Verse 1
PSALM 116
PRAISING GOD FOR RECOVERY FROM SERIOUS ILLNESS
As an introduction here, we submit these discerning words of Derek Kidner.
There is an infectious delight and a touching gratitude about this psalm, the personal tribute of a man whose prayer has found an overwhelming answer. He has come now to the temple to tell the whole assembly what has happened, and to offer God what he had vowed to him in his extremity.[1]
This writer feels an especially deep appreciation for this psalm, because three years ago, in 1988, he was diagnosed by six of the leading orthopedic surgeons in Houston as having the most "acute case of spinal stenosis" the doctors had ever seen. Included in the list of doctors was the head of the orthopedic surgery department of Baylor Medical University. The diagnosis included such words as "inoperable," "incurable" and "wheel-chair." Many people prayed for him, and many treatments were tried; God heard the prayers and healed him. Even the distinguished physician, Dr. Dean Cline, who supervised this writer's illness, monitored all the treatments, and at last expressed astonishment at the complete recovery that God granted, when asked by this writer, "What shall I tell people who inquire as to what helped me to get well?" simply pointed upward and replied, "It is my medical opinion that the Great Physician on high laid his hand upon you"!
There can be no wonder, then, that this writer can identify with almost every word of this psalm.
Some commentators are reluctant to view the crisis from which the psalmist was rescued here as a serious illness, but there is no acceptable alternative. The great majority of the scholars whose works we have consulted prefer the interpretation expressed by Kidner in our opening lines. These include Clyde Miller, Albert Barnes, J. R. Dummelow, Arnold Rhodes, G. Rawlinson, W. Stewart McCullough, and a number of others. The interpretation accepted by all of these was thus stated by McCullough: "This psalm is an individual's hymn of thanksgiving for deliverance from an illness that brought him to the very brink of death."[2]
Briggs insisted that, "The psalm is not individual but national."[3] But we cannot harmonize Brigg's interpretation with the fact that in the RSV, the words, "I," "me" and "my" occur no less than thirty-three times in nineteen verses!
Regarding the date and authorship, this writer is willing to accept, "The ancient Hebrew tradition which ascribed it to Hezekiah, and considered it to have been written on the occasion of his deliverance from death, as narrated in Isaiah 38. Many resemblances are traced between the phraseology of the psalm and expressions attributed to Hezekiah in Isaiah 37 and Isaiah 38."[4]
To this writer, that old tradition is much more satisfactory than the `We don't have the slightest idea' opinions of some present-day scholars. Briggs cited the structure of Psalms 12b and Ps. Psalms 18b, stating that, "This favors an early date."[5]
The presence of Aramaisms in the psalm has been interpreted by some as evidence of a late date; but the use of Aramaisms as an indication of date has been totally discredited by the discovery of the great corpus of Canaanite religious poetry dating back to 1400 B.C., called the Ras Shamra Discoveries (1929-1937). As Merrill F. Unger stated, "Aramaisms cannot be made a criterion for determining the date or authorship, for they occur in Old Testament books from both early and late periods."[6] (See Vol. 1 of our Minor Prophets Series, pp. 263,264, for more on this.)
WHY THE PSALMIST LOVED THE LORD
"I love Jehovah because he heareth
My voice and my supplications.
Because he hath inclined his ear unto me."
Nothing so thrills the human heart as the realization, sweeping like a tidal wave over one's soul, that God, even the Almighty and Eternal God, has heard the feeble and distressed cry of a sufferer. For one not to love such a merciful and compassionate God would press the limits of human ingratitude.
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