The speaker in the previous psalm said, What is my expectation? Is it not the Lord?^[1] Now, in this psalm, he says, Patiently, I awaited the Lord and he attended to me. He who said, Hear my prayer, now says, He heard my prayer. What have you prayed? I prayed that you may lead my thinking from the pit of misery and mud of desire, which is called clay, and set my feet on the rock so that I not be moved beyond by blowing winds, that is, from unclean spirits giving aid. He directs my steps; then he will give my mouth a new song. He sings not reckoning himself, or to Pharaoh, for there is no deliverance without God, but he sings a hymn to God, in whom we will have strength, and he himself will reduce our enemies to nothing.

Some people applied this psalm to blessed Jeremiah, others to the remarkable Daniel, since the one and the other were thrown into a pit and the psalm’s opening mentions a pit; they were led to that interpretation by attending to the one verse. Some, [by contrast], claimed the psalm fits the situation of the captives dwelling in Babylon. For my part, however, I believe it was written to address the events affecting David as a type and refers to the whole human race, who receive the hope of resurrection from our God and Savior. Now, it is the divinely inspirited Paul who guides us to this understanding, quoting individual verses in the epistle to the Hebrews.

He sings this psalm in the person of the new people, who waited for the Lord and were lifted up from the deep pit of sin, which like mud fouls those who are held in it. And he raised their feet onto a rock—Christ—and put into their mouth a new hymn—of the gospel of God who worked many miracles without number. He inclined to me and heard my cry.

The pit of misery is evil and ignorance. . . . The rock is faith in Christ. And he directs my steps by actions and true teachings.

Just as the mud of a lake stinks and is heavy, so also the sins of people are like mud, causing people to shudder because of their smell and causing them to drown because of their weight. When we walk in the commandments of the Lord Christ, he sets our feet upon the Rock.

Christ has heard the prayer of his own servants and has brought us out from the pit of misery and from the mire of dregs. We were drowning there; our whole flesh was clinging to the mire, trapped in the whirlpool of our sins. Our soul was powerless to save itself; fallen and ruined as it was by the multiplicity and dreadfulness of our offenses. Thanks be to the Lord Jesus, God’s only Son, who came down from heaven to forgive us our sins.^[1] He came to save us from the pit and slime of this world, from the mud and mire of this earth, from this body doomed to death.^[2] In his own flesh he has restored our soul and steadied our tottering footsteps. Strengthened by God’s Word and absolved through the cross of our Lord’s body, we walk no longer in the shame and disfigurement of vice but in the forgiveness of sin. Rooted and built in Christ,^[3] David declares that the Lord has set his feet on a rock. As the apostle says, They drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.^[4] May that rock, which follows those who thirst, confirm the weak and unsteady; may that water never be lacking to those who long for it; and may that firm foundation never be wanting to those in danger of falling.

After we are made free from all unbridled emotion, we sing a new song, having been renewed in our home.

In place of the impious worship of the idols I was taught to sing the praises of the true God and offer a song—not an old one but a new one, suited to the new favors. I no longer make supplication in dirges, you see; instead, I sing of the favors. So this is related, as I said, to the sufferings of David as a type and to the favors done to him. And it is related in particular to the human race sunken to the very depths of sin and consigned to death but retrieved through the incarnation of our Savior and given the hope of resurrection.

A hymn is a song of praise. Make sure when you call on God that you do so in praise and not in an attempt to coerce him. If you invoke God, begging him to suppress your enemy, or if you invoke God as your ally when you are minded to make merry over someone else’s misfortune, you are making him collude with your malice. And if you do that, you are not calling on him with praise but trying to manipulate him.

Who are these righteous people? Believers, clearly, because it is the one who lives by faith who is just.

Among other things, the Lord’s name is eternal Savior. The one who puts his trust in the Lord’s name is the one who believes that he must be saved by the Lord’s grace rather than by his own merits.

The wonders performed by your power, he is saying, defy counting and all description: there is no one who can do the like. While your creation is great and beautiful, what you arrange time after time in your providence surpasses human praise—in Egypt, in the wilderness, in the case of Moses, in the case of Joshua, in the case of Samuel, and earlier instances than those, having to do with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the royalty Joseph gained through slavery, not to mention all the other cases individually.

[Christ] offered himself to the death of the accursed that he might break the curse of the Law, offering himself voluntarily a victim to God the Father, in order that by means of a voluntary victim the curse that attended the discontinuance of the regular victim might be removed. Now of this sacrifice mention is made in another passage of the psalms: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body have you prepared for me; that is, by offering to God the Father, who refused the legal sacrifices, the acceptable offering of the body that he received. Of this offering the holy apostle thus speaks: For this he did once for all when he offered himself up,^[1] securing complete salvation for the human race by the offering of this holy, perfect victim.

This verse embraces the mysteries of the Old and New Testaments, for it says that at a later time God no longer accepted the sacrifices and offerings which were earlier being performed to honor him through the sacrifice of cattle which fed the priests. It is certainly true that he considered it fitting to accept these kinds of offerings, since there seemed to be a certain prefiguration of the body of Christ through them. But once the Messiah himself, the Lord Christ, who had been foretold, arrived and offered himself for us all as the compassionate Victim, it was unnecessary that such a preliminary figure as the Old Testament sacrifices still endure, now that the truth had reached fulfillment. . . .The body which was previously promised through the images of the sacrifices . . . was now fulfilled by his coming.

That is, it is written about me in the beginning of the Psalter: Blessed is the man, so I may do your will.

Here the psalmist introduces the person of Christ, who says, By the will of the Father he came and completed the things that are written concerning him in the law and the prophets. And he declared his righteousness in a great church, which is in all peoples and is more excellent than that of the law.

