Psalms 32:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

My moisture is turned into the drought of summer— Some have inferred, says Dr. Delaney, from Psalms 32:3, &c. that David continued some time impenitent after the affair with Bathsheba: but had he been long impenitent, it would have been impossible for him to say, mine iniquity have I not hid; however, he most beautifully and feelingly describes the distressed condition that he was in before his pardon was pronounced; his mind upon the rack; his body distempered and wasted with grief. But, in consequence of his pardon, his moisture was turned into the dryness of summer. So it should be translated. The change was as if he had been removed at once from the depth of winter into midsummer; as if all the storms and rains and clouds of that gloomy season, the finest emblems of grief, were changed at once into serenity and sunshine; all heaven clear, unclouded, and smiling upon him. This interpretation of the doctor's might be admitted upon the idea of the summers here in our climate; but we must consider that David wrote in one which was very different; and the drought of which he speaks is very common in the eastern countries. Rain indiscriminately in the winter months, and not at all in the summer, is what is most common in the east. So it is at Aleppo, and about Algiers; and the summers in Judea are usually perfectly dry. It is therefore, doubtless, to the withered appearance of an eastern summer in common, that the Psalmist refers. See the Observations, p. 4. 13 where an account of a Syrian summer is given from Dr. Russel, which supplies us with a most beautiful comment on this passage. He says, that "from the end of May, if not sooner, not so much as one refreshing shower falls, and scarce a friendly cloud appears to shelter from the excessive heat of the sun till about the middle of September; that the verdure of the spring fades before the middle of May, and before the end of that month the whole country puts on so parched and barren an aspect, that one would scarce think it capable of producing any thing, there being but very few plants which have vigour enough to resist the extreme heat." In defence of this latter interpretation, a writer has urged the mechanism of the psalm; for, says he, this is one of those compositions which, according to the genius of the Hebrew poetry, express the same sense twice over in almost every verse. But, if we take the new interpretation of it above given, the latter part of the verse will have no connection at all with the former; nay, will be directly contrary to, and inconsistent with it. And to say no more, all the old versions and the best commentators do agree in the sense which we have given above.