David penned this psalm when he was in affliction; and in it, I. He complains of the great distress and trouble he was in and earnestly begs of God to relieve and succour him, ver. 1-21. II. He imprecates the judgments of God upon his persecutors, ver. 22-29. III. He concludes with the voice of joy and praise, in an assurance that God would help and succour him, and would do well for the church, ver. 30-36. Now, in this, David was a type of Christ, and divers passages in this psalm are applied to Christ in the new Testament and are said to have their accomplishment in him (ver. 4, 9, 21), and ver. 22 refers to the enemies of Christ. So that (like the twenty-second psalm) it begins with the humiliation and ends with the exaltation of Christ, one branch of which was the destruction of the Jewish nation for persecuting him, which the imprecations here are predictions of. In singing this psalm we must have an eye to the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that followed, not forgetting the sufferings of Christians too, and the glory that shall follow them; for it may lead us to think of the ruin reserved for the persecutors and the rest reserved for the persecuted.
Complaints and Petitions.
To the chief musician upon Shoshannim. A psalm of David.