Psalm 116:1

I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(1) I love the Lord.—Besides this rendering, where Jehovah is supplied as an object, this poet being given to use verbs without an object (see Psalm 116:2; Psalm 116:10), there are two other possible translations.

1. I have longed that Jehovah should hear, &c—For this meaning of the verb to love see Jeremiah 5:31, Amos 4:5; and for the construction see Psalm 27:4-6. So the Syriac and Arabic versions.

2. I am well pleased that Jehovah hears (or will hear).—So LXX. and Vulg.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 116:1-2. I love the Lord — Hebrew, I love, because the Lord hath heard my voice. “The soul, transported with gratitude and love, seems, at first, to express her affection without declaring its object, as thinking that all the world must know who is the person intended. Thus Mary Magdalene, at the sepulchre, though no previous mention had been made of Jesus, says to one, whom she thought to be the gardener, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, &c. John 20:15. And ought not the love of God to be excited in all our hearts by the consideration, that when we were not able to raise ourselves up to him, he mercifully and tenderly inclined and bowed down his ear to us?” — Horne. Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live — Hebrew, בימי אקרא, bejamai ekra, in my days, that is, as long as I have a day to live, as this phrase is used 2 Kings 20:19; Isaiah 39:8.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

116:1-9 We have many reasons for loving the Lord, but are most affected by his loving-kindness when relieved out of deep distress. When a poor sinner is awakened to a sense of his state, and fears that he must soon sink under the just wrath of God, then he finds trouble and sorrow. But let all such call upon the Lord to deliver their souls, and they will find him gracious and true to his promise. Neither ignorance nor guilt will hinder their salvation, when they put their trust in the Lord. Let us all speak of God as we have found him; and have we ever found him otherwise than just and good? It is of his mercies that we are not consumed. Let those who labour and are heavy laden come to him, that they may find rest to their souls; and if at all drawn from their rest, let them haste to return, remembering how bountifully the Lord has dealt with them. We should deem ourselves bound to walk as in his presence. It is a great mercy to be kept from being swallowed up with over-much sorrow. It is a great mercy for God to hold us by the right hand, so that we are not overcome and overthrown by a temptation. But when we enter the heavenly rest, deliverance from sin and sorrow will be complete; we shall behold the glory of the Lord, and walk in his presence with delight we cannot now conceive.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I love the Lord - The Hebrew rather means, "I love, because the Lord hath heard," etc. That is, the psalmist was conscious of love; he felt it glowing in his soul; his heart was full of that special joy, tenderness, kindness, peace, which love produces; and the source or reason of this, he says, was that the Lord had heard him in his prayers.

Because he hath heard ... - That is, This fact was a reason for loving him. The psalmist does not say that this was the only reason, or the main reason for loving him, but that it was the reason for that special joy of love which he then felt in his soul. The main reason for loving God is his own excellency of nature; but still there are other reasons for doing it, and among them are the benefits which he has conferred on us, and which awaken the love of gratitude. Compare the notes at 1 John 4:19.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

PSALM 116

Ps 116:1-19. The writer celebrates the deliverance from extreme perils by which he was favored, and pledges grateful and pious public acknowledgments.

1, 2. A truly grateful love will be evinced by acts of worship, which calling on God expresses (Ps 116:13; Ps 55:16; 86:7; compare Ps 17:6; 31:2).

The Treasury of David

1 I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.

2 Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as Ilive.

3 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.

4 Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.

5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.

