And I said - That is, when I saw these calamities coming upon me, and knew not what the result was to be.
Oh, that I had wings like a dove! - literally, “Who will give me wings like a dove?” or, Who will give me the pinion of a dove? The original word - אבר 'êber - means properly, “a wing-feather;” a pinion; the penna major or flagfeather of a bird’s wing by which he steers his course, - as of an eagle, Isaiah 40:31, or of a dove, as here. It is distinguished from the wing itself, Ezekiel 17:3 : “A great eagle, with great wings, “long-winged,” full of feathers.” The reference here is supposed to be to the turtle-dove - a species of dove common in Palestine. Compare the notes at Psalms 11:1. These doves, it is said, are never tamed. “Confined in a cage, they droop, and, like Cowper, sigh for ‘A lodge in some vast wilderness - some boundless contiguity of shade;’ and no sooner are they set at liberty, than they flee to their mountains.” Land and the Book (Dr. Thomson), vol. i., p. 416.
For then would I fly away, and be at rest - I would escape from these dangers, and be in a place of safety. How often do we feel this in times of trouble! How often do we wish that we could get beyond the reach of enemies; of sorrows; of afflictions! How often do we sigh to be in a place where we might be assured that we should be safe from all annoyances; from all trouble! There is such a place, but not on earth. David might have borne his severest troubles with him if he could have fled - for those troubles are in the heart, and a mere change of place does not affect them; or he might have found new troubles in the place that seemed to him to be a place of peace and of rest. But there is a world which trouble never enters. That world is heaven; to that world we shall soon go, if we are God’s children; and there we shall find absolute and eternal rest. Without “the wings of a dove,” we shall soon fly away and be at rest. None of the troubles of earth will accompany us there; no new troubles will spring up there to disturb our peace.