Psalms 61:4(v4)I will dwell in your tent forever. I will take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
Psalms 124:7(v3)Our soul has escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare. The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Psalms 141:9(v3)Keep me from the snare which they have laid for me, from the traps of the workers of iniquity.
Psalms 57:1(v4)Be merciful to me, God, be merciful to me, for my soul takes refuge in you. Yes, in the shadow of your wings, I will take refuge, until…
Psalms 17:8(v4)Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings,
Show all 58 cross-references
Deuteronomy 32:11(v4)As an eagle that stirs up her nest, that flutters over her young, he spread abroad his wings, he took them, he bore them on his feathers.
Isaiah 43:1-2(v4)But now Yahweh who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel, says: “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by…
Isaiah 43:2(v5)When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire,…
Psalms 35:2(v4)Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help.
Job 5:19-27(v5)He will deliver you in six troubles; yes, in seven no evil will touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death; in war, from the power…
Matthew 23:37(v4)“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children…
Genesis 15:1(v4)After these things Yahweh’s word came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Don’t be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great…
Ruth 2:12(v4)May Yahweh repay your work, and a full reward be given to you from Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take…
Proverbs 3:23-25(v5)Then you shall walk in your way securely. Your foot won’t stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. Yes, you will lie down, and…
Psalms 3:5-6(v5)I laid myself down and slept. I awakened; for Yahweh sustains me. I will not be afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set…
Hebrews 6:17-18(v4)In this way God, being determined to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an…
Exodus 12:12-13(v7)For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and animal. I will…
Job 5:10-22(v3)who gives rain on the earth, and sends waters on the fields; so that he sets up on high those who are low, those who mourn are exalted to…
Genesis 7:23(v7)Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky.…
Psalms 112:7(v5)He will not be afraid of evil news. His heart is steadfast, trusting in Yahweh.
Hebrews 13:6(v5)So that with good courage we say, “The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?”
Psalms 121:5-6(v6)Yahweh is your keeper. Yahweh is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
Titus 1:2(v4)in hope of eternal life, which God, who can’t lie, promised before time began;
Psalms 32:6(v7)For this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely when the great waters overflow, they shall not…
Proverbs 7:23(v3)Until an arrow strikes through his liver, as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn’t know that it will cost his life.
Numbers 14:37-38(vv3, 7)even those men who brought up an evil report of the land, died by the plague before Yahweh. But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of…
Numbers 16:48(v6)He stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.
Proverbs 6:5(v3)Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.
Ecclesiastes 9:12(v3)For man also doesn’t know his time. As the fish that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are…
2 Timothy 2:26(v3)and they may recover themselves out of the devil’s snare, having been taken captive by him to his will.
2 Samuel 24:15(vv3, 6)So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning even to the appointed time; and seventy thousand men died of the people from Dan…
Numbers 16:46-48(v3)Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, put fire from the altar in it, lay incense on it, carry it quickly to the congregation, and make…
Joshua 14:10(v7)“Now, behold, Yahweh has kept me alive, as he spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that Yahweh spoke this word to Moses, while…
Psalms 91:6(v3)nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that wastes at noonday.
1 Timothy 6:9(v3)But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and…
Psalms 27:1-3(v5)Yahweh is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Yahweh is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers came…
Hosea 9:8(v3)A prophet watches over Ephraim with my God. A fowler’s snare is on all of his paths, and hostility in the house of his God.
Amos 3:5(v3)Can a bird fall in a trap on the earth, where no snare is set for him? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when there is nothing to…
Matthew 24:6-7(v6)You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you aren’t troubled, for all this must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will…
Exodus 12:29-30(v6)At midnight, Yahweh struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of…
1 Kings 8:37(v3)“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight, mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in…
Psalms 138:2(v4)I will bow down toward your holy temple, and give thanks to your Name for your loving kindness and for your truth; for you have exalted…
Mark 13:31(v4)Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Psalms 89:23-24(v4)I will beat down his adversaries before him, and strike those who hate him. But my faithfulness and my loving kindness will be with him. In…
Proverbs 28:1(v5)The wicked flee when no one pursues; but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
Isaiah 21:4(v5)My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.
2 Kings 19:35(v6)That night, Yahweh’s angel went out, and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the…
Job 4:13-15(v5)In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake.…
Job 24:14-16(v5)The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief. The eye also of the adulterer waits for…
Psalms 46:2(v5)Therefore we won’t be afraid, though the earth changes, though the mountains are shaken into the heart of the seas;
Song of Solomon 3:8(v5)They all handle the sword, and are expert in war. Every man has his sword on his thigh, because of fear in the night.
Luke 12:20(v5)“But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’
Luke 12:39(v5)But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched, and not allowed his…
1 Corinthians 10:3-10(v6)and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the…
2 Kings 7:6(v5)For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians to hear the sound of chariots, and the sound of horses, even the noise of a great army; and…
Lamentations 3:12-13(v5)He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
Matthew 8:26(v5)He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm.
Job 6:4(v5)For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. My spirit drinks up their poison. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me.
58 distinct cross-references across this passage (60 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (19 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv3, 4, 5, 7In verse third the Psalmist expresses his assurance that…
In verse third the Psalmist expresses his assurance that the trust of which he had spoken would not be vain and delusory, but that God would prove at all times the deliverer of his people. He is evidently to be considered as addressing himself, and in this way encouraging his own heart to hope in the Lord. Some think that by the snare of the fowler, spoken of here in connection with the pestilence, is to be understood hidden mischief as distinguished from open aggression, and that the Psalmist declares the Divine protection to be sufficient for him, whether Satan should attack him openly and violently or by more secret and subtle methods. I would not reject this interpretation; for though some may think that the words should be taken in their simpler acceptation, the Psalmist most probably intended under these terms to denote all different kinds of evil, and to teach us that God was willing and able to deliver us from any of them.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv3–5That is, God’s help is most ready for us,…
That is, God’s help is most ready for us, whether Satan assail us secretly, which he calleth a snare: or openly, which is here meant by the pestilence.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Psa 91:3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the…
Psa 91:3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, [and] from the noisome pestilence.
Ver. 3. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler] i.e. Of the devil and his emissaries, 2Ti 2:26, who, by force and fraud, seek to ensnare the saints. Gratiae privativae multo plures sunt quam positivae, saith Gerson. God daily delivereth his from innumerable deaths and dangers. By fowler here some understand the punishing angel, 2Sa 24:15-17, and conceive that this psalm was penned upon occasion of that great plague that followed upon David’s numbering the people; for then, if ever, both prince and people stood in need of special comfort, and here they have it. Divine consolations are therefore sweet, because seasonable and suitable.
Read full note →
And from the noisome pestilence] That uncomfortable and contagious disease. The Vulgate rendereth it, and from rough words. In Hebrew Dabhar signifieth a word, Debher, a pest; an evil tongue hath the pestilence in it, Ab excidio exitiorum.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv3–7O thou believing, pious soul, who after my example…
O thou believing, pious soul, who after my example shalt make God thy refuge, thou shalt partake of the same privilege which I enjoy.
He shall deliver thee from the pestilence, which like a fowler’s snare taketh men suddenly and unexpectedly, and holdeth them fast, and commonly delivers them up to death.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of…
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,.... These are the words of the psalmist, either speaking to himself, for the encouragement of his own faith and trust in the Lord; or to the man that dwells in the secret place, and under the shadow of the most High; which latter seems most agreeable; though Cocceius thinks they are the words of God in one of his Persons, speaking of another divine Person that should deliver such that trust in him: the Targum makes them to be the words of David to Solomon his son. By the "fowler" and his "snare" may be meant either Saul, who laid wait for David, spread snares for him, and hunted him as a partridge on the mountains, from whom he was delivered; or rather any tyrannical enemy and persecutor of the saints, who lay snares for them; and these are broken by the Lord, and so they escape, as a bird out of the hands of the fowler, Psa 124:6 or it may, best of all, be understood of Satan and his temptations, which are as snares that he lays to catch the people of God in, and from which they are delivered by the power and grace of God; see Ti1 3:7.
and from the noisome pestilence; the most pernicious and destructive one; which may be literally understood of any pestilential distemper; from which the Lord, by his powerful providence, sometimes protects his people, when in danger of it: or, spiritually, of the pestilential disease of sin, that noisome and deadly one, the plague of the heart, which is the worst of all plagues; and from the ruinous and destructive effects and consequences of which the Lord saves his saints.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5, 6Pestilence - From the pestilence, which like a fowler's…
Pestilence - From the pestilence, which like a fowler's snare takes men suddenly and unexpectedly.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Verse 3. Surely he shall deliver thee] If thou…
Verse 3. Surely he shall deliver thee] If thou wilt act thus, then the God in whom thou trustest will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, from all the devices of Satan, and from all dangerous maladies. As the original word, דבר dabar, signifies a word spoken, and deber, the same letters, signifies pestilence; so some translate one way, and some another: he shall deliver thee from the evil and slanderous word; he shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence - all blasting and injurious winds, effluvia, &c.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv4, 5, 7Psa 91:4. He shall cover thee with his feathers…
Psa 91:4. He shall cover thee with his feathers — shall protect thee with the greatest tenderness and affection, as a hen covers and defends her chickens when they are in any danger. And under his wings shalt thou trust — The wings of his overshadowing power and providence; his truth — Whereby he is obliged to fulfil all his gracious promises, and among the rest, that of protection in dangers; shall be thy shield and buckler — Thy strong and sure defence.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of…
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler - The snare or gin set for catching birds; meaning, here, that God would save him from the purposes of wicked people; such purposes as might be compared with the devices employed to catch birds. On the meaning of the figure used here, see the notes at Psa 18:5.
