Yet the Lord will command, &c.— In the day-time the Lord commanded his favour; I say; and in the night his song is in my mouth; a prayer to my living God. He applies to God day and night. In the day-time he prays God to command his favour to attend him; and in the night he has always a song directed to him. I cannot withhold from my reader in this place, the ingenious Mr. Merrick's paraphrase of this and the two foregoing verses:
Thy mercies, Lord, before my eyes Shall yet in sweet remembrance rise; Tho' now, with mournful step, and slow, O'er Jordan's lonely banks I go, And, exil'd from thy much-lov'd dome, On distant Hermon pensive roam; Deeps to confederate deeps aloud Have call'd, and from the bursting cloud Their licens'd rage the storms have shed, And heap'd their billows o'er my head. Yet, midst the storm, and midst the wave, Thy love the beams of comfort gave: Thy name to rapture prompts my tongue, My joy by day, by night my song: To thee my soul ascends in prayer, And in thy bosom pours its care.