Psalm 107:39

Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 107:39. Again they are minished — When they prove ungrateful to him who had enriched and exalted them, and grow proud, insolent, and secure, as the manner of men is, he quite alters the course of his providence toward them. They suddenly sink, as they suddenly rose, and end their days in as mean a condition as they began them; and brought low through oppression, &c. — He lays them low by tyrannical oppressors, into whose hands he delivers them, by dearth, and other calamities, which make them pine away in grief and sorrow. Thus it often happens with families and individuals as well as with nations: descendants lose as fast as their progenitors gained, and scatter what the others had heaped together. For worldly wealth, honour, power, and glory are uncertain things, and it often happens that those who think themselves most secure in the possession of them, are, by unexpected and even extraordinary events, stripped of them all, and reduced to the lowest state of poverty and degradation.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

107:33-43 What surprising changes are often made in the affairs of men! Let the present desolate state of Judea, and of other countries, explain this. If we look abroad in the world, we see many greatly increase, whose beginning was small. We see many who have thus suddenly risen, as suddenly brought to nothing. Worldly wealth is uncertain; often those who are filled with it, ere they are aware, lose it again. God has many ways of making men poor. The righteous shall rejoice. It shall fully convince all those who deny the Divine Providence. When sinners see how justly God takes away the gifts they have abused, they will not have a word to say. It is of great use to us to be fully assured of God's goodness, and duly affected with it. It is our wisdom to mind our duty, and to refer our comfort to him. A truly wise person will treasure in his heart this delightful psalm. From it, he will fully understand the weakness and wretchedness of man, and the power and loving-kindness of God, not for our merit, but for his mercy's sake.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Again, they are minished ... - literally, "And they are made to decrease." That is - all is in the hand of God. He rules and directs all things. If there is prosperity, it comes from him; if there are reverses, they occur under his hand. People are not always prosperous. There are changes, misfortunes, disappointments, sorrows. God so deals with the race as in the bests manner to secure the recognition of himself: not always sending prosperity, lest people should regard it as a thing of course, and forget that it comes from him; and not making the course of life uniformly that of disappointment and sorrow, lest they should feel that there is no God presiding over human affairs. He visits now with prosperity, and now with adversity; now with success, and now with reverses, showing that his agency is constant, and that people are wholly dependent on him. In existing circumstances - since man is what he is - it is better that there should be alternations, reverses, and changes, than that there should be a uniform course.

Through oppression - Anything that "presses" or "straitens."

Affliction - Evil; here, in the sense of calamity.

And sorrow - Anguish, pain: of body or mind.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

33-41. He turneth rivers into a wilderness, &c.—God's providence is illustriously displayed in His influence on two great elements of human prosperity, the earth's productiveness and the powers of government. He punishes the wicked by destroying the sources of fertility, or, in mercy, gives fruitfulness to deserts, which become the homes of a busy and successful agricultural population. By a permitted misrule and tyranny, this scene of prosperity is changed to one of adversity. He rules rulers, setting up one and putting down another.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

They, these poor men, who, when they are exalted and blessed by God, kick at him, and grow insolent and secure, as the returner of men is,

are minished and brought low; are by God’s just judgment diminished in their numbers and in their blessings.

Through oppression, affliction, and sorrow; or, through wicked oppression, (by the tyranny of others, whom God sends to spoil them of their abused riches,) and by other griefs or grievous calamities which God inflicts.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Again they are minished,.... Or "lessened", in their families, cattle, and substance; either the same persons as before, or others. The Targum paraphrases it,

"but when they sin, they are lessened:''

for sin is the cause of it, as follows:

and brought low through oppression, affliction and sorrow; either because of their oppression of the poor, the evil they do to them, and the sorrow they bring upon them; or they are brought into a low estate through the tyranny and oppression of others, and by the afflictions and sorrows they are brought into by them. This may be applied to the Jews, at their destruction by the Romans, when they were greatly lessened and brought low by their oppression of them: or rather to the Christians; not under the Heathen persecutions, for then they increased more and more; but under antichristian tyranny, when the beast had power over them, and overcame and slew them; and their numbers were so reduced, that the whole world is said to wonder after the beast, Revelation 13:3, and which will be the case again, when the witnesses will be slain: the number of Christians is greatly lessening now; there are but a few names in Sardis; Jacob is small, but will be smaller and fewer still.