6 The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.

7 Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

8 For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.

Psalm 116:1

"I love the Lord." A blessed declaration: every believer ought to be able to declare without the slightest hesitation, "I love the Lord." It was required under the law, but was never produced in the heart of man except by the grace of God, and upon gospel principles. It is a great thing to say "I love the Lord" : for the sweetest of all graces and the surest of all evidences of salvation is love. It is great goodness on the part of God that he condescends to be loved by such poor creatures as we are, and it is a sure proof that he has been at work in our heart when we can say, "Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee." "Because he hath heard my voice and my supplications." The Psalmist not only knows that he loves God, but he knows why he does so. When love can justify itself with a reason, it is deep, strong, and abiding. They say that love is blind; but when we love God our affection has its eyes open and can sustain itself with the most rigid logic. We have reason, superabundant reason, for loving the Lord; and so because in this case principle and passion, reason and emotion go together, they make up an admirable state of mind. David's reason for his love was the love of God in hearing his prayers. The Psalmist had used his "voice" in prayer, and the habit of doing so is exceedingly helpful to devotion. If we can pray aloud without being overheard it is well to do so. Sometimes, however, when the Psalmist had lifted up his voice, his utterance had been so broken and painful that he scarcely dared to call it prayer; words failed him, he could only produce a groaning sound, but the Lord heard his moaning voice. At other times his prayers were more regular and better formed' these he calls "supplications." David had praised as best he could, and when one form of devotion failed him he tried another. He had gone to the Lord again and again, hence he uses the plural and says "my supplications," but as often as he had gone, so often had he been welcome. Jehovah had heard, that is to say, accepted, and answered both his broken cries and his more composed and orderly supplications; hence he loved God with all his heart. Answered prayers are silken bonds which bind our hearts to God. When a man's prayers are answered, love is the natural result. According to Alexander, both verbs may be translated in the present, and the text may run thus, "I love because Jehovah hears my voice, my supplications." This also is true in the case of every pleading believer. Continual love flows out of daily answers to prayer.

Psalm 116:2

"Because he hath inclined his ear unto me" : - bowing down from his grandeur to attend to my prayer; the figure seems to be that of a tender physician or loving friend leaning over a sick man whose voice is faint and scarcely audible, so as to catch every accent and whisper. When our prayer is very feeble, so that we ourselves can scarcely hear it, and question whether we do pray or not, yet God bows a listening ear, and regards our supplications. "Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live," or, "in my days." Throughout all the days of my life I will address my prayer to God alone, and to him I will unceasingly pray. It is always wise to go where we are welcome and are well treated. The word "call" may imply praise as well as prayer: calling upon the name of the Lord is an expressive name for adoration of all kinds. When prayer is heard in our feebleness, and answered in the strength and greatness of God, we are strengthened in the habit of prayer, and confirmed in the resolve to make ceaseless intercession. We should not thank a beggar who informed us that because we had granted his request he would never cease to beg of us, and yet doubtless it is acceptable to God that his petitioners should form the resolution to continue in prayer: this shows the greatness of his goodness, and the abundance of his patience. In all days let us pray and praise the Ancient of days. He promises that as our days our strength shall be; let us resolve that as our days our devotion shall be.

Psalm 116:3

continued...THE ARGUMENT

This Psalm contains a solemn thanksgiving to God for a glorious deliverance from grievous and dangerous calamities; as also from great perplexities and terrors of mind arising from the sense of God’s displeasure.

The psalmist professeth his love to God for his manifold mercies in delivering him out of great straits and dangers, Psalm 116:8; promising to walk holily, prayeth for his future protection, studieth and promiseth to be thanked, Psalm 116:9-19.

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I love the Lord,.... As the Messiah, David's antitype, did; of which he gave the fullest proof by his obedience to his will; and as David, the man after God's own heart, did, and as every good man does; and the Lord is to be loved for the perfections of his nature, and especially as they are displayed in Christ, and salvation by him; and for his works of creation, providence, and grace, and particularly for his great love shown in redemption, regeneration, and other blessings of grace, as well as for what follows.

Because he hath heard my voice and my supplication; in the original text the words lie thus, "I love, because the Lord hath heard", or "will hear"; and so read the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic versions, and so the Targum; and may be rendered, "I love that the Lord should hear me", so the Syriac and Arabic versions; nothing is more desirable and grateful to good men than that the Lord should hear them; but Kimchi and others transpose the words as we do, which gives a reason why he loved the Lord; because he heard his prayers, which were vocal, put up in a time of distress, in an humble and submissive manner, under the influence of the Spirit of grace and supplication, in the name of Christ, for his righteousness sake, and through his mediation; and such supplications are heard and answered by the Lord, sooner or later; and which engages the love of his people to him; see Psalm 34:1. It may be applied to Christ, who offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, and was always heard; and for which he thanked his Father and loved him, Hebrews 5:7.

Geneva Study Bible

I {a} love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.

(a) He grants that no pleasure is so great as to feel God's help in our need, neither that anything more stirs up our love toward him.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

1. Lit. I love, because Jehovah heareth my voice, even my supplications: an unusual, but not impossible, form of expression for I love Jehovah, because he heareth &c. Cp. 1 John 4:19 (R.V.), “We love, because he first loved us.” Again in Psalm 116:2 (I will call), and Psalm 116:10 (I believed) the Psalmist employs verbs in a peculiar manner without an expressed object.

