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John Gill
INTRODUCTION TO Psalms 56 To the chief Musician upon Jonathelemrechokim, Michtam of David when the Philistines took him in Gath. The words "jonathelemrechokim" are by our translators left untranslated. Aben Ezra takes them to be the beginning of a song; and others think they are the name of a musical instrument: but they seem rather to design the subject matter of the psalm, and may be rendered,...
John Gill
Thou tellest my wanderings,.... Not his sins; though these are aberrations or wanderings from the ways of God's commandments; yet these are not told by the Lord: he takes no account of them; the number of them is not kept by him; they are blotted out, cast behind his back, and into the depths of the sea; though sometimes his people think they are told and numbered by him, Job 14:16; but David's...
Matthew Henry
It seems by this, and many other psalms, that even in times of the greatest trouble and distress David never hung his harp upon the willow-trees, never unstrung it or laid it by; but that when his dangers and fears were greatest he was still in tune for singing God's praises. He was in imminent peril when he penned this psalm, at least when he meditated it; yet even then his meditation of God was...
Charles H. Spurgeon
Shall they escape by iniquity? is thine anger cast down the people, O God. Thou tellest my wanderings: David’s was a life of wandering, from the sheep-folds to his father’s house, then to the palace of Saul, then to the camp of Israel, then to the palace again, then to the cave Adullam, then among the Philistines, — I scarcely remember all the places where he went, but there were at least twelve...
Charles H. Spurgeon
Put thou my tears into thy bottle:- This is thought by some to have been an allusion to an old Roman custom of catching the tears of the friends of the dying in a lachrymatory, or small bottle, and then burying them in their tomb. I see no reason to believe that David meant anything so absurd. There is probably a very much better meaning than that to be attached to these words. Bottles, large...
Charles H. Spurgeon
Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? David was such a wanderer at that time that he might not remember all the places where he had hidden away from Saul, but God had a record of them, and even of his tears: “are they not in thy book?” There is nothing that concerns the Lord’s chosen people that is not noted and remembered by him.