This is a song of praise for deliverance (1-5) and a meditation on the deliverance and its lessons (6-12), with a final note of praise (12). The phrases descriptive of the trouble are such as to leave little room for doubt that the singer had been sick and nigh unto death-"Thou hast healed me.... Thou has brought up my soul from Sheol." Moreover, he believed that the sickness was a divine chastisement and that through it and his deliverance he had found the method of Jehovah-"His anger is but for a moment;... weeping may tarry for the night."
The issue of such experience is of the highest, "life," "joy in the morning." The review is full of suggestiveness. Days of prosperity had issued in self-satisfaction. Jehovah had hid His face. That was the moment of His anger and that the night of weeping! There was the return to Jehovah in the cry of anguish. The answer was immediate, mourning became dancing, sackcloth was exchanged for gladness. What was all this for?
"To the end that my glory may sing praise to Thee and not be silent." Self-satisfaction cannot praise Jehovah. Therefore it must be corrected by discipline. The final note of praise shows that through affliction and by deliverance the lesson has been learned.