And from the noisome pestilence - The “fatal” pestilence; the pestilence that spreads death in its march. That is, he can prevent its coming upon you; or, he can save you from its ravages, while others are dying around you. This promise is not to be understood as absolute, or as meaning that no one who fears God will ever fall by the pestilence - for good people “do” die at such times as well as bad people; but the idea is, that God “can” preserve us at such a time and that, as a great law, he will be thus the protector of those who trust him. It is to be remembered that in times of pestilence (as was the case during the prevalence of the Asiatic cholera in 1832 and 1848), very many of the victims are the intemperate, the sensual, the debased, and that a life of this kind is a predisposing cause of death in such visitations of judgment. A large part of those who die are of that number. From the danger arising from this cause, of course the virtuous, the temperate, the pious are exempt; and this is one of the methods by which God saves those who trust in him from the “noisome pestilence.” Religion, therefore, to a considerable extent, constitutes a ground of security at such times; nor is there any reason to doubt that, in many cases also, there may be a special interposition protecting the friends of God from danger, and sparing them for future usefulness. The promise here is substantially that general promise which we have in the Scriptures everywhere, that God is the Protector of his people, and that they may put their trust in him.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5, 63. Surely he shall deliver thee—The change from the…
3. Surely he shall deliver thee—The change from the first person in Psa_91:2, to the second in Psa_91:3, is abrupt and perplexing. We must either adopt the dramatic theory respecting the structure of this psalm, (see the introduction,) making three speakers, and assigning Psa_91:3 and part of Psa_91:9 to the second, Psa_91:14-16 to the third, (namely, to Jehovah,) and the rest to the first; or, we must suppose in Psa_91:3; Psa_91:9 the same speaker adopts the I instead of thou, for the purpose of speaking from his own heart, and for greater pathos.
Snare of the fowler—In the enumeration of evils from which the righteous shall be delivered by his single trust in God, he properly begins with the “trap of the fowler”—the dangers arising from the secret wickedness of men.
Read full note →
Noisome pestilence— Fatal pestilence, or pestilence of wickedness. The words are not specific of any bodily disease, or class of destructive diseases, but apply to any causes by which men are swept away suddenly—often those which come from the crafty wickedness of men, and is parallel to “snare of the fowler” in the previous member. It is one of the four great judgments of God, enumerated Eze_14:21; Rev_6:8. The word “noisome” means calamitous, ruinous, as Psa_57:1, where Psa_91:4-6 show it was brought only against wicked men. So Psa_94:20, where it is rendered iniquity, and Proverbs 19:30, rendered calamity. But see on Psa_91:6
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv3–73. Surely he &c.] For HE &c. The pronoun…
3. Surely he &c.] For HE &c. The pronoun is emphatic.
the snare of the fowler] All insidious attempts against life or welfare (Psa_124:7; Psa_141:9, &c.; 2Ti_2:26).
Read full note →
and from the noisome pestilence] from [omit and] the destroying pestilence. But pestilence comes later in Psa_91:6, and the LXX, Symm., and Syr., give a better parallel to the snare of the fowler by the reading, which involves only a change of vocalisation, from the destroying word of malignant calumny and slander. Cp. the same parallel in Psa_38:12, and the numerous complaints of slander, and prayers to be delivered from it; e.g. Psa_5:9; Psa_120:2-3.
3–8. The providential care of God described in detail. The Psalmist, if the interpretation advocated above is correct, now addresses Israel; or, it may be, any godly Israelite.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv3–7(3) Snare of the fowler.—The image of the net…
(3) Snare of the fowler.—The image of the net has occurred frequently before. (See Psa_10:15, &c) Here, as in Ecc_9:12, it is used generally of any unexpected peril to life.
Noisome pestilence.—Literally, pestilence of calamities, i.e., fatal. (See Psa_57:1, where the same word “calamities” occurs.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Surely he shall deliver thee. The second speaker takes…
Surely he shall deliver thee. The second speaker takes up the word, and naturally changes the person. Addressing the first speaker, he says Yes, assuredly, God shall deliver thee from whatever dangers beset thee: as, first, from the snare of the fowler; (comp. Psa_124:7 Pro_6:5) and, secondly, from the noisome pestilence (comp. ver. 6), i.e. from all dangers whatsoever not more from these than from others.
The fowler"s snare.
Read full note →
It is a frequent usage of the psalmist"s to compare the soul of man to a bird. (cf. Ps 11 Ps 84 etc.) In the next verse God himself is likened to the mother bird that shelters her young under her wings. And, like a bird, the soul of man is exposed to many dangers. Not alone such as are open and known, but such as are bidden, secret, and subtle; not alone from the hovering hawk, but also from the crafty snare of the fowler. And with such souls as are contemplated in this psalm, it is this latter peril which is the true image of that against which they need to guard, and from which God alone can deliver them. The snare of the fowler it is a very suggestive similitude. Consider, therefore
I THE DANGER THAT THREATENS THE BELIEVER. It is as a snare.
1. A concealed peril. For the fowler to show himself, or to spread his snare in the sight of any bird, would be to defeat the very object he has in view. Hence he conceals himself and his snare both. And so also doth that crafty hunter who seeks for souls that he may destroy them"Satan, the fowler, who betrays Unguarded souls a thousand ways he does not venture to display openly the evil which he intends by the suggestions be plies us with and the temptations which he puts in our way. Rather he transforms himself into an angel of light. (2Co_11:14) Thus craftily does he hide away from us the real nature of the sin into which he would betray us.
2. Adapted to our nature. The fowler does not seek to snare all birds in the same way, but he studies their nature and likings and haunts, and so sets his snare. And is it not just thus with our great adversary? He knows our weak points, where the chink in our armour is through which his darts may enter. He knows where we are vulnerable, how we may be best ensnared. That which would tempt one man would have no attraction, or but little, for another. And Satan knows that. Ah! where should we be were it not for the safe keeping of God?
3. Attractively baited. How the devil lured Saul to persecute the Church, by persuading him that he was "doing God service"! How Christian people are often led to mingle in strange scenes, and to associate with those who are no friends to Christ in their amusements and ways, on the pretext that so they may bring these ungodly ones under good influence, and thus lead them on to something better! The result is generally the reverse of what was expected. Satan has a vast variety of these baits, and the souls are not a few that he has snared by means of them. "It is only for once;" "Don"t listen to narrow, prejudiced people;" "You can"t help your nature and disposition;" "You can repent, and get forgiveness; these are some of the fowler"s baits with which he tempts us into his snare.
4. Sometimes he uses decoys. "Religious people do such things: why shouldn"t you?
5. Sometimes he employs several of them together. Old Master Quarles says"The close pursuers" busy hands do plant Snares in thy substance; snares attend thy want Snares in thy credit; snares in thy disgrace; Snares in thy high estate; snares in thy base; Snares tuck thy bed, and snares surround thy board; Snares watch thy thoughts; snares attack thy word; Snares in thy quiet; snares in thy commotion; Snares in thy diet; snares in thy devotion; Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubts; Snares lie within thy heart, and snares without; Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath; Snares in thy sickness; snares are in thy death.
There is not a place in which a believer walks that is free from them. Therefore let us watch and pray.
II OUR RICH CONSOLATION IN VIEW OF THESE DANGERS. God will "surely" deliver us from them.
1. He has promised to do so.
2. He has done so for his people in all ages who have sought such deliverance.
3. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil; therefore, certainly, these snares.
III THE NATURE OF HIS DELIVERANCE. How does the Lord fulfil this word?
1. By not letting us fall into them. He keeps us from the evil, that it shall not touch us. This is very blessed more blessed than to be delivered out of the snare when we have fallen therein. The eider brother was, after all, more to be envied than the restored prodigal. We too much forget this. God has many means of holding us back from sin. Chief of all, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, giving us, as to Joseph, a holy fear and an abiding love of God.
2. By rescuing us out of the snare. Yes, he stands ready to do this. You fallen ones, he will do this for you. S.C.
Limitations of temporal protection.
The fact is patent. It demands consideration. God does not always give protection from bodily evils to his saints. On a house at Chester, that was spared in the time of plague, is the inscription, "God"s providence is mine inheritance." But the man who lived there was not the only good man in Chester at the time. Other good men were not thus protected. Evidently the psalmist "accepts in all simplicity the belief in that which, but for sin and its consequences, would be the law of human life that visible blessing, and obedience to the Supreme Ruler of the world, must always go together. To us the faith is rather that whatever betides us of outward fortune cannot touch the true life which is hid in God." What we need to see is that the psalmist asserts the ever working law, and leaves us to find the limitations and exceptions that arise in its practical working.