Geneva Study Bible

{s} Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.

(s) As God by his providence exalts man, so he also humbles them by afflictions to know themselves.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

39. And when they were diminished and brought low,

Through oppression, evil, and sorrow,

39–42. Though trouble may come, Jehovah scatters their oppressors and defends them, to the joy of the righteous and the chagrin of the wicked.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 39. - Again. There is no "again" in the original, but merely the usual yaw conjunctive. Still, in the thought, there is no doubt an abrupt transition. The writer turns to the darker side of the picture. They are minished and brought low. God shows his providence, not merely in blessing, but also in chastising. Even the very nation which has been the most highly favored may, by misconduct, fall under his displeasure and suffer at his hands. Their population is diminished; they arc "bowed down" (Revised Version), or "brought low." Calamities of various kinds befall them. Sometimes their decline is brought about through oppression, which may be either the cruel rule of a native monarch, such as Saul, or the still heavier yoke of a foreign power, like Egypt or Babylon. Sometimes it comes from such an affliction as bad harvests, plagues of locusts, or pestilence. Sometimes it is brought about by sorrow - the death of a good ruler in the flower of his age, the extinction of a royal stock, the destruction of a nation's best and bravest on battle-fields, and the like. But in all calamities alike it is God's hand that deals the blow. Psalm 107:39

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But is also came to pass that it went ill with them, inasmuch as their flourishing prosperous condition drew down upon them the envy of the powerful and tyrannical; nevertheless God put an end to tyranny, and always brought His people again to honour and strength. Hitzig is of opinion that Psalm 107:39 goes back into the time when things were different with those who, according to Psalm 107:36-38, had thriven. The modus consecutivus is sometimes used thus retrospectively (vid., Isaiah 37:5); here, however, the symmetry of the continuation from Psalm 107:36-38, and the change which is expressed in Psalm 107:39 in comparison with Psalm 107:38, require an actual consecution in that which is narrated. They became few and came down, were reduced (שׁחח, cf. Proverbs 14:19 : to come to ruin, or to be overthrown), a coarctatione malitiae et maeroris. עצר is the restraint of despotic rule, רעה the evil they had to suffer under such restraint, and רגון sorrow, which consumed their life. מעצר has Tarcha and רעה Munach (instead of Mercha and Mugrash, vid., Accentuationssystem, xviii. 2). There is no reason for departing from this interpunction and rendering: "through tyranny, evil, and sorrow." What is stiff and awkward in the progress of the description arises from the fact that Psalm 107:40 is borrowed from Job 12:21, Job 12:24, and that the poet is not willing to make any change in these sublime words. The version shows how we think the relation of the clauses is to be apprehended. Whilst He pours out His wrath upon tyrants in the contempt of men that comes upon them, and makes them fugitives who lose themselves in the terrible waste, He raises the needy and those hitherto despised and ill-treated on high out of the depth of their affliction, and makes families like a flock, i.e., makes their families so increase, that they come to have the appearance of a merrily gamboling and numerous flock. Just as this figure points back to Job 21:11, so Psalm 107:42 is made up out of Job 22:19; Job 5:16. The sight of this act of recognition on the part of God of those who have been wrongfully oppressed gives joy to the upright, and all roguery (עולה, vid., Psalm 92:16) has its mouth closed, i.e., its boastful insolence is once for all put to silence. In Psalm 107:43 the poet makes the strains of his Psalm die away after the example of Hosea, Hosea 14:10 [9], in the nota bene expressed after the manner of a question: Who is wise - he will or let him keep this, i.e., bear it well in mind. The transition to the justice together with a change of number is rendered natural by the fact that מי חכם, as in Hos. loc. cit. (cf. Jeremiah 9:11; Esther 5:6, and without Waw apod. Judges 7:3; Proverbs 9:4, Proverbs 9:16), is equivalent to quisquis sapeins est. חסדי ה (חסדי) are the manifestations of mercy or loving-kindness in which God's ever-enduring mercy unfolds itself in history. He who is wise has a good memory for and a clear understanding of this.