He delivereth me from mine enemies: yea, thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me: thou hast delivered me from the violent man. Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name. Great deliverance giveth he to his king; and sheweth mercy to his anointed, to David, and to his seed for evermore. This is a Psalm of thanksgiving, in which David gives thanks to God (as the title of the Psalm shows) because of his deliverance from all his enemies. And this Psalm I should divide into four parts, for David had combatted with four kinds of enemies—King Saul, the neighbouring nations, his son Absalom, and his seditious subjects. At the beginning of the Psalm, in the first six verses, David describes the greatness of his perils, his distresses and his straits in the midst of so many and great afflictions, out of which the Lord delivered him, “The sorrows of hell (saith he) compassed me about, &c.” Then in the seventh verse, after the manner of the prophets, he alludes in his song of praise to the deliverance out of Egypt, and to those mighty works at Mount Sinai and in the Red Sea; intimating, that as God then powerfully delivered his people from the midst of death, so, he also more than once had been delivered by the powerful arm and the high hand of God, again, as it were from the hand of Pharaoh, and from the midst of surrounding death. And then again, when he says verses 16, and 17, “He delivered me from my strong enemies and from them that were mightier than I,” he alludes to King Saul, who had persecuted him with hostile hatred and bitterness for the word of God’s sake, because he was chosen from on high to be King and to be his successor. At verse 28, he celebrates the goodness of God who stands by the humble and those who are despised by the world and defends them against the proud and the mighty: as he did in giving David the victory over Goliah, the Philistines, the Amalekites, and other nations. At verse 34, he intimates something respecting his third and domestic adversary his son Absalom, who, on that account, was by far the more dreadful and atrocious enemy. Then at verse 42, he gives thanks to God who so wonderfully stood by him against the crafty counsels and snares of the seditious, of which kind was Siba and, in the time of Absalom almost the whole of Israel. For this most excellent and most godly king had many national and domestic enemies, and seditious citizens; so much so, that, as he himself here says, many gentile nations were far more kind and obedient to him than his own people. Therefore any afflicted one, especially if in magisterial office, may use this Psalm in giving thanks to God for his deliverance out of various perils and distresses which fall upon those who govern the state, or who are set over the Church.