I THE EVER WORKING LAW. Temporal good attends upon piety. The world is constructed and arranged to give this law a sphere. Just so far as natural relations are kept simple, the law does work. "Honesty is the best policy." Goodness does bring reward. Chastity does secure health. The fear of God does prove to he practical wisdom. The man of wise and restrained habits does stand the best chance in time of epidemic disease. The diligent in business do succeed. "Right is right." Right comes right. "Godliness has the promise of the life that now is.
II THE EVER MANIFEST EXCEPTIONS. These occasion the distress of men like Asaph, who are too keen to detect the dark side of things. Righteous Job suffers. The wicked are in great power. The exceptions come through the disturbance of Divine arrangements by man"s wilfulness and sin. He makes his law cross the Divine law. Then arises the necessity for modifications in the working of the Divine law.
1. The allegiance of the good must be tested.
2. The results of that testing must be used as persuasive example to others. The Book of Job really wrestles with this difficulty. The man who is "upright, fears God, and eschews evil" does not find himself protected from all harm. And yet it is still true, Job in trouble was abiding in "the shadow of the Almighty. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon1885 · Public DomainOn vv3–7Ver. 3. He shall deliver thee from the snare…
Ver. 3. He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler. Are we therefore beasts? Beasts doubtless. When man was in honour he understood not, but was like the foolish beasts. (Ps 49:12) Men are certainly beasts, wandering sheep, having no shepherd. Why art thou proud, O man? Why dost thou boast thyself, O smatterer? See what a beast thou art, for whom the snares of the fowler are being prepared. But who are these fowlers? The fowlers indeed are the worst and most wicked, the cleverest and the most cruel. The fowlers are they who sound no horn, that they may not be heard, but shoot their arrows in secret places at the innocent... But lo! since we know the fowlers and the beasts, our further enquiry must be, what this snare may be. I wish not myself to invent it, nor to deliver to you what is subject to doubt. The Apostle shows us this snare, for he was not ignorant of the devices of these fowlers. Tell us, I pray, blessed Paul, what this snare of the devil is, from which the faithful soul rejoices that it is delivered? They that will be rich (in this world?) says he, fall into temptation and the snare (of the devil?) (1Ti 6:9-10). Are not the riches of this world, then, the snare of the devil?. Alas! how few we find who can boast of freedom from this snare, how many who grieve that they seem to themselves too little enmeshed in the net, and who still labour and toil with all their strength to involve and entangle themselves more and more. Ye who have left all and followed the Son of man who has not where to lay his head, rejoice and say, He hath delivered we from the snare of the fowlers. Bernard.
Ver. 3. Surely he shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence. Lord Craven lived in London when that sad calamity, the plague, raged. His house was in that part of the town called Craven Buildings. On the plague growing epidemic, his Lordship, to avoid the danger, resolved to go to his seat in the country. His coach and six were accordingly at the door, his baggage put up, and all things in readiness for the journey. As he was walking through his hall with his hat on, his cane under his arm, and putting on his gloves, in order to step into his carriage, he overheard his negro, who served him as postillion, saying to another servant. "I suppose, by my Lord's quitting London to avoid the plague, that his God lives in the country, and not in town." The poor negro said this in the simplicity of his heart, as really believing a plurality of gods. The speech, however, struck Lord Craven very sensibly, and made him pause. "My God, "thought he, "lives everywhere, and can preserve me in town as well as in the country. I will even stay where I am. The ignorance of that negro has just now preached to me a very useful sermon. Lord, pardon this unbelief, and that distrust of thy providence, which made me think of running from thy hand." He immediately ordered his horses to be taken from the coach, and the baggage to be taken in. He continued in London, was remarkably useful among his sick neighbours, and never caught the infection. Whitecross's Anecdotes.
Read full note →
Ver. 3, 6. Pestilence. It is from a word (rkd) that signifies to speak, and speak out; the pestilence is a speaking thing, it proclaims the wrath of God amongst a people. Drusius fetches it from the same root, but in piel, which is to decree; showing that the pestilence is a thing decreed in heaven, not casual. Kirker thinks it is called rkd, because it keeps order, and spares neither great nor small. The Hebrew root signifies to destroy, to cut off, and hence may the plague or pestilence have its name. The Septuagint renders it yanatos, death, for ordinarily it is death; and it is expressed by "Death, "Re 6:8, he sat on the pale horse, and killed with sword, hunger, death, and beasts of the earth; it refers to Eze 14:21, where the pestilence is mentioned. Pestilence may be from a word which signifies to spread, spoil, rush upon, for it doth so; 2Sa 24:15, seventy thousand slain in three days; and plague, a plhgh from plhssw, to smite, to wound, for it smites suddenly, and wounds mortally; hence it is in Nu 14:12, "I will smite them with the pestilence." This judgment is very grievous, it is called in Ps 91:3 the "noisome pestilence, "because it is infectious, contagious; and therefore the French read it, "de la peste dangereuse, "from the dangerous pestilence, it doth endanger those that come near it: and Musculus hath it, a peste omnium pessima, from the worst pestilence of all: and others, the woeful pestilence; it brings a multitude of woes with it to any place or person it comes unto, it is a messenger of woeful fears, sorrows, distractions, terrors, and death itself. William Greenhill.
Ver. 3. Invisible protection from invisible dangers; wisdom to meet cunning, love to war with cruelty, omnipresence to match mystery, life to baffle death.
Ver. 3. SURELY, or reasons for assured confidence in God's protection.
Ver. 3-7. Pestilence, panic, and peace; (for times of widespread disease). Charles A. Davis.
Ver. 3,8-9.
1. Saints are safe "surely, "(Ps 91:3).
2. The evil is bounded"only, "(Ps 91:8).
3. The Lord has reasons for preserving his own "because, "(Ps 91:9).
Psalms 91:4*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn v4He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under…
Psa_91:4
He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.
Read full note →
The covering wing
There is here a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. He shall cover thee with His pinions; that is the Divine act. Under His wings shalt thou trust; that is the human condition. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler; that is the Divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible.
I. The covering wing. The main idea in this image is that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are gathered. Whatsoever kites may be in the sky, whatsoever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, they are safe there. The imago suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realized by those who nestle beneath that wing. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent psalmist, My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped; when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of the Divine providence in this world, we have to come to this belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near the man sheltered beneath Gods wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another, who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is their insolvency to the one the same as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the lobsters at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that Divine protection. It may still wound, but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.
II. The flight of the shelterless to the Shelter. Under His wings shalt thou flee to a refuge. Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? There are plenty of men that know all about the security of the Refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of the nature to fling myself into an Asylum, to cast myself into Gods arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him. The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.
III. The warrant for this flight. His truth shall be thy shield. Now, truth here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called Gods truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the Divine nature. And if, instead of truth, we read the good old English word troth, we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the psalmist meant. You cannot trust a God that has not given you an inkling of His character or disposition, but if He has spoken then you know where to have Him. That is just what the psalmist means. How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great thought of Gods troth. Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains. Who is like unto Thee, O Lord; or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee? That faithfulness shall be our shield, not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm, but the word means the large shield, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight; and circling him around, like a tower of iron. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Safe shelter
The Lord here compares Himself to a hen covering her brood, and He speaks not only of the wing, which gives shelter, but He enters into detail, and speaks of the feathers, which give warmth, and comfort, and repose.
I. When may this text be relied upon by a believer?
1. In cases of extreme peril.
(1) Public calamity.
(2) Domestic grief.
(3) Personal danger.
2. But texts of Scripture like this are not made to be hung up on the nail and only taken down now and then in stress of weather. Blessed be God, the promise before us is available for sunshiny days, yea, for every hour of this mortal life. You always need protection, and, believer in Christ, you shall always have it.
3. In times of temptation.
4. In times of expected trials. Many a true servant of God has said to himself, What shall I do when I get old? I am just able now to pick up a living, but what shall I do when these withered limbs can no longer avail to earn my daily bread? Do? Why, you will have the same Father then as you have now to succour you, and you will have the same Providence then as now to supply your wants. You thank God for your daily bread now, and you shall have your daily bread then, for He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings shall you trust.
5. In the hour of death.
II. How may we expect the text to be fulfilled?
1. It may possibly be verified to us by our being preserved altogether from the danger which we dread. God has often, as predicted in the present psalm, in times of pestilence, and famine, and war, preserved His people by remarkable providences. Strong faith has always a particular immunity in times of trouble. When a man has really, under a sense of duty, under a conscientious conviction rested alone in God, he has been enabled to walk where the thickest dangers were flying, all unharmed.
2. There are some dangers from which the providence of God does not preserve the Lords people but still He covers them with His feathers in another sense, by giving them grace to bear up under their troubles. You shall find your afflictions become your mercies, and your trials become your comforts. You shall glory in tribulation, and find light in the midst of gloom, and have joy unspeakable in the season of your sorrow.
3. In yet another way doth God set seal to this record when by His grace having sustained His servants in their trouble He brings them out of it greatly enriched thereby. Oh! it is a great blessing to be put through the fire, if you come out purified.
III. Why may we be sure that it shall be so?
1. Faith enlists the sympathy of God.
2. Gods promise is pledged. You keep your promise to your child, and will not God keep His promise to you? O rest in Him, then; He shall cover us with His feathers, for His own word declares it.
