33 He turned rivers into a wilderness, And water-springs into thirsty ground, 34 A land of fruit into a salt desert, For the wickedness of the dwellers in it. 35 He turned a wilderness into a pool of water, And a dry land into water-springs. 36 And He made the hungry to dwell there, And they found an inhabited city. 37 And they sowed fields and planted vineyards, And these yielded fruits of increase. 38 And He blessed them and they multiplied exceedingly, And their cattle He diminished not. 39 And they were diminished and brought low, By the pressure of ill and sorrow. 40 "He pours contempt on princes, And makes them wander in a pathless waste." 41 He lifted the needy out of affliction, And made families like a flock. 42 The upright see it and rejoice, And all perverseness stops its mouth. 43 Whoso is wise, let him observe these things, And let them understand the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah. Notwithstanding the division of Books which separates Psalm cvii. from the two preceding, it is a pendant to these. The "gathering from among the heathen" prayed for in Psalm cvi. 47 has here come to pass (ver. 3). The thanksgiving which there is regarded as the purpose of that restoration is here rendered for it. Psalm cv. had for theme God's mercies to the fathers. Psalm cvi. confessed the hereditary faithlessness of Israel and its chastisement by calamity and exile. Psalm cvii. begins with summoning Israel as "the redeemed of Jehovah," to praise Him for His enduring loving-kindness in bringing them back from bondage, and then takes a wider flight, and celebrates the loving Providence which delivers, in all varieties of peril and calamity, those who cry to God. Its vivid pictures of distress and rescue begin, indeed, with one which may fairly be supposed to have been suggested by the incidents of the return from exile; and the second of these, that of the liberated prisoners, is possibly coloured by similar reminiscences; but the great restoration is only the starting-point, and the bulk of the psalm goes further afield. Its instances of Divine deliverance, though cast into narrative form, describe not specific acts, but God's uniform way of working. Wherever there are trouble and trust, there will be triumph and praise. The psalmist is propounding a partial solution of the old problem--the existence of pain and sorrow. They come as chastisements. If terror or misery drive men to God, God answers, and deliverance is assured, from which fuller-toned praise should spring. It is by no means a complete vindication of Providence, and experience does not bear out the assumption of uniform answers to prayers for deliverance from external calamities, which was more warranted before Christ than it is now; but the essence of the psalmist's faith is ever true--that God hears the cry of a man driven