"To the chief musician: instruction; for the sons of Korah."

These are clearly companion psalms, and so under one title. The prophetic aspect is the remnant cast out or fled: compare with Matthew 24:15 et seqq., Mark 13:14, etc., Joel 2:17. The historic occasion is when David and his faithful following abandoned Jerusalem under Absalom's conspiracy. The closing days of our Lord had in the highest degree this character, though modified by other considerations; for what sorrows had not He, the Holy One of God? Yet the former of the twain is more general and looks at Gentile enemies as much as or more than any; whereas the force of the later psalm is the complaint against the Jews as "an ungodly nation." Professedly holy (in the sense here of piety from being the object of divine mercy), they had none; they were now goi lo-chasid. How true, yet how bitter, that the driven out godly ones should so speak to God of the chosen people! And so in fact it will be. The one psalm without the other could not adequately express the grief of the remnant at this juncture, when the Antichrist sets up the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary, instigated and protected by the Beast (or Emperor of the Western powers). See Rev. 13. The thirst here is to drink once more of the waters, whence the abominable amalgam of Gentile self-will and Jewish apostasy had driven them out; so they confidently expect from God Who cannot deny Himself, and loves His people.