3. Moreover, you are His child, and what will not a father do for his own dear child? Were he a stranger you might take little heed though he were in trouble, in danger, or in deep distress--but your child, your own child--oh! you cannot rest, while he suffers. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Under His wings shalt thou trust.
God s protective care
The simile before us represents the mother-bird guarding her young until they can guard themselves. It is protection as a process in training until one has learned to use his capacities for self-protection. The figure before us may be so misused as to emphasize what we may call the nursery idea in religious life. Gods purpose and plan is to train man to be self-reliant. As the meaning of all true charity is found in that help which develops self-help, so is Gods method in training man. His protecting help is to make man competent to help himself. This is a wide-reaching principle. The kind of God it discloses is one who has great respect for the creature He has made--a God who has put His image upon man by endowing him with certain qualities capable of growth; a God who puts great value upon the manly, self-sustaining character; a God who expects that when one is a child he will speak as a child, he will understand as a child, he will think as a child. But this same God expects that when the child grows into the man, he will put away childish things. A God who specially puts His protecting care round about the growing time of moral and spiritual childhood, that one may grow up into self-reliant, spiritual manhood--it is this kind of God who is revealed under this familiar likeness. It is truly the mother-bird brooding over her young, teaching, training, and caring for them against the time they must care for themselves. So, also, does this figure show us a certain kind of man--namely, a man who has developed a spiritual vigour and strength under the protecting care of God; a man who has learned from God that he has a mind which can expand with the thoughts of God, a heart which can throb with the feelings of God, a will which from feebleness and indecision can, under this same Divine training, grow virile and resolute. What can come nearer to what must be the true religion of the world as that which shows God protecting man, so that man may grow up into protecting himself? and, again, man affectionately accepting that protection, so that mind, heart, and will may grow up into religious self-reliance? Do we not see in Nature that the picture of the young always under the mothers wing argues sick offspring when Nature would have growth in healthy self-reliance? In like manner Christian character, if it deserves the name, must be other than an exotic, to be cared for under glass and at a certain temperature. The true likeness is not to a tropical palm in a greenhouse, but rather to a sturdy oak or elm, living and growing in the climate of a North American winter. I know of no better illustration of Gods protecting care rightly used than in the staunch ocean steamer sailing out at the appointed time into the teeth of a hurricane. It is advertised to sail over the seas. The commander is not consulting the signals to see when he can safely set sail. Nor once under way is he studying his chart to find where he can make a harbour. Lighter ships, built for coast service, run for a refuge. Not so the sturdier craft. It is not seeking shelter or protection from the storm. But, with valiant confidence in itself, it moves out into the storm, with much buffeting, some breakages, half-speed at times--yes, occasionally have-to, so terrific is the gale--yet with no purpose to turn back, but moving on--steadily, slowly, resolutely moving on. (A. H. Hall.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v4
Psalms
THE SHELTERING WING
Read full note →
Psa 91:4.
We remember the magnificent image in Moses’ song, of God’s protection and guidance as that of the eagle who stirred up his nest, and hovered over the young with his wings, and bore them on his pinions. That passage may possibly have touched the imagination of this psalmist, when he here employs the same general metaphor, but with a distinct and significant difference in its application. In the former image the main idea is that of training and sustaining. Here the main idea is that of protection and fostering. On the wing and under the wing suggest entirely different notions, and both need to be taken into account in order to get the many-sided beauties and promises of these great sayings. Now there seems to me here to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. ‘He shall cover thee with His pinions’; that is the divine act. ‘Under His wings shalt thou trust’; that is the human condition. ‘His truth shall be thy shield and buckler’; that is the divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible.
I. A word then, first, about the covering wing.
Now, the main idea in this image is, as I have suggested, that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are guarded. Whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there. The image suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realised by those who nestle beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept prominent, as that chiefly intended by the Psalmist.
This psalm rings throughout with the truth that a man who dwells ‘in the secret place of the Most High’ has absolute immunity from all sorts of evil; and there are two regions in which that immunity, secured by being under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified here. The one is that of outward dangers, the other is that of temptation to sin and of what we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and departments in which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the divine protection, exhibit that protection as secured in two entirely different ways.
The triumphant assurances of this psalm, ‘There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,’-’the pestilence shall smite thousands and ten thousands beside thee, but not come nigh thee,’-seem to be entirely contradicted by experience which testifies that ‘there is one event to the evil and the good,’ and that, in epidemics or other widespread disasters, we all, the good and the bad, God-fearers and God-blasphemers, do fare alike, and that the conditions of exemption from physical evil are physical and not spiritual. It is of no use trying to persuade ourselves that that is not so. We shall understand God’s dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart of such promises as these in this psalm far better, if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does not mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going to be God’s petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people. No! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent Psalmist, ‘My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped,’ when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of divine providence in this world, we have to come to the belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near a man sheltered beneath God’s wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the shell-fish at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, ‘There shall no evil befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling.’
For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which vindicates as no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the old theocracy of Israel, but not now realised, the grand sayings of this text. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that divine protection. It may still wound but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.
And so, brethren! if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, ‘He shall cover thee with His feathers.’ Anything that has come through them is manifestly not an ‘evil.’ ‘Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?’ ‘If God be for us who can be against us?’ Not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, ‘sorrows’ and ‘afflictions,’-these all work for our good, and protection consists, not in averting the blows, but in changing their character.
Then, there is another region far higher, in which this promise of my text is absolutely true-that is, in the region of spiritual defence. For no man who lies under the shadow of God, and has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that Presence, is likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God; and the defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For, as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any outward breastplate or armour, nor even by the divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by the indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes us ‘free from the law of sin and death,’ and conquerors over all temptations.
I say not a word about all the other beautiful and pathetic associations which are connected with this emblem of the covering wing, sweet and inexhaustible as it is, but I simply leave with you the two thoughts that I have dwelt upon, of the twofold manner of that divine protection.
II. And now a word, in the second place, about the flight of the shelterless to the shelter.
The word which is rendered in our Authorised Version, ‘shalt thou trust,’ is, like all Hebrew words for mental and spiritual emotions and actions, strongly metaphorical. It might have been better to retain its literal meaning here instead of substituting the abstract word ‘trust.’ That is to say, it would have been an improvement if we had read with the Revised Version, not, ‘under His wings shalt thou trust,’ but ‘under His wings shalt thou take refuge.’ For that is the idea which is really conveyed; and in many of the psalms, if you will remember, the same metaphor is employed. ‘Hide me beneath the shadow of Thy wings’; ‘Beneath Thy wings will I take refuge until calamities are overpast’; and the like. Many such passages will, no doubt, occur to your memories.
But what I wish to signalise is just this, that in this emblem of flying into a refuge from impending perils we get a far more vivid conception, and a far more useful one, as it seems to me, of what Christian faith really is than we derive from many learned volumes and much theological hair-splitting. ‘Under His wings shalt thou flee for refuge.’ Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? The Old Testament is full of the teaching-which is masked to ordinary readers, but is the same teaching as the New Testament is confessedly full of-of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds men to God. If only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in Old and New Testament of words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the Old Testament about ‘trusting in God’ run on all fours with ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’
But just mark what comes out of that metaphor; that ‘trust,’ the faith which unites with God, and brings a man beneath the shadow of His wings, is nothing more or less than the flying into the refuge that is provided for us. Does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? Does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? Does it not speak to us of the necessity of swift flight, with all the powers of our will? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? Surely it is something a great deal more than that. A man out in the plain, with the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, behind him might believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the City of Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are many men who know all about the security of the refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast myself into God’s arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him.
The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my outstretched hand, but the Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.
So, brethren! another consideration comes out of this clause: ‘Under His wings shalt thou trust.’ If you do not flee for refuge to that wing, it is of no use to you, however expanded it is, however soft and downy its underside, however sure its protection. You remember the passage where our Lord uses the same venerable figure with modifications, and says: ‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not.’ So our ‘would not’ thwarts Christ’s ‘would.’ Flight to the refuge is the condition of being saved. How can a man get shelter by any other way than by running to the shelter? The wing is expanded; it is for us to say whether we will ‘flee for refuge to the hope set before us.’
III. Now, lastly, the warrant for this flight.
‘His truth shall be thy shield.’ Now, ‘truth’ here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called God’s truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the divine nature. And if, instead of ‘truth,’ we read the good old English word ‘troth,’ we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the Psalmist meant. Or if ‘troth’ is archaic, and conveys little meaning to us; suppose we substitute a somewhat longer word, of the same meaning, and say, ‘His faithfulness shall be thy shield.’ You cannot trust a God that has not given you an inkling of His character or disposition, but if He has spoken, then you ‘know where to have him.’ That is just what the Psalmist means. How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge, unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great thought of God’s troth. ‘Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains.’ ‘Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee?’ That faithfulness shall be our ‘shield,’ not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm; but the word means the large shield, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight, and circling him around, like a wall of iron.