He calls the roll of the book every divinely inspired Scripture, both the legal and the prophetic. In these Scriptures things are written concerning the memory of the Savior among us. The psalmist calls it a roll because everything is summed up into one.

The apostolic exhortation sings a similar note to this, I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, the worship according to reason.^[1] In place of the rites of the Law, the Lord required us to consecrate our limbs. Now, seeing your grace, he says, I offered myself to you in the words Here I am. This statement, of course, blessed Paul applies to Christ the Lord, and rightly so: he is our nature’s first fruits, and it is fitting for him in the first place to speak for us and in himself to prefigure in type what is appropriate in our case.

Let the Jews perceive that they have not prevailed against me, but that it is your will that I suffer. Besides, I desired to suffer; that is why I say in my human nature: To do your will, O my God, is my delight. It was your will and mine that I suffer; not their plottings and power did it, but you and I desired it. You, in truth, struck your Shepherd, and the sheep have been scattered. . . . That I suffer was your will and mine also. What you desired, I also desired.

Because there is one will, there is one substance, there is inseparable majesty and the power of the Trinity. But there is another voice, that of the flesh; and yet, it too consents to God’s will. . . . Christ accepted death and crucifixion so as to crucify the flesh. For my sake he took on himself the combat, so that he might conquer me. Though Christ’s flesh was strong and not liable to sin, he nevertheless took on my sins. He took on my weaknesses and infirmities, though he himself was without infirmity. . . . He who is all pure took on our flesh to make it all pure. He, the immortal one, took on our flesh to make us immortal.

What does he mean when he says, I have declared your justice? He did not simply say, I have given, but I have declared. What does this mean? That he has justified our race not by right actions, not by toils, not by barter and exchange but by grace alone. Paul, too, made this clear when he said, But now the justice of God has been made manifest independently of the Law.^[1] But the justice of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ and not through any labor and suffering.

Blessed David promises to preach God’s righteousness, the truth of inspired composition, the admirable salvation and immeasurable mercy in a great assembly gathered by divine grace throughout the whole world. And redeemed nature itself promises to give this response to its salvation by flocking to church, moving its lips in hymn singing, proclaiming God’s righteous judgment, recounting his ineffable care and giving a glimpse of the truth of the inspired promises.

This is said to warn us that we must not out of fear restrain our lips from proclaiming what we have believed. There are Christians who live among ill-disposed pagans, among people who are sophisticated in an unwholesome way, squalid, unfaithful people without good sense, mockers. These Christians nonetheless have faith in their hearts, but once they begin to find themselves hounded for being Christians they are afraid to confess with their lips the faith they have in their hearts, and they restrain their lips from giving expression to what they know, what they have within. The Lord rebukes them: If anyone is embarrassed about me in the presence of men and women, I will be embarrassed about that person in my Father’s presence;^[1] that is to say, I will not recognize anyone who has been ashamed of confessing me before other people; I will not confess that person before my Father. The lips must proclaim what is in the heart: this is an injunction against fear. But the heart must have in it what the lips say: this is an injunction against insincerity. Sometimes you are afraid and dare not say what you know to be true, what you believe; but at other times you are tempted to be insincere and say something that is not in your heart. Your lips and your heart must be in agreement. If you seek peace from God, be reconciled with yourself; let there be no harmful conflict between your mouth and your heart.

A person can speak of his own justice without arrogance, . . . if he has faith in God and believes that on account of his faith he will be reckoned as just.^[1] . . . It was for this reason that Christ came, to establish faith and to grant us forgiveness of sin.

[At this point in the psalm] he introduces the persons of those who believed from Israel; for he confesses to God that he did not remove his mercy from it but then and now saved and supported them.

The mercy was that he saved human nature, wounded by the vice of transgression, by his holy incarnation; the truth was that through the blessing of the promised resurrection, he sits at the right hand of the Father and from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I would not dare to turn back to you if I were not confident of your forgiveness; I would not go on persevering were I not confident of your promise. . . . I see you to be good, and I see you to be just; I love you because you are good and fear you because you are just. Love and fear jointly are my guides.

The church of God, buffeted by billows from the godless, in its struggles is not carried away but attributes developments to sins and failings and begs to enjoy assistance from the Savior. In a particular way, the church of God is not composed completely of perfect people; instead, it numbers also those addicted to sloth and inclined to the careless life, who choose to serve pleasure. Since it is one body, both features are displayed as in the case of one person.

There is nothing of my own in me that deserves praise. May he tear off my sackcloth and clothe me in his own robe, for it is not I who live now, but Christ lives in me. If Christ lives in you, and all the good you have belongs to Christ, and all the good you ever will have belongs to Christ, what are you of yourself? I am needy and poor.

Truly, what higher or holier poverty can there be than this, that a person knowing he is defenseless of his own, asks help for daily life from another’s generosity and realizes his life and being to depend every moment on God’s help. Such a one truly confesses himself the beggar of the Lord, like the psalmist, who said, I am a beggar and a poor man, and God helps me.

Since God cared for you before you even existed, how can he fail to care for you now that you are what he willed you to be? You are a believer now; you are already walking the path of righteousness. Is it likely that he will not care for you, he who makes his sun rise over good and bad people and sends his rain on just and unjust alike? Now that you are righteous by living through faith, will he neglect you, abandon you, send you away? Of course not. In your present life he cherishes you, and helps you, and provides all you need here and cuts away all that could harm you. By giving you all these things he comforts you so that you can hold out, and by taking them away he corrects you so that you may not perish. The Lord has you in his care, so do not worry.