Consider my trouble.
A note of trouble in a triumph Psalm
The second part of the Psalm begins with Psalms 9:13. The prayer in that verse is the only trace of trouble in the Psalm. The rest is triumph and exaltation. This, at first discordant, note has sorely exercised commentators; and the violent solution that the whole of the Cheth stanza (verses 13, 14) should be regarded as “the cry of the meek,” quoted by the Psalmist, and therefore be put in inverted commas (though adopted by Delitzsch and Cheyne), is artificial and cold. There is little difficulty in the connection. The victory has been completed over certain enemies, but there remain others; and the time for praise unmingled with petition has not yet come for the Psalmist, as it never comes for any of us in this life. Quatre Bras is won, but Waterloo has to be fought tomorrow. The prayer takes account of the dangers still threatening, but it only glances at these, and then once more turns to look with hope on the accomplished deliverance. The thought of how God had lifted the suppliant up from the very gates of death heartens him to pray for all further mercy needed. Death is the lord of a gloomy prison house, the gates of which open inwards only, and permit no egress. On its very threshold the Psalmist stood. But God had, lifted him thence,, and the remembrance wings his prayer. The “gates of the daughter of Zion” are in sharp, happy contrast with the frowning portals of death. A city’s gates are the place of cheery life, stir, gossip, business. Anything proclaimed there flies far. There the Psalmist resolves that he will tell his story of rescue, which he believes was granted that it might be told. God’s end is the spread of His name, not for any good to Him, but because to know it is life to us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)