When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.
Ver. 10. When my father and my mother forsake me] Or, For my father and my mother do forsake me (that is, they are not able to help me), but thou, &c., 1 Samuel 22:1; 1 Samuel 22:3. There is an ocean of love in a parent's heart toward their even untoward children, as was in David toward Absalom, after all his unnatural miscarriages; insomuch as Joab upbraideth him with it, 2 Samuel 19:6. But all the mercies of all the fathers and mothers in the world put together make not the tithe of God's mercy toward his children, Isaiah 41:15 .
Then the Lord will take me up] Heb. will gather me, that is, take me into his care and keeping. In the civil law we find provision made for outcasts and friendless persons; some hospitals to entertain them, some liberties to comfort and compensate their trouble. It is sure that in God the forlorn and fatherless find mercy, Hosea 14:3; 1Sa 22:2-3; Joh 9:35; Jeremiah 30:17. In the Israelites' marching through the wilderness, at the fourth alarm arose the standard of Dan, Asher, and Naphtali; and to these was committed the care of gathering together the lame, feeble, and sick, and to look that nothing was left behind; whence they were called the gathering host, Joshua 6:9. Unto this, some think, David here alludeth.