John Calvin Commentary Psalms 31:9

"Have mercy upon me, O Jehovah, for I am in distress: Mine eye wasteth away with grief, [yea], my soul and my body." — Psalms 31:9 (ASV)

Have mercy upon me, O Jehovah! To move God to help him, he emphasizes the greatness of his misery and grief by the number of his complaints; not that God needs arguments to persuade him, but because he allows the faithful to deal familiarly with him, that they may relieve themselves of their cares.

The greater the number of afflictions with which they are oppressed, the more they encourage themselves, while bewailing them before God, in the hope of obtaining his assistance. These forms of expression may seem hyperbolical, but it is obvious that it was David’s purpose to declare and express what he had felt personally.

First, he says that his eyes, his soul, and his belly, were consumed with grief. From this it appears that it was not lightly nor for a short time that he was thus tormented and distressed by these calamities. Indeed, he was endowed with so much meekness of spirit that he would not allow himself to be easily agitated by a slight circumstance, nor distressed by excessive sorrow.

He had also been for a long time accustomed to the endurance of troubles. We must, therefore, admit that his afflictions were incredibly severe, when he yielded to such a degree of strong emotion. By the word anger, too, he shows that he was not at all times of such iron-like firmness, or so free from sinful passion, that his grief did not now and then break forth into an excess of impetuosity and keenness.

From this we infer that the saints often have a severe and arduous conflict with their own passions; and that although their patience has not always been free from peevishness, yet by carefully wrestling against it, they have at last achieved this much, that no accumulation of troubles has overwhelmed them.

By life some understand the vital senses, an interpretation which I do not entirely reject. But I prefer to explain it as simply meaning that, being consumed with grief, he felt his life and his years sliding away and failing. And by these words again, David bewails not so much his faintheartedness as the severity of his calamities; although he was by no means ashamed to confess his infirmity, for which he was anxiously seeking a remedy.

When he says that his strength failed under his sorrow, some interpreters prefer reading, under his iniquity; and I confess that the Hebrew word עון, on, has both meanings; indeed, more frequently it signifies an offense or a fault. But as it is sometimes used for punishment, I have chosen the sense which appears most suitable to the context.

And although it is true that David was accustomed to ascribe the afflictions which he suffered at any time to his own fault, yet, as he is only recounting his miseries here, without mentioning the cause of them, it is probable that, in his usual manner, he expresses the same thing twice by different words.