But thou, O Lord, do with for thy names sake: because thy mercy is sweet. Do thou deliver me.

“For I am poor and needy,.... As he was in human nature, being born of poor parents, brought up in a mean manner, had not where to lay his head, and was ministered to by others; though he was Lord of all, and immensely rich in the perfections of his nature, and in his vast empire and dominion, and the revenues arising from thence; see Co2 8:9. It may here chiefly respect his helpless and forlorn estate as man, at the time of his sufferings and death; see Psa 40:17. And my heart is wounded within me; with the sins of his people on him, with a sense of divine wrath, and when under divine desertions, especially when his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, Mat 26:38.”

“The thunder and lightning are now as it were followed by a shower of tears of deep sorrowful complaint. Ps 109 here just as strikingly accords with Ps 69, as Ps 69 does with Ps 22 in the last strophe but one. The twofold name Jahve Adonaj (vid., Symbolae, p. 16) corresponds to the deep-breathed complaint. עשׂה אתּי, deal with me, i.e., succouring me, does not greatly differ from לי in Sa1 14:6. The confirmation, Psa 109:21, runs like Psa 69:17 : Thy loving-kindness is טּוב, absolutely good, the ground of everything that is good and the end of all evil. Hitzig conjectures, as in Psa 69:17, חסדך כּטוב, "according to the goodness of Thy loving-kindness;" but this formula is without example: "for Thy loving-kindness is good" is a statement of the motive placed first and corresponding to the "for thy Name's sake." In Psa 109:22 (a variation of Psa 55:5) חלל, not חלל, is traditional; this חלל, as being verb. denom. from חלל, signifies to be pierced, and is therefore equivalent to חולל (cf. Luk 2:35). The metaphor of the shadow in Psa 109:23 is as in Psa 102:12. When the day declines, the shadow lengthens, it becomes longer and longer (Virgil, majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae), till it vanishes in the universal darkness. Thus does the life of the sufferer pass away. The poet intentionally uses the Niph. נהלכתּי (another reading is נהלכתּי); it is a power rushing upon him from without that drives him away thus after the manner of a shadow into the night. The locust or grasshopper (apart from the plague of the locusts) is proverbial as being a defenceless, inoffensive little creature that is soon driven away, Job 39:20. ננער, to be shaken out or off (cf. Arabic na‛ûra, a water-wheel that fills its clay-vessels in the river and empties them out above, and הנּער, Zac 11:16, where Hitzig wishes to read הנּער, dispulsio = dispulsi). The fasting in Psa 109:24 is the result of the loathing of all food which sets in with deep grief. כּחשׁ משּׁמן signifies to waste away so that there is no more fat left. (Note: The verbal group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. ḥajda, kaḥuṭa, etc. has the primary signification of withdrawal and taking away or decrease; to deny is the same as to withdraw from agreement, and he becomes thin from whom the fat withdraws, goes away. Saadia compares on this passage (פרה) בהמה כחושׁה, a lean cow, Berachoth 32a. In like manner Targum II renders Gen 41:27 תּורתא כהישׁתא, the lean kine.) In Psa 109:25 אני is designedly rendered prominent: in this the form of his affliction he is the butt of their reproaching, and they shake their heads doubtfully, looking upon him as one who is punished of God beyond all hope, and giving him up for lost. It is to be interpreted thus after Psa 69:11.”