God is ‘faithful’ to all the obligations under which He has come by making us. That is what one of the New Testament writers tells us, when he speaks of Him as ‘a faithful Creator.’ Then, if He has put desires into our hearts, be sure that somewhere there is their satisfaction; and if He has given us needs, be sure that in Him there is the supply; and if He has lodged in us aspirations which make us restless, be sure that if we will turn them to Him, they will be satisfied and we shall be at rest. ‘God never sends mouths but He sends meat to fill them.’ ‘He remembers our frame,’ and measures His dealings accordingly. When He made me, He bound Himself to make it possible that I should be blessed for ever; and He has done it.
God is faithful to His word, according to that great saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer tells us that by ‘God’s counsel,’ and ‘God’s oath,’ ‘two immutable things,’ we might have ‘strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.’ God is faithful to His own past. The more He has done the more He will do. ‘Thou hast been my Help; leave me not, neither forsake me.’ Therein we present a plea which God Himself will honour. And He is faithful to His own past in a yet wider sense. For all the revelations of His love and of His grace in times that are gone, though they might be miraculous in their form, are permanent in their essence. So one of the Psalmists, hundreds of years after the time that Israel was led through the wilderness, sang: ‘There did we’-of this present generation-’rejoice in Him.’ What has been, is, and will be, for Thou art ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ We have not a God that lurks in darkness, but one that has come into the light. We have to run, not into a Refuge that is built upon a ‘perhaps,’ but upon ‘Verily, verily! I say unto thee.’ Let us build rock upon Rock, and let our faith correspond to the faithfulness of Him that has promised.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v4(See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
trust
(See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv3, 5For he will rescue you from the snare of…
For he will rescue you from the snare of the hunter and from the deadly plague
The words that have been left out can be put in. AT: "For God will rescue you from the snare of the hunter and he will rescue you from the plagues that can kill" (See: Ellipsis)
Read full note →
the snare of the hunter
"from the snare that the hunter has set to catch you"
He will cover you with his wings, and under his wings you will find refuge
God's protection is here referred to as "wings" which a bird uses to cover its' young from danger. "Cover you with his wings" and "under his wings" mean basically the same thing. AT: "He will keep you safe and protect you" (See: Metaphor and Parallelism)
His trustworthiness is a shield and protection
God's trustworthiness is here referred to as a "shield" which can protect people who rely on him. The abstract noun "trustworthiness" can be stated as "trust." AT: "You can trust him to protect you" (See: Metaphor and Abstract Nouns)
protection
No one knows for sure what this word means. Possible meanings are 1) a small shield strapped to the forearm that soldiers used to defend themselves against arrows and swords or 2) a wall of stones set in a circle inside which soldiers could hide and shoot arrows.
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 7 In verse third the Psalmist expresses his assurance that…
In verse third the Psalmist expresses his assurance that the trust of which he had spoken would not be vain and delusory, but that God would prove at all times the deliverer of his people. He is evidently to be considered as addressing himself, and in this way encouraging his own heart to hope in the Lord. Some think that by the snare of the fowler, spoken of here in connection with the pestilence, is to be understood hidden mischief as distinguished from open aggression, and that the Psalmist declares the Divine protection to be sufficient for him, whether Satan should attack him openly and violently or by more secret and subtle methods. I would not reject this interpretation; for though some may think that the words should be taken in their simpler acceptation, the Psalmist most probably intended under these terms to denote all different kinds of evil, and to teach us that God was willing and able to deliver us from any of them.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3–5 That is, God’s help is most ready for us,…
That is, God’s help is most ready for us, whether Satan assail us secretly, which he calleth a snare: or openly, which is here meant by the pestilence.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Psa 91:3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the…
Psa 91:3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, [and] from the noisome pestilence.
Ver. 3. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler] i.e. Of the devil and his emissaries, 2Ti 2:26, who, by force and fraud, seek to ensnare the saints. Gratiae privativae multo plures sunt quam positivae, saith Gerson. God daily delivereth his from innumerable deaths and dangers. By fowler here some understand the punishing angel, 2Sa 24:15-17, and conceive that this psalm was penned upon occasion of that great plague that followed upon David’s numbering the people; for then, if ever, both prince and people stood in need of special comfort, and here they have it. Divine consolations are therefore sweet, because seasonable and suitable.
Read full note →
And from the noisome pestilence] That uncomfortable and contagious disease. The Vulgate rendereth it, and from rough words. In Hebrew Dabhar signifieth a word, Debher, a pest; an evil tongue hath the pestilence in it, Ab excidio exitiorum.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3–7 O thou believing, pious soul, who after my example…
O thou believing, pious soul, who after my example shalt make God thy refuge, thou shalt partake of the same privilege which I enjoy.
He shall deliver thee from the pestilence, which like a fowler’s snare taketh men suddenly and unexpectedly, and holdeth them fast, and commonly delivers them up to death.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of…
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,.... These are the words of the psalmist, either speaking to himself, for the encouragement of his own faith and trust in the Lord; or to the man that dwells in the secret place, and under the shadow of the most High; which latter seems most agreeable; though Cocceius thinks they are the words of God in one of his Persons, speaking of another divine Person that should deliver such that trust in him: the Targum makes them to be the words of David to Solomon his son. By the "fowler" and his "snare" may be meant either Saul, who laid wait for David, spread snares for him, and hunted him as a partridge on the mountains, from whom he was delivered; or rather any tyrannical enemy and persecutor of the saints, who lay snares for them; and these are broken by the Lord, and so they escape, as a bird out of the hands of the fowler, Psa 124:6 or it may, best of all, be understood of Satan and his temptations, which are as snares that he lays to catch the people of God in, and from which they are delivered by the power and grace of God; see Ti1 3:7.
and from the noisome pestilence; the most pernicious and destructive one; which may be literally understood of any pestilential distemper; from which the Lord, by his powerful providence, sometimes protects his people, when in danger of it: or, spiritually, of the pestilential disease of sin, that noisome and deadly one, the plague of the heart, which is the worst of all plagues; and from the ruinous and destructive effects and consequences of which the Lord saves his saints.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6 Pestilence - From the pestilence, which like a fowler's…
Pestilence - From the pestilence, which like a fowler's snare takes men suddenly and unexpectedly.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Verse 3. Surely he shall deliver thee] If thou…
Verse 3. Surely he shall deliver thee] If thou wilt act thus, then the God in whom thou trustest will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, from all the devices of Satan, and from all dangerous maladies. As the original word, דבר dabar, signifies a word spoken, and deber, the same letters, signifies pestilence; so some translate one way, and some another: he shall deliver thee from the evil and slanderous word; he shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence - all blasting and injurious winds, effluvia, &c.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 7 Psa 91:4. He shall cover thee with his feathers…
Psa 91:4. He shall cover thee with his feathers — shall protect thee with the greatest tenderness and affection, as a hen covers and defends her chickens when they are in any danger. And under his wings shalt thou trust — The wings of his overshadowing power and providence; his truth — Whereby he is obliged to fulfil all his gracious promises, and among the rest, that of protection in dangers; shall be thy shield and buckler — Thy strong and sure defence.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of…
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler - The snare or gin set for catching birds; meaning, here, that God would save him from the purposes of wicked people; such purposes as might be compared with the devices employed to catch birds. On the meaning of the figure used here, see the notes at Psa 18:5.
And from the noisome pestilence - The “fatal” pestilence; the pestilence that spreads death in its march. That is, he can prevent its coming upon you; or, he can save you from its ravages, while others are dying around you. This promise is not to be understood as absolute, or as meaning that no one who fears God will ever fall by the pestilence - for good people “do” die at such times as well as bad people; but the idea is, that God “can” preserve us at such a time and that, as a great law, he will be thus the protector of those who trust him. It is to be remembered that in times of pestilence (as was the case during the prevalence of the Asiatic cholera in 1832 and 1848), very many of the victims are the intemperate, the sensual, the debased, and that a life of this kind is a predisposing cause of death in such visitations of judgment. A large part of those who die are of that number. From the danger arising from this cause, of course the virtuous, the temperate, the pious are exempt; and this is one of the methods by which God saves those who trust in him from the “noisome pestilence.” Religion, therefore, to a considerable extent, constitutes a ground of security at such times; nor is there any reason to doubt that, in many cases also, there may be a special interposition protecting the friends of God from danger, and sparing them for future usefulness. The promise here is substantially that general promise which we have in the Scriptures everywhere, that God is the Protector of his people, and that they may put their trust in him.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6 3. Surely he shall deliver thee—The change from the…
3. Surely he shall deliver thee—The change from the first person in Psa_91:2, to the second in Psa_91:3, is abrupt and perplexing. We must either adopt the dramatic theory respecting the structure of this psalm, (see the introduction,) making three speakers, and assigning Psa_91:3 and part of Psa_91:9 to the second, Psa_91:14-16 to the third, (namely, to Jehovah,) and the rest to the first; or, we must suppose in Psa_91:3; Psa_91:9 the same speaker adopts the I instead of thou, for the purpose of speaking from his own heart, and for greater pathos.
Snare of the fowler—In the enumeration of evils from which the righteous shall be delivered by his single trust in God, he properly begins with the “trap of the fowler”—the dangers arising from the secret wickedness of men.
