Psalms 91:10

Psa 91:10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

Ver. 10. There shall no evil befall the] No devoratory evil, as Tertullian expresseth it; nothing that tendeth ad exitium, but only ad exercitium, and such as shall end in thy good.

Neither shall any plague] What a wonderful separation made the Lord between the houses of the Israelites and the Egyptians, Exo 11:7. See Job 5:1-27, and take these places, as Psa 91:6. For it may befall a saint to share in a common calamity; as the good corn and weeds are cut down together, but for a different end and purpose,

- Non te tua plurima, Pantheu,

Labentem texit pietas -

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.

Psa_91:10

Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

Immunity from disease

That wealthy promise has not become exhausted by the lapse of time. Rather has the promise acquired a new and deeper significance, and it now embraces in its generous charge the interests of the soul. We move amid moral pestilences. Plague-stricken people are all about us--men and women afflicted with moral and spiritual diseases which carry the germs of perilous contagion. How are we to escape them? The Maser went into the very precincts of the plague, and yet was immune in the foul contagion. Disease demands prepared conditions. If the conditions are absent the contagion is impotent. What, then, was our Lords condition when he entered into fellowship with men and women who were smitten by the plague of sin? The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. How different it all was in the life of Judas Iscariot! The devil put it into the heart of Judas! The germs fell in the prepared conditions; they found a congenial lodgment, and they bore their issues in an evil life.

1. One of the primary pre-disposing conditions of disease is physical exhaustion. The natural forces are reduced. The energy is spent. The army is driven away from the walls, the gates are left undefended, and the enemy has an open way. Our physical defences are found in the natural resistances of the body. Let these be impoverished, and our security is gone. Let me change the analogy. In the life of the body we are only safe when our income exceeds our expenditure. How is it with the soul? The strength of the soul depends upon the quality of its resistances. If the soul is strong and powerful, the Pharisaic germ of hypocrisy or the microbe of actual vice will gain no foothold. But the soul can become faint. Its defences can be straitened, and the stronghold may then be easily taken at the first besiegement of sin. Now, how does a soul become exhausted? We can use our previous figure: the expenditure has exceeded the income. We have broken correspondencies with our resources. We have ignored the land of rest. Men easily capitulate to the evil one when, by neglect of prayer, they have reduced themselves to spiritual exhaustion.

2. Another of the predisposing conditions to disease is bad food. Diet is not altogether a matter of indifference when we are considering the advance of disease. Some foods are the friends of hostile microbes; they are the forerunners of disease; they prepare the way, arranging congenial conditions. How is it with the soul? Is diet of any moment? With what kind of food are we feeding the mind? Is it a food which predisposes the mind to offer hospitality to the foe? How about our reading? Let us subject ourselves to a rigorous self-investigation. Can we honestly expect our minds to be healthy with the kind of food we give them? Thoughts are foodstuff. Where, then, shall we gather them? He gave them bread from heaven to eat! The Lords bread will make us immune against disease. This is the bread, of which, if a man eat, he shall not die.

3. Another predisposing condition to disease is undisciplined emotion. The bacteriologist has told us that excessive grief and fretfulness open the doors to the invading army of disease. It is not so much some commanding emotional passion which exhausts the body; little frets can do it. We can lose a pound quite as effectually by dropping two hundred and forty pennies as by losing a sovereign. The great point to remember is, that all these dispositions lower the strength and quality of our physical defences. How is it with the soul? Undisciplined emotion is a condition against which we must be on our guard. How easily some people can be stirred into violent emotion! Now, all unharnessed emotion impoverishes the spiritual defences. The devil likes nothing better than to get our emotions well stirred, to make us satisfied with these pleasurable feelings, and then behind our satisfaction to carry on his nefarious work. Emotionalism is the forerunner of evil contagion, and provides conditions for the microbe which will end at last in the bondage of an eradical disease. Let me mention one other predisposing condition of moral and spiritual disease.

