Psalm 18:18

EXPOSITION

Verse 4-19. See Psalms on "Psalms 18:4" for further information.

Verse 18. It was an ill day, a day of calamity, of which evil foes took cruel advantage, while they used crafty means utterly to ruin him, yet David could say, but the Lord is my stay. What a blessed but which cuts the Gordian knot, and slays the hundred headed hydra! There is no fear of deliverance when our stay is in Jehovah.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 8-19. See Psalms on "Psalms 18:8" for further information.

Verse 18. They prevented me in the day of my calamity; i.e., came on me suddenly, unawares, when I was unprovided and helpless, and must have destroyed me had not God upheld and supported me when I was in danger of perishing. God was to the psalmist ![fml, for a staff to support him. What the staff is to one that is ready to fall, the means of recovering and preserving him; that was God to David in the time of his extremity. For he several times preserved him from Saul, when he, David, thought his destruction by him almost unavoidable. See 1 Samuel 23:26-27 . Samuel Chandler.

Verse 18. They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the Lord was my stay. When Henry the Eighth had spoken and written bitterly against Luther; said Luther, Tell the Henries, the bishops, the Turks, and the devil himself, do what they can, we are the children of the kingdom, worshipping of the true God, whom they, and such as they, spit upon and crucified. And of the same spirit were many martyrs. Basil affirms of the primitive saints, that they had so much courage and confidence in their sufferings, that many of the heathen seeing their heroic zeal and constancy, turned Christians. Charles Bradbury.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 18. The enemy's "craft," They prevented me in the day of my calamity. The enemy chained. But the Lord was my stay.