Psalm 142 A Contemplation of David. A Prayer when he was in the cave. 1 I cry out to Yahweh with my voice; with my voice to Yahweh I make my supplication. 2 I pour out my complaint before Him; I declare before Him my trouble. 3 When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then You knew my path. In the way in which I walk they have secretly set a snare for me. 4 Look on my right hand and see, for there is no one who acknowledges me; refuge has failed me; no one cares for my soul. 5 I cried out to You, O Yahweh: I said, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. 6 Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low; deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than I. 7 Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name; the righteous shall surround me, for You shall deal bountifully with me.”
An Instruction of David— “‘I cried unto the Lord with my voice.’ Hilary saith, 'Even the silent and spiritual expectation of every believer is a cry to God.' But the prayer of the heart is not confined there; it finds utterance aloud with the voice. What David did himself, he would have his posterity and all believers in their trouble to do. ‘With my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication.” (Jamieson, Fausset, Brown) “‘A Prayer when he was in the cave’— a state of utter destitution. Persecuted by his own countrymen, dismissed by Achish, and not yet joined by his own relations, or any other attendants, he took refuge in the cave, and was there alone. But in that disconsolate, and seemingly desperate situation, he desponded not. He had a Friend in Heaven into whose bosom he poured forth his complaint, and told Him the sad story of his trouble and distress.’ (Bp. Horne)
“‘I poured out my complaint before Him’ lit. ‘before His face.’ etc. In the sacrificial coloring of these expressions, especially the emphatic לפנין, ‘before His face,’ there is a drawing nigh to God answerable to the New Testament ‘coming boldly to the throne of grace,’ a ‘drawing near’ to the ‘holy of holies.’ Hebrews 4:16; 10:22. This earnest pouring out of complaint and prayer for mercy, before the face of God, takes also the Levitical idea of a ‘libation,’ or ‘drink-offering,’ poured freely upon the sacrifice of the altar, to give it flavour and acceptance. Leviticus 4:7, etc. See Isaiah 57:6.” (Daniel Whedon)
“‘When my spirit was overwhelmed within me.’ (3a) Literally, in the muffling upon me of my spirit. When my spirit was so wrapped in trouble and gloom, so ‘muffled round with woe’, that I could not see the path before me, was distracted and unable to choose a line of conduct, ‘Thou (emphatic) knewest my path.’” (A.S. Aglen, 1884) “‘In the way in which I walk they have secretly set a snare for me.’ (3b) but God saw it; He knew his path. David had elected Yeshua as a shepherd boy and was later anointed with oil. So he was predestined to glory to be adopted as a son of God (Ephesians 1:5) and to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:25), through suffering.
"I looked on my right hand, and beheld." The first two verbs must be translated as imperatives, as in the margin of the English Bible. [‘Look on the right hand, and see.’] The right hand is mentioned as the post of a protector.” (Joseph Addison Alexander) “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:54-56)
I’ve not a friend like the lowly Jesus - no not one— “‘for there is no one who acknowledges me; refuge has failed me; no one cares for my soul.’ All human love, since sin has taken possession of humanity, is more or less selfish, and all fellowship of faith and of love imperfect; and there are circumstances in life in which these dark sides make themselves felt overpoweringly, so that a man seems to himself to be perfectly isolated, and turns all the more urgently to God, who alone is able to supply the soul's want of some object to love, whose love is absolutely unselfish, and unchangeable, and unclouded, to whom the soul can confide without reserve whatever burdens it, and who not only honestly desires its good, but is able also to compass it in spite of every obstacle.” (Franz Delitzsch)
“I cried out to You, O Yahweh: I said, ‘You are my Refuge, my Portion in the land of the living. Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low; deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than I.’ (6) But surely not stronger than You.
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus Christ, my righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
In Him, my righteousness, alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne
“‘Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name; the righteous shall surround me, for You shall deal bountifully with me.’ (7) I will be raised to eternal life. You are my portion among all living beings. “There is no one else among the living to whom I can come but to Thee[— Jesus], the living [eternal] God. My hope is not in human beings, for they are against me; not in angels, for they have not the power to rescue me. It is God only, the living God, whom I make my confidence and the ground of my hope.” (Albert Barnes)