John Calvin Commentary Psalms 94:18

"When I said, My foot slippeth; Thy lovingkindness, O Jehovah, held me up." — Psalms 94:18 (ASV)

What is said in this verse—If I said, My foot has fallen—confirms the preceding statement. To commend God’s kindness and power all the more, he declares that it was no common danger from which he had been rescued, but rather, in a way, from imminent death. The meaning of the language is that death stared him so fully in the face that he despaired for himself; Paul similarly speaks of having had the message of death in himself when his condition was desperate and he had given up hope of life (2 Corinthians 1:9). The fact that the Psalmist was delivered after he had considered death certain made divine intervention all the more conspicuous.

If we understand him as speaking of temporal death only in the expression, My foot has fallen—it is not unexplainable that he despaired, since God often prolongs the lives of His people in the world when they had lost hope and were preparing for their departure.

Possibly, however, the Psalmist only means that this was the language of his feelings; and this is the more probable, because we have already seen that he never ceased praying to God—a proof that he still had some hope. The next verse offers still further proof, for there he tells us that his afflictions were always mixed with some comfort.

By thoughts, he means anxious and perplexing cares, which would have overwhelmed him if consolation had not been given to him from above. We learn this truth from the passage: that God intervenes on behalf of His people, with due regard for the magnitude of their trials and distresses, and at the very moment it is necessary, giving them relief in their distress, as is stated in other places.

The heavier our calamities grow, we should hope that divine grace will be all the more powerfully manifested in comforting us through them (Psalms 4:1; Psalms 118:5), but if, through the weakness of the flesh, we are vexed and tormented by anxious cares, we must be satisfied with the remedy that the Psalmist speaks of here in such high terms.

Believers are conscious of two very different states of mind. On the one hand, they are afflicted and distressed with various fears and anxieties; on the other, a secret joy is given to them from above, and this is suited to their need, so as to preserve them from being overwhelmed by any combination or force of calamity that may assail them.