Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? [why] hidest thou [thyself] in times of trouble?
Ver. 1. Why standest thou afar off, O Lord?] As if thou hadst forgotten what thou hadst promised thy people in the formed psalm; which the Greek and Latin versions make to be one and the same with this, as having no title, and tending almost to the same purpose. Hence the difference in numbers, which holdeth almost to the end of the psalter, viz. to Psalms 148:1,14 .
Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?] So God seemeth to do when he helpeth not presently; neither doth anything more trouble the saints in affliction than the want of God's gracious presence. This maketh them thus to expostulate and lament after the Lord; not quarrel, as those hypocrites did, Isaiah 58:3, or revile, as Caligula did his Jupiter, taking up that verse in Homer, Zευ πατερ ουτις σειο Yεων ολοωτερος αλλος, or with him (little better) in the holy history, who said, "Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I wait for the Lord any lenger?" 2 Kings 6:33. The good soul knows that God waiteth to be gracious; and as he seldom cometh at our time, so at his own (which is ever the best) time he never faileth.