Read full note →
Noisome pestilence— Fatal pestilence, or pestilence of wickedness. The words are not specific of any bodily disease, or class of destructive diseases, but apply to any causes by which men are swept away suddenly—often those which come from the crafty wickedness of men, and is parallel to “snare of the fowler” in the previous member. It is one of the four great judgments of God, enumerated Eze_14:21; Rev_6:8. The word “noisome” means calamitous, ruinous, as Psa_57:1, where Psa_91:4-6 show it was brought only against wicked men. So Psa_94:20, where it is rendered iniquity, and Proverbs 19:30, rendered calamity. But see on Psa_91:6
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–7 3. Surely he &c.] For HE &c. The pronoun…
3. Surely he &c.] For HE &c. The pronoun is emphatic.
the snare of the fowler] All insidious attempts against life or welfare (Psa_124:7; Psa_141:9, &c.; 2Ti_2:26).
Read full note →
and from the noisome pestilence] from [omit and] the destroying pestilence. But pestilence comes later in Psa_91:6, and the LXX, Symm., and Syr., give a better parallel to the snare of the fowler by the reading, which involves only a change of vocalisation, from the destroying word of malignant calumny and slander. Cp. the same parallel in Psa_38:12, and the numerous complaints of slander, and prayers to be delivered from it; e.g. Psa_5:9; Psa_120:2-3.
3–8. The providential care of God described in detail. The Psalmist, if the interpretation advocated above is correct, now addresses Israel; or, it may be, any godly Israelite.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–7 (3) Snare of the fowler.—The image of the net…
(3) Snare of the fowler.—The image of the net has occurred frequently before. (See Psa_10:15, &c) Here, as in Ecc_9:12, it is used generally of any unexpected peril to life.
Noisome pestilence.—Literally, pestilence of calamities, i.e., fatal. (See Psa_57:1, where the same word “calamities” occurs.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Surely he shall deliver thee. The second speaker takes…
Surely he shall deliver thee. The second speaker takes up the word, and naturally changes the person. Addressing the first speaker, he says Yes, assuredly, God shall deliver thee from whatever dangers beset thee: as, first, from the snare of the fowler; (comp. Psa_124:7 Pro_6:5) and, secondly, from the noisome pestilence (comp. ver. 6), i.e. from all dangers whatsoever not more from these than from others.
The fowler"s snare.
Read full note →
It is a frequent usage of the psalmist"s to compare the soul of man to a bird. (cf. Ps 11 Ps 84 etc.) In the next verse God himself is likened to the mother bird that shelters her young under her wings. And, like a bird, the soul of man is exposed to many dangers. Not alone such as are open and known, but such as are bidden, secret, and subtle; not alone from the hovering hawk, but also from the crafty snare of the fowler. And with such souls as are contemplated in this psalm, it is this latter peril which is the true image of that against which they need to guard, and from which God alone can deliver them. The snare of the fowler it is a very suggestive similitude. Consider, therefore
I THE DANGER THAT THREATENS THE BELIEVER. It is as a snare.
1. A concealed peril. For the fowler to show himself, or to spread his snare in the sight of any bird, would be to defeat the very object he has in view. Hence he conceals himself and his snare both. And so also doth that crafty hunter who seeks for souls that he may destroy them"Satan, the fowler, who betrays Unguarded souls a thousand ways he does not venture to display openly the evil which he intends by the suggestions be plies us with and the temptations which he puts in our way. Rather he transforms himself into an angel of light. (2Co_11:14) Thus craftily does he hide away from us the real nature of the sin into which he would betray us.
2. Adapted to our nature. The fowler does not seek to snare all birds in the same way, but he studies their nature and likings and haunts, and so sets his snare. And is it not just thus with our great adversary? He knows our weak points, where the chink in our armour is through which his darts may enter. He knows where we are vulnerable, how we may be best ensnared. That which would tempt one man would have no attraction, or but little, for another. And Satan knows that. Ah! where should we be were it not for the safe keeping of God?
3. Attractively baited. How the devil lured Saul to persecute the Church, by persuading him that he was "doing God service"! How Christian people are often led to mingle in strange scenes, and to associate with those who are no friends to Christ in their amusements and ways, on the pretext that so they may bring these ungodly ones under good influence, and thus lead them on to something better! The result is generally the reverse of what was expected. Satan has a vast variety of these baits, and the souls are not a few that he has snared by means of them. "It is only for once;" "Don"t listen to narrow, prejudiced people;" "You can"t help your nature and disposition;" "You can repent, and get forgiveness; these are some of the fowler"s baits with which he tempts us into his snare.
4. Sometimes he uses decoys. "Religious people do such things: why shouldn"t you?
5. Sometimes he employs several of them together. Old Master Quarles says"The close pursuers" busy hands do plant Snares in thy substance; snares attend thy want Snares in thy credit; snares in thy disgrace; Snares in thy high estate; snares in thy base; Snares tuck thy bed, and snares surround thy board; Snares watch thy thoughts; snares attack thy word; Snares in thy quiet; snares in thy commotion; Snares in thy diet; snares in thy devotion; Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubts; Snares lie within thy heart, and snares without; Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath; Snares in thy sickness; snares are in thy death.
There is not a place in which a believer walks that is free from them. Therefore let us watch and pray.
II OUR RICH CONSOLATION IN VIEW OF THESE DANGERS. God will "surely" deliver us from them.
1. He has promised to do so.
2. He has done so for his people in all ages who have sought such deliverance.
3. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil; therefore, certainly, these snares.
III THE NATURE OF HIS DELIVERANCE. How does the Lord fulfil this word?
1. By not letting us fall into them. He keeps us from the evil, that it shall not touch us. This is very blessed more blessed than to be delivered out of the snare when we have fallen therein. The eider brother was, after all, more to be envied than the restored prodigal. We too much forget this. God has many means of holding us back from sin. Chief of all, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, giving us, as to Joseph, a holy fear and an abiding love of God.
2. By rescuing us out of the snare. Yes, he stands ready to do this. You fallen ones, he will do this for you. S.C.
Limitations of temporal protection.
The fact is patent. It demands consideration. God does not always give protection from bodily evils to his saints. On a house at Chester, that was spared in the time of plague, is the inscription, "God"s providence is mine inheritance." But the man who lived there was not the only good man in Chester at the time. Other good men were not thus protected. Evidently the psalmist "accepts in all simplicity the belief in that which, but for sin and its consequences, would be the law of human life that visible blessing, and obedience to the Supreme Ruler of the world, must always go together. To us the faith is rather that whatever betides us of outward fortune cannot touch the true life which is hid in God." What we need to see is that the psalmist asserts the ever working law, and leaves us to find the limitations and exceptions that arise in its practical working.
I THE EVER WORKING LAW. Temporal good attends upon piety. The world is constructed and arranged to give this law a sphere. Just so far as natural relations are kept simple, the law does work. "Honesty is the best policy." Goodness does bring reward. Chastity does secure health. The fear of God does prove to he practical wisdom. The man of wise and restrained habits does stand the best chance in time of epidemic disease. The diligent in business do succeed. "Right is right." Right comes right. "Godliness has the promise of the life that now is.
II THE EVER MANIFEST EXCEPTIONS. These occasion the distress of men like Asaph, who are too keen to detect the dark side of things. Righteous Job suffers. The wicked are in great power. The exceptions come through the disturbance of Divine arrangements by man"s wilfulness and sin. He makes his law cross the Divine law. Then arises the necessity for modifications in the working of the Divine law.
1. The allegiance of the good must be tested.
2. The results of that testing must be used as persuasive example to others. The Book of Job really wrestles with this difficulty. The man who is "upright, fears God, and eschews evil" does not find himself protected from all harm. And yet it is still true, Job in trouble was abiding in "the shadow of the Almighty. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv3–7 Ver. 3. He shall deliver thee from the snare…
Ver. 3. He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler. Are we therefore beasts? Beasts doubtless. When man was in honour he understood not, but was like the foolish beasts. (Ps 49:12) Men are certainly beasts, wandering sheep, having no shepherd. Why art thou proud, O man? Why dost thou boast thyself, O smatterer? See what a beast thou art, for whom the snares of the fowler are being prepared. But who are these fowlers? The fowlers indeed are the worst and most wicked, the cleverest and the most cruel. The fowlers are they who sound no horn, that they may not be heard, but shoot their arrows in secret places at the innocent... But lo! since we know the fowlers and the beasts, our further enquiry must be, what this snare may be. I wish not myself to invent it, nor to deliver to you what is subject to doubt. The Apostle shows us this snare, for he was not ignorant of the devices of these fowlers. Tell us, I pray, blessed Paul, what this snare of the devil is, from which the faithful soul rejoices that it is delivered? They that will be rich (in this world?) says he, fall into temptation and the snare (of the devil?) (1Ti 6:9-10). Are not the riches of this world, then, the snare of the devil?. Alas! how few we find who can boast of freedom from this snare, how many who grieve that they seem to themselves too little enmeshed in the net, and who still labour and toil with all their strength to involve and entangle themselves more and more. Ye who have left all and followed the Son of man who has not where to lay his head, rejoice and say, He hath delivered we from the snare of the fowlers. Bernard.
