LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, [and] I was troubled.
Ver. 7. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain, &c]. Yea, but there is no mountain so strong that may not be moved, if not removed with an earthquake. Is it not as easy with God to blast an oak as trample a mushroom? And what though God in his favour had settled strength to David's mountain? what though he had constituted and established it sure as Mount Zion (for there was David's arx, et aula regia) which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever? Psalms 125:1; yet, by a turn of his countenance only, God can soon dissweeten all in his enjoyments, and plunge him into a deplorable condition.
Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled] i.e. Thou didst suspend the actual influence and communication of thy grace (the Chaldee calleth it Shechinah, the divine presence), and I was all death. The life of some creatures consisteth in the end; so doth that of the saints in the light of God's countenance. And as in an eclipse of the sun there is a drooping in the whole face of nature, so when God hideth his face the good soul laboureth and languisheth. And as none look at the sun but when it is in the eclipse, so neither prize we God's loving countenance till we have lost it.