He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down. The scene is now removed from heaven to earth. Isaiah wished that God would "rend the heavens, and come down" (2 Sam. 64:1). The figure used in this passage is less bold, but very graphic and pertinent to the occasion, because the verb, 'bowed down' is equivalent to 'made tend downward;' and accordingly, while in clear, severe, settled weather the clouds appear high, they approach on the eve of a storm nearer to the earth. 'He came down,' not by change of place, but by the manifestation of His presence and power on David's behalf. This 'bowing the heavens' was a prelude to 'His coming down.' This is entirely a scenic representation, which owed its existence to the imagination of the sacred bard. But it is the privilege of faith to realize the presence and the operation of the Divine Being in the greatest disorders, both of the material and the moral world, touching the secret springs, and guiding all events to their destined issue, whether for the destruction of His enemies or for the deliverance and benefit of His people.
And darkness was under his feet. The word here used is not the common one for "darkness." It is used chiefly in poetry, and signifies a dark cloud, dense gloom (Job 22:13; Isaiah 60:2). [The Septuagint renders it by gnofos (G1105), black, tempestuous darkness (see Hebrews 12:18).] The representation of 'darkness being under his feet' is borrowed partly from Exodus 19:16, and "there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount," and partly from Deuteronomy 5:22, "These words spake the Lord ... in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and the thick darkness."