(7) In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears. (8) Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth. (9) There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. (10) He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet. (11) And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind. (12) And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. (13) Through the brightness before him were coals of fire kindled. (14) The LORD thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice. (15) And he sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and discomfited them. (16) And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered, at the rebuking of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. (17) He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters; (18) He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them that hated me: for they were too strong for me. (19) They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the LORD was my stay.
The preparatory verses, are all intended as introductory to what is here said. For, if such was David's misery; such his enemies; such his helplessness, and inability to cope with them; what grace must have been manifested in his deliverance by the LORD GOD of his salvation. The expressions of which David makes use, of the shaking of the earth, and the foundation of the heavens, are not to be understood literally; but, the mercies in which the LORD spake to him on those occasions, were as evident tokens of the LORD's kindness and regard to him, as if GOD had spoken by thunder, and manifested the part he took in it, by a voice from heaven. Reader! spiritually considered, when sinners are awakened, and converted, by the gracious operations of GOD the HOLY GHOST, do not their souls sometimes answer to those mercies, by the first apprehensions of the mind, as if their whole frames were convulsed, like the trembling of the earth, or the shaking of the heavens. Probably, in this high and beautiful style of expression, David had in view, Moses' account of the LORD's leading his chosen out of Egypt. The sacred writers, in more than one instance, seem to have had this in view. See Exodus 15:2-13; Habakkuk 3:2; to the end. Psalms 114:1, to the end.