4. Our bacteriologists tell us that one of the greatest discoveries of the last generation has been the absolute necessity of scrupulous cleanliness in all surgical work. Our doctors are now vigilant to the last degree in closing every door against the entrance of dirt. Operations are performed with sterilized instruments under the most exacting conditions of cleanliness. The smallest remnant of uncleanliness affords a foothold for disease. How is it with the soul? Is there any need of the same scrupulousness? Are we as vigilant in maintaining the purity of our spirits as the surgeon is in maintaining the cleanliness of His work? Do we not rather treat small scruples lightly, and do we not laugh at the morally painstaking, and label them faddy or puritanical? We retain a dirty little prejudice, or some spirit of undue severity, or some little policy which we persuade ourselves cannot be called wrong, but only expedient; and these retained uncleannesses afford the occasion an opportunity to the enemy of our souls; and through the entrance thus obtained he leads all the forces of darkness and the strong black battalions of hell. If we are to defeat him we shall have to attend to the scruple. One grain of dirt can afford sustenance to a host of microbes. Now, let me recall the glorious promise with which I began. Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. It is possible for us to be in the world and yet not of it, to mix with sinners and yet be separate from them, to be perfectly pure and yet to go and be their minister and guest. Our only security is in God. In Him we have all-sufficient defences. (J. H. Jowett, M.A.)

Safety from disease

In 1854, when Mr. Spurgeon had scarcely been twelve months in London, there was raging there a fearful epidemic of Asiatic cholera. With all his youthful ardour he plunged at once into the work of relieving the sick and the suffering and the dying, and of burying the dead. Weary and worn with much work, he one day came back from a funeral service feeling as though he himself were a prey to the awful judgment and scourge of God. He was passing along a certain street, and he observed in the window of a shoemakers shop a paper wafered to a pane of glass, and on which were inscribed in large characters the 9th and 10th verses of the 91st psalm--Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. Mr. Spurgeon said, That was Gods message to me. I at once took heart, and from that moment I neither felt any fear of the cholera myself nor did I suffer any harm from repeated ministries upon the sick and the dying.

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ver. 10. There shall no evil befall thee, etc. It is a security in the very midst of evils. Not like the security of angelssafety in a world of safety, quiet in a calm; but it is quiet in a storm; safety amid desolation and the elements of destruction, deliverance where everything else is going to wreck. Cicaties Bradley, 1840.

Ver. 10. God doth not say no afflictions shall befall us, but no evil. Thomas Watson.

Ver. 10. Sin which has kindled a fire in hell, is kindling fires on earth continually. And when they break out, every one is asking how they happened. Amos replies, "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" And when desolation is made by fire, Isaiah declares, The Lord hath "consumed us, because of our iniquities." Many years ago my house was oft threatened to be destroyed, but the Lord insured it, by giving me Ps 91:10; and the Lord's providence is the best insurance. John Bridge.

Ver. 10.

1. The Personal Blessing.

2. The Domestic Blessing.

3. The connection between the two.

Psalms 91:11*

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

10. (Psa 91:10) There shall not happen to thee (any) evil, and a stroke shall not approach into thy tent. The first verb is a causative passive, and strictly means, shall not be suffered or allowed to happen. Evil, i.e. natural evil, suffering or distress. The word translated stroke is very commonly applied to God's strokes or afflictive judgments. See above, on Psa 38:11; Psa 39:10. Into thy tent is an expression apparently intended to qualify the promise, which might otherwise have seemed too absolute and inconsistent with the context, from which we learn that danger was to draw nigh, even to the righteous, but not so as actually to enter his tent, and take up its abode with him.

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

(10) Dwelling.—Literally, tent: an instance in which the patriarchal life became stereotyped, so to speak, in the language. (See Note, Psa_104:3.) Even we speak of “pitching our tent.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10. befall thee] Lit., be let befall thee. Cp. Pro_12:21.

thy dwelling] Lit., thy tent, a survival of the language of nomad life.

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.

There shall no evil befall thee,.... The evil of sin cleaves to the best of saints, the evil of temptations besets them, and the evil of afflictions comes upon them, as chastisements from the Lord; for they must expect to receive evil, in this sense, as well as good, from his hands; but the evil of punishment never touches them; and therefore, when any public calamity befalls them in common with others, yet not as an evil of punishment; it is not an evil to them, it is for their good:

neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling; how should it, when they dwell in God, and have made him, the most High, their habitation (u); Psa 91:1 otherwise it may come nigh their temporal dwellings; See Gill on Psa 91:7 though it may not enter into them; and, should it, yet not as an evil, or by way of punishment; see Pro 3:33.

(u) "excelsum posuisti habitaculum tuum", Pagninus, Montanus, De Dieu, Gejerus.

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

There shall no evil befall thee - The Chaldee Paraphrase has, “The Lord of the world answered and said, ‘There shall no evil befall thee,’” etc. The sentiment, however, is that the psalmist could assure such an one, from his own personal experience, that he would be safe. He had himself made Yahweh his refuge, and he could speak with confidence of the safety of doing so. This, of course, is to be understood as a general truth, in accordance with what has been said above.

Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling - On the word rendered “plague” here נגע nega‛ - see Psa 38:12, