John Calvin Commentary Psalms 60:1

"O God thou hast cast us off, thou hast broken us down; Thou hast been angry; oh restore us again." — Psalms 60:1 (ASV)

O God! you have cast us off. To excite both himself and others to a more serious consideration of the goodness of God, which they currently experienced, he begins the psalm with prayer; and a comparison is made, designed to show that the government of Saul had been under divine reprobation.

He complains of the sad confusions into which the nation had been thrown, and prays that God would return to it in mercy and re-establish its affairs. Some have thought that David here refers to his own distressed condition: this is not probable. I grant that, before coming to the throne, he underwent severe afflictions; but in this place he evidently speaks of the whole people as well as himself.

The calamities which he describes are such as extended to the whole kingdom; and I have not the least doubt, therefore, that he is to be considered as drawing a comparison which might illustrate the favor of God, as it had been shown so remarkably, from the beginning, to his own government.

With this in mind, he deplores the long-continued and heavy disasters which had fallen upon the people of God under Saul’s administration. It is particularly noticeable that, though he had found his own countrymen his worst and bitterest enemies, now that he sat upon the throne, he forgets all the injuries which they had done him and, mindful only of the situation which he occupied, associates himself with the rest of them in his addresses to God.

The scattered condition of the nation is what he emphasizes as the main calamity. In consequence of the dispersion of Saul’s forces, the country lay completely exposed to the incursions of enemies; not a man was safe in his own house, and no relief remained but in flight or banishment.

He next describes the confusions which reigned by a metaphor, representing the country as opened, or cleft asunder; not that there had been a literal earthquake, but that the kingdom, in its torn and shattered condition, presented that calamitous aspect which generally follows an earthquake. The affairs of Saul ceased to prosper from the time that he forsook God; and when he perished at last, he left the nation in a state little short of ruin.

The greatest apprehension must have been felt throughout it; it had become the scorn of its enemies, and was ready to submit to any yoke, however degrading, which promised tolerable conditions. Such is the manner in which David intimates that the divine favor had been alienated by Saul, pointing, when he says that God was displeased, at the radical source of all the evils that prevailed; and he prays that the same physician who had broken would heal.