Ver. 3. Surely he shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence. Lord Craven lived in London when that sad calamity, the plague, raged. His house was in that part of the town called Craven Buildings. On the plague growing epidemic, his Lordship, to avoid the danger, resolved to go to his seat in the country. His coach and six were accordingly at the door, his baggage put up, and all things in readiness for the journey. As he was walking through his hall with his hat on, his cane under his arm, and putting on his gloves, in order to step into his carriage, he overheard his negro, who served him as postillion, saying to another servant. "I suppose, by my Lord's quitting London to avoid the plague, that his God lives in the country, and not in town." The poor negro said this in the simplicity of his heart, as really believing a plurality of gods. The speech, however, struck Lord Craven very sensibly, and made him pause. "My God, "thought he, "lives everywhere, and can preserve me in town as well as in the country. I will even stay where I am. The ignorance of that negro has just now preached to me a very useful sermon. Lord, pardon this unbelief, and that distrust of thy providence, which made me think of running from thy hand." He immediately ordered his horses to be taken from the coach, and the baggage to be taken in. He continued in London, was remarkably useful among his sick neighbours, and never caught the infection. Whitecross's Anecdotes.
Read full note →
Ver. 3, 6. Pestilence. It is from a word (rkd) that signifies to speak, and speak out; the pestilence is a speaking thing, it proclaims the wrath of God amongst a people. Drusius fetches it from the same root, but in piel, which is to decree; showing that the pestilence is a thing decreed in heaven, not casual. Kirker thinks it is called rkd, because it keeps order, and spares neither great nor small. The Hebrew root signifies to destroy, to cut off, and hence may the plague or pestilence have its name. The Septuagint renders it yanatos, death, for ordinarily it is death; and it is expressed by "Death, "Re 6:8, he sat on the pale horse, and killed with sword, hunger, death, and beasts of the earth; it refers to Eze 14:21, where the pestilence is mentioned. Pestilence may be from a word which signifies to spread, spoil, rush upon, for it doth so; 2Sa 24:15, seventy thousand slain in three days; and plague, a plhgh from plhssw, to smite, to wound, for it smites suddenly, and wounds mortally; hence it is in Nu 14:12, "I will smite them with the pestilence." This judgment is very grievous, it is called in Ps 91:3 the "noisome pestilence, "because it is infectious, contagious; and therefore the French read it, "de la peste dangereuse, "from the dangerous pestilence, it doth endanger those that come near it: and Musculus hath it, a peste omnium pessima, from the worst pestilence of all: and others, the woeful pestilence; it brings a multitude of woes with it to any place or person it comes unto, it is a messenger of woeful fears, sorrows, distractions, terrors, and death itself. William Greenhill.
Ver. 3. Invisible protection from invisible dangers; wisdom to meet cunning, love to war with cruelty, omnipresence to match mystery, life to baffle death.
Ver. 3. SURELY, or reasons for assured confidence in God's protection.
Ver. 3-7. Pestilence, panic, and peace; (for times of widespread disease). Charles A. Davis.
Ver. 3,8-9.
1. Saints are safe "surely, "(Ps 91:3).
2. The evil is bounded"only, "(Ps 91:8).
3. The Lord has reasons for preserving his own "because, "(Ps 91:9).
Psalms 91:4*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v4 He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under…
Psa_91:4
He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.
Read full note →
The covering wing
There is here a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. He shall cover thee with His pinions; that is the Divine act. Under His wings shalt thou trust; that is the human condition. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler; that is the Divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible.
I. The covering wing. The main idea in this image is that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are gathered. Whatsoever kites may be in the sky, whatsoever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, they are safe there. The imago suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realized by those who nestle beneath that wing. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent psalmist, My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped; when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of the Divine providence in this world, we have to come to this belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near the man sheltered beneath Gods wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another, who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is their insolvency to the one the same as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the lobsters at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that Divine protection. It may still wound, but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.
II. The flight of the shelterless to the Shelter. Under His wings shalt thou flee to a refuge. Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? There are plenty of men that know all about the security of the Refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of the nature to fling myself into an Asylum, to cast myself into Gods arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him. The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.
III. The warrant for this flight. His truth shall be thy shield. Now, truth here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called Gods truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the Divine nature. And if, instead of truth, we read the good old English word troth, we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the psalmist meant. You cannot trust a God that has not given you an inkling of His character or disposition, but if He has spoken then you know where to have Him. That is just what the psalmist means. How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great thought of Gods troth. Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains. Who is like unto Thee, O Lord; or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee? That faithfulness shall be our shield, not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm, but the word means the large shield, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight; and circling him around, like a tower of iron. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Safe shelter
The Lord here compares Himself to a hen covering her brood, and He speaks not only of the wing, which gives shelter, but He enters into detail, and speaks of the feathers, which give warmth, and comfort, and repose.
I. When may this text be relied upon by a believer?
1. In cases of extreme peril.
(1) Public calamity.
(2) Domestic grief.
(3) Personal danger.
2. But texts of Scripture like this are not made to be hung up on the nail and only taken down now and then in stress of weather. Blessed be God, the promise before us is available for sunshiny days, yea, for every hour of this mortal life. You always need protection, and, believer in Christ, you shall always have it.
3. In times of temptation.
4. In times of expected trials. Many a true servant of God has said to himself, What shall I do when I get old? I am just able now to pick up a living, but what shall I do when these withered limbs can no longer avail to earn my daily bread? Do? Why, you will have the same Father then as you have now to succour you, and you will have the same Providence then as now to supply your wants. You thank God for your daily bread now, and you shall have your daily bread then, for He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings shall you trust.
5. In the hour of death.
II. How may we expect the text to be fulfilled?
1. It may possibly be verified to us by our being preserved altogether from the danger which we dread. God has often, as predicted in the present psalm, in times of pestilence, and famine, and war, preserved His people by remarkable providences. Strong faith has always a particular immunity in times of trouble. When a man has really, under a sense of duty, under a conscientious conviction rested alone in God, he has been enabled to walk where the thickest dangers were flying, all unharmed.
2. There are some dangers from which the providence of God does not preserve the Lords people but still He covers them with His feathers in another sense, by giving them grace to bear up under their troubles. You shall find your afflictions become your mercies, and your trials become your comforts. You shall glory in tribulation, and find light in the midst of gloom, and have joy unspeakable in the season of your sorrow.
3. In yet another way doth God set seal to this record when by His grace having sustained His servants in their trouble He brings them out of it greatly enriched thereby. Oh! it is a great blessing to be put through the fire, if you come out purified.
III. Why may we be sure that it shall be so?
1. Faith enlists the sympathy of God.
2. Gods promise is pledged. You keep your promise to your child, and will not God keep His promise to you? O rest in Him, then; He shall cover us with His feathers, for His own word declares it.
3. Moreover, you are His child, and what will not a father do for his own dear child? Were he a stranger you might take little heed though he were in trouble, in danger, or in deep distress--but your child, your own child--oh! you cannot rest, while he suffers. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Under His wings shalt thou trust.
God s protective care
The simile before us represents the mother-bird guarding her young until they can guard themselves. It is protection as a process in training until one has learned to use his capacities for self-protection. The figure before us may be so misused as to emphasize what we may call the nursery idea in religious life. Gods purpose and plan is to train man to be self-reliant. As the meaning of all true charity is found in that help which develops self-help, so is Gods method in training man. His protecting help is to make man competent to help himself. This is a wide-reaching principle. The kind of God it discloses is one who has great respect for the creature He has made--a God who has put His image upon man by endowing him with certain qualities capable of growth; a God who puts great value upon the manly, self-sustaining character; a God who expects that when one is a child he will speak as a child, he will understand as a child, he will think as a child. But this same God expects that when the child grows into the man, he will put away childish things. A God who specially puts His protecting care round about the growing time of moral and spiritual childhood, that one may grow up into self-reliant, spiritual manhood--it is this kind of God who is revealed under this familiar likeness. It is truly the mother-bird brooding over her young, teaching, training, and caring for them against the time they must care for themselves. So, also, does this figure show us a certain kind of man--namely, a man who has developed a spiritual vigour and strength under the protecting care of God; a man who has learned from God that he has a mind which can expand with the thoughts of God, a heart which can throb with the feelings of God, a will which from feebleness and indecision can, under this same Divine training, grow virile and resolute. What can come nearer to what must be the true religion of the world as that which shows God protecting man, so that man may grow up into protecting himself? and, again, man affectionately accepting that protection, so that mind, heart, and will may grow up into religious self-reliance? Do we not see in Nature that the picture of the young always under the mothers wing argues sick offspring when Nature would have growth in healthy self-reliance? In like manner Christian character, if it deserves the name, must be other than an exotic, to be cared for under glass and at a certain temperature. The true likeness is not to a tropical palm in a greenhouse, but rather to a sturdy oak or elm, living and growing in the climate of a North American winter. I know of no better illustration of Gods protecting care rightly used than in the staunch ocean steamer sailing out at the appointed time into the teeth of a hurricane. It is advertised to sail over the seas. The commander is not consulting the signals to see when he can safely set sail. Nor once under way is he studying his chart to find where he can make a harbour. Lighter ships, built for coast service, run for a refuge. Not so the sturdier craft. It is not seeking shelter or protection from the storm. But, with valiant confidence in itself, it moves out into the storm, with much buffeting, some breakages, half-speed at times--yes, occasionally have-to, so terrific is the gale--yet with no purpose to turn back, but moving on--steadily, slowly, resolutely moving on. (A. H. Hall.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v4
Psalms
THE SHELTERING WING
Read full note →
Psa 91:4.
