Psalms 34:17

17. They cried, and Jehovah heard;

And rescued them out of all their distresses.

We may understand a subject from the verb, they who cried cried, as in Psa_34:5, i.e., when any cried: or with LXX and Vulg. supply the righteous. (Had the LXX this reading, or did they merely insert the word from Psa_34:15?) It is however possible that Psa_34:15-16 should be transposed, and then the righteous in Psa_34:15 supplies the natural subject to Psa_34:17. This transposition deserts the present order of the letters of the alphabet, but is justified by Lamentations 2, 3, 4, and Proverbs 31 according to the LXX, where Pç precedes Ayin.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psa 34:17 [The righteous] cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

Ver. 17. The righteous cry, &c.] This is often inculcated for our better assurance; because we are apt to doubt if delayed. See Psa 34:6.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18. (Psa 34:17). They cried and Jehovah heard, and fromt all their distresses delivered them. This may at first sight seem to have respect to the evil-doers of the preceding verse, who are then represented as obtaining relief from deserved judgments by humble prayer to God. But as the wicked are, in this whole passage, mentioned only incidentally, and as a kind of foil or contrast to the righteous, it seems better on the whole, to make the first verb here indefinite, men cry for help, but with special reference to the righteous of Psa 34:16 (15). God watches over the righteous to protect them—as he does over the wicked to destroy them—and whenever they cry to him for help, he saves them. This parenthetical construction of Psa 34:17 (16) is the more admissible because it contains no finite verb, whereas Psa 34:18 (17) contains three.

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (1850) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Humble penitents are objects of God's special tender regard (Psa 51:19; Isa 57:15).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 17. The righteous cry] There is no word in the present Hebrew text for righteous; but all the versions preserve it. I suppose it was lost through its similitude to the word צעקו tsaaku, they cry צעקו צדיקים tsaaku tsaddikim, the righteous cry.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17. They It is wicked men who are spoken of in the immediately preceding verse; but they here evidently refers not to them, but to the righteous, mentioned in the fifteenth verse; and, accordingly, in all the ancient versions, and in our English Bible, the words the righteous are supplied. It is supposed by those who make this supplement, that the word צדיקים, tsaddikim, has been lost out of the text. But if we read the 16th verse as a parenthesis, it will not be necessary to make any supplement, and the words may be read exactly as they are in the Hebrew, They cried.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

The righteous cry,.... The word "righteous" is not in the original text, but is rightly supplied in our version, as it is in the Targum, and by Jarchi; and so Kimchi and Ben Melech observe, that these words are not to be connected with Psa 34:16, but with Psa 34:15; and they are indeed an amplification of the last clause of it; and the cry of the righteous is meant, to which the ears of the Lord are open; though Aben Ezra thinks that these words are to be understood of them that do evil, and of their cry to the Lord, when they turn from their evil ways; but the former sense is best;

and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles; their inward troubles, through the workings of corruption in their hearts; through the violent assaults of Satan, the blasphemous thoughts he injects into them, and his solicitations of them to sin; and through divine desertions, and their outward troubles; through afflictions of body, losses of estate and friends, and the reproaches and persecutions of men; out of all these the Lord sooner or later delivers his people who cry unto him.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth - That is, one of the advantages or benefits of being righteous is the privilege of crying unto God, or of calling on his name, with the assurance that he will hear and deliver us. No one has ever yet fully appreciated the “privilege” of being permitted to call upon God; the privilege of prayer. There is no blessing conferred upon man in his present state superior to this; and no one can fully understand the force of the argument derived from this in favor of the service of God. What a world would this be - how sad, how helpless, how wretched - if there were no God to whom the guilty, the suffering, and the sorrowful might come; if God were a Being who never heard prayer at all; if he were a capricious Being who might or might not hear prayer; if He were a Being governed by fitful emotions, who would now hear the righteous, and then the wicked, and then neither, and who dispensed His favors in answer to prayer by no certain rule!

And delivereth them out of all their troubles -

(1) He often delivers them from trouble in this life in answer to prayer.

(2) he will deliver them literally from all trouble in the life to come.

The promise is not indeed, that they shall be delivered from all trouble on earth, but the idea is that God is able to rescue them from trouble here; that He often does it in answer to prayer; and that there will be, in the case of every righteous person, a sure and complete deliverance from all trouble hereafter. Compare the notes at Psa 34:6 : see Psa 34:19.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Heb. They cry, to wit, the righteous, as is manifest both from the nature of the thing, and from Psa 34:15, where they are so called, and with which this verse is to be continued, the 16th verse coming in by way of parenthesis, as is very usual in many places of Scripture.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ver. 17. The righteous cry. Like Israel in Egypt, they cry out under the heavy yoke of oppression, both of sin, temptation, care, and grief. And the Lord heareth; he is like the night watchman, who no sooner hears the alarm bell than he flies to relieve those who need him. And delivereth them out of all their troubles. No net of trouble can so hold us that the Lord cannot free us. Our afflictions may be numerous and complicated, but prayer can set us free from them all, for the Lord will show himself strong on our behalf.

Ver. 17. Afflictions and their threefold blessing.

1. They make us pray.

2. They bring us the Lord's hearing ear.

3. They afford room for joyful experience of deliverance.

Psalms 34:18*

Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth; literally, they cry, and the Lord heareth. "Cry," which by the ordinary rules of grammar should have for its subject the "evil-doers" of the preceding verse, must, it is obvious from the context, refer to the "righteous" of ver. 15, who are the predominant subject of the entire passage( vers. 15-22). And delivereth them out of all their troubles. (comp. ver. 19 and Psa_54:7)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The face of the Lord His angry face, les ires in Old French, ire, as (in Lev. 20:5): “And I will direct My face, etc.” So did Menachem (p. 143) associate it.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.