I love is a reminiscence of Psalm 18:1, though the Heb. word there is different. My voice, (even) my supplications is (if the text is sound) a slight variation from the usual phrase the voice of my supplications (Psalm 28:2; Psalm 28:6; Psalm 31:22; Psalm 130:2; Psalm 140:6).

The P.B.V. I am well pleased that the Lord &c. is linguistically questionable and less forcible.

1, 2. Answered prayer demands lifelong love and gratitude.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 1, 2. - An introduction, in which the writer declares his love to God, and his resolution to call on him continually, on ac count of his having been delivered from an imminent peril. Verse 1. - I love the Lord, because he hath heard; literally, I love, because the Lord (Jehovah) hath heard. The object of this love is not expressed, but can only be Jehovah. Still, the grammatical construction is unusual, and has caused the suggestion of an emendation. For אהבתי Professor Cheyne would read האמנתי as at the beginning of ver. 10. My voice and my supplications; literally, my voice, my supplications - the latter expression being exegetical of the former. Psalm 116:1

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Not only is כּי אהבתּי "I love (like, am well pleased) that," like ἀγαπῶ ὅτι, Thucydides vi. 36, contrary to the usage of the language, but the thought, "I love that Jahve answereth me," is also tame and flat, and inappropriate to the continuation in Psalm 116:2. Since Psalm 116:3-4 have come from Psalm 18:5-17, אהבתּי is to be understood according to ארחמך in Psalm 18:2, so that it has the following יהוה as its object, not it is true grammatically, but logically. The poet is fond of this pregnant use of the verb without an expressed object, cf. אקרא in Psalm 116:2, and האמנתּי in Psalm 116:10. The Pasek after ישׁמע is intended to guard against the blending of the final a‛ with the initial 'a of אדני (cf. Psalm 56:1-13 :18; Psalm 5:2, in Baer). In Psalm 116:1 the accentuation prevents the rendering vocem orationis meae (Vulgate, lxx) by means of Mugrash. The ı̂ of קולי will therefore no more be the archaic connecting vowel (Ew. 211, b) than in Leviticus 26:42; the poet has varied the genitival construction of Psalm 28:6 to the permutative. The second כי, following close upon the first, makes the continuation of the confirmation retrospective. "In my days" is, as in Isaiah 39:8, Bar. 4:20, cf. בחיּי in Psalm 63:5, and frequently, equivalent to "so long as I live." We even here hear the tone of Psalm 18 (Psalm 18:2), which is continued in Psalm 18:3-4 as a freely borrowed passage. Instead of the "bands" (of Hades) there, the expression here is מצרי, angustiae, plural of meetsar, after the form מסב in Psalm 118:5; Lamentations 1:3 (Bttcher, De inferis, 423); the straitnesses of Hades are deadly perils which can scarcely be escaped. The futures אמצא and אקרא, by virtue of the connection, refer to the contemporaneous past. אנּה (viz., בלישׁן בקשׁה, i.e., in a suppliant sense) is written with He instead of Aleph here and in five other instances, as the Masora observes. It has its fixed Metheg in the first syllable, in accordance with which it is to be pronounced ānna (like בּתּים, bāttim), and has an accented ultima not merely on account of the following יהוה equals אדני (vid., on Psalm 3:8), but in every instance; for even where (the Metheg having been changed into a conjunctive) it is supplied with two different accents, as in Genesis 50:17; Exodus 32:31, the second indicates the tone-syllable.

(Note: Kimchi, mistaking the vocation of the Metheg, regards אנּה (אנּא) as Milel. But the Palestinian and the Babylonian systems of pointing coincide in this, that the beseeching אנא (אנה) is Milra, and the interrogatory אנה Milel (with only two exceptions in our text, which is fixed according to the Palestinian Masora, viz., Psalm 139:7; Deuteronomy 1:28, where the following word begins with Aleph), and these modes of accenting accord with the origin of the two particles. Pinsker (Einleitung, S. xiii.) insinuates against the Palestinian system, that in the cases where אנא has two accents the pointing was not certain of the correct accentuation, only from a deficient knowledge of the bearings of the case.)

Instead now of repeating "and Jahve answered me," the poet indulges in a laudatory confession of general truths which have been brought vividly to his mind by the answering of his prayer that he has experienced.