, I pray thee, thy lovingkindness be for my comfort, According to thy word unto thy servant." — Psalms 119:76 (ASV)

I beseech You, let Your goodness be for my consolation. Although he has acknowledged that he had been justly humbled, yet he desires that his sorrow may be alleviated by some consolation. He implores God’s mercy, as being essentially necessary to relieve and cure his miseries. He thus shows that nothing can remove sorrow from the faithful, until they feel that God is reconciled to them.

In the Word in which God offers His mercy, there is to be found no small comfort for healing all the grief to which people are subject. But the Psalmist is now speaking of actual mercy, if I may use that term, when God by the deed itself declares the favor which He has promised.

Confiding in the Divine promise, he already cherished in his heart a joy, proceeding from the hope of receiving the bestowals of Divine grace. But as all our hope would end in mere disappointment if God did not eventually appear as our deliverer, he requests the fulfillment of what God had promised him.

Lord, as if he had said, since You have graciously promised to be ready to help me, be pleased to make good Your word. The observation which I have previously made should be remembered, that it is not in vain to remind God of His promise. It would be presumption for people to come into His presence if He did not, of His own good pleasure, open the way for them.

When the Psalmist says, to Your servant, he does not claim God’s mercy exclusively to himself, as if it had been promised to him alone by some special oracle; but he applies to himself what God has promised to the whole Church, which it is the unique role of faith to do. For unless I believe that I am one of those to whom God addresses in His word, so that His promises belong to me in common with others, I will never have the confidence to call upon Him.