We remember the magnificent image in Moses’ song, of God’s protection and guidance as that of the eagle who stirred up his nest, and hovered over the young with his wings, and bore them on his pinions. That passage may possibly have touched the imagination of this psalmist, when he here employs the same general metaphor, but with a distinct and significant difference in its application. In the former image the main idea is that of training and sustaining. Here the main idea is that of protection and fostering. On the wing and under the wing suggest entirely different notions, and both need to be taken into account in order to get the many-sided beauties and promises of these great sayings. Now there seems to me here to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. ‘He shall cover thee with His pinions’; that is the divine act. ‘Under His wings shalt thou trust’; that is the human condition. ‘His truth shall be thy shield and buckler’; that is the divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible.
I. A word then, first, about the covering wing.
Now, the main idea in this image is, as I have suggested, that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are guarded. Whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there. The image suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realised by those who nestle beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept prominent, as that chiefly intended by the Psalmist.
This psalm rings throughout with the truth that a man who dwells ‘in the secret place of the Most High’ has absolute immunity from all sorts of evil; and there are two regions in which that immunity, secured by being under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified here. The one is that of outward dangers, the other is that of temptation to sin and of what we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and departments in which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the divine protection, exhibit that protection as secured in two entirely different ways.
The triumphant assurances of this psalm, ‘There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,’-’the pestilence shall smite thousands and ten thousands beside thee, but not come nigh thee,’-seem to be entirely contradicted by experience which testifies that ‘there is one event to the evil and the good,’ and that, in epidemics or other widespread disasters, we all, the good and the bad, God-fearers and God-blasphemers, do fare alike, and that the conditions of exemption from physical evil are physical and not spiritual. It is of no use trying to persuade ourselves that that is not so. We shall understand God’s dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart of such promises as these in this psalm far better, if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does not mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going to be God’s petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people. No! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent Psalmist, ‘My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped,’ when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of divine providence in this world, we have to come to the belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near a man sheltered beneath God’s wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the shell-fish at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, ‘There shall no evil befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling.’
For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which vindicates as no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the old theocracy of Israel, but not now realised, the grand sayings of this text. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that divine protection. It may still wound but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.
And so, brethren! if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, ‘He shall cover thee with His feathers.’ Anything that has come through them is manifestly not an ‘evil.’ ‘Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?’ ‘If God be for us who can be against us?’ Not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, ‘sorrows’ and ‘afflictions,’-these all work for our good, and protection consists, not in averting the blows, but in changing their character.
Then, there is another region far higher, in which this promise of my text is absolutely true-that is, in the region of spiritual defence. For no man who lies under the shadow of God, and has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that Presence, is likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God; and the defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For, as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any outward breastplate or armour, nor even by the divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by the indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes us ‘free from the law of sin and death,’ and conquerors over all temptations.
I say not a word about all the other beautiful and pathetic associations which are connected with this emblem of the covering wing, sweet and inexhaustible as it is, but I simply leave with you the two thoughts that I have dwelt upon, of the twofold manner of that divine protection.
II. And now a word, in the second place, about the flight of the shelterless to the shelter.
The word which is rendered in our Authorised Version, ‘shalt thou trust,’ is, like all Hebrew words for mental and spiritual emotions and actions, strongly metaphorical. It might have been better to retain its literal meaning here instead of substituting the abstract word ‘trust.’ That is to say, it would have been an improvement if we had read with the Revised Version, not, ‘under His wings shalt thou trust,’ but ‘under His wings shalt thou take refuge.’ For that is the idea which is really conveyed; and in many of the psalms, if you will remember, the same metaphor is employed. ‘Hide me beneath the shadow of Thy wings’; ‘Beneath Thy wings will I take refuge until calamities are overpast’; and the like. Many such passages will, no doubt, occur to your memories.
But what I wish to signalise is just this, that in this emblem of flying into a refuge from impending perils we get a far more vivid conception, and a far more useful one, as it seems to me, of what Christian faith really is than we derive from many learned volumes and much theological hair-splitting. ‘Under His wings shalt thou flee for refuge.’ Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? The Old Testament is full of the teaching-which is masked to ordinary readers, but is the same teaching as the New Testament is confessedly full of-of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds men to God. If only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in Old and New Testament of words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the Old Testament about ‘trusting in God’ run on all fours with ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’
But just mark what comes out of that metaphor; that ‘trust,’ the faith which unites with God, and brings a man beneath the shadow of His wings, is nothing more or less than the flying into the refuge that is provided for us. Does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? Does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? Does it not speak to us of the necessity of swift flight, with all the powers of our will? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? Surely it is something a great deal more than that. A man out in the plain, with the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, behind him might believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the City of Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are many men who know all about the security of the refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast myself into God’s arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him.
The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my outstretched hand, but the Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.
So, brethren! another consideration comes out of this clause: ‘Under His wings shalt thou trust.’ If you do not flee for refuge to that wing, it is of no use to you, however expanded it is, however soft and downy its underside, however sure its protection. You remember the passage where our Lord uses the same venerable figure with modifications, and says: ‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not.’ So our ‘would not’ thwarts Christ’s ‘would.’ Flight to the refuge is the condition of being saved. How can a man get shelter by any other way than by running to the shelter? The wing is expanded; it is for us to say whether we will ‘flee for refuge to the hope set before us.’
III. Now, lastly, the warrant for this flight.
‘His truth shall be thy shield.’ Now, ‘truth’ here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called God’s truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the divine nature. And if, instead of ‘truth,’ we read the good old English word ‘troth,’ we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the Psalmist meant. Or if ‘troth’ is archaic, and conveys little meaning to us; suppose we substitute a somewhat longer word, of the same meaning, and say, ‘His faithfulness shall be thy shield.’ You cannot trust a God that has not given you an inkling of His character or disposition, but if He has spoken, then you ‘know where to have him.’ That is just what the Psalmist means. How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge, unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great thought of God’s troth. ‘Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains.’ ‘Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee?’ That faithfulness shall be our ‘shield,’ not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm; but the word means the large shield, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight, and circling him around, like a wall of iron.
God is ‘faithful’ to all the obligations under which He has come by making us. That is what one of the New Testament writers tells us, when he speaks of Him as ‘a faithful Creator.’ Then, if He has put desires into our hearts, be sure that somewhere there is their satisfaction; and if He has given us needs, be sure that in Him there is the supply; and if He has lodged in us aspirations which make us restless, be sure that if we will turn them to Him, they will be satisfied and we shall be at rest. ‘God never sends mouths but He sends meat to fill them.’ ‘He remembers our frame,’ and measures His dealings accordingly. When He made me, He bound Himself to make it possible that I should be blessed for ever; and He has done it.
God is faithful to His word, according to that great saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer tells us that by ‘God’s counsel,’ and ‘God’s oath,’ ‘two immutable things,’ we might have ‘strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.’ God is faithful to His own past. The more He has done the more He will do. ‘Thou hast been my Help; leave me not, neither forsake me.’ Therein we present a plea which God Himself will honour. And He is faithful to His own past in a yet wider sense. For all the revelations of His love and of His grace in times that are gone, though they might be miraculous in their form, are permanent in their essence. So one of the Psalmists, hundreds of years after the time that Israel was led through the wilderness, sang: ‘There did we’-of this present generation-’rejoice in Him.’ What has been, is, and will be, for Thou art ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ We have not a God that lurks in darkness, but one that has come into the light. We have to run, not into a Refuge that is built upon a ‘perhaps,’ but upon ‘Verily, verily! I say unto thee.’ Let us build rock upon Rock, and let our faith correspond to the faithfulness of Him that has promised.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v4 (See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
trust
(See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 5 For he will rescue you from the snare of…
For he will rescue you from the snare of the hunter and from the deadly plague
The words that have been left out can be put in. AT: "For God will rescue you from the snare of the hunter and he will rescue you from the plagues that can kill" (See: Ellipsis)
Read full note →
the snare of the hunter
"from the snare that the hunter has set to catch you"
He will cover you with his wings, and under his wings you will find refuge
God's protection is here referred to as "wings" which a bird uses to cover its' young from danger. "Cover you with his wings" and "under his wings" mean basically the same thing. AT: "He will keep you safe and protect you" (See: Metaphor and Parallelism)
His trustworthiness is a shield and protection
God's trustworthiness is here referred to as a "shield" which can protect people who rely on him. The abstract noun "trustworthiness" can be stated as "trust." AT: "You can trust him to protect you" (See: Metaphor and Abstract Nouns)
protection
No one knows for sure what this word means. Possible meanings are 1) a small shield strapped to the forearm that soldiers used to defend themselves against arrows and swords or 2) a wall of stones set in a circle inside which soldiers could hide and shoot arrows.
translationWords
die
plague
refuge
trust
shield
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3–6 91:3-4 The psalmist invites the godly to trust in…
91:3-4 The psalmist invites the godly to trust in the Lord and find protection in him.
91:3 God protects the godly from deadly disease and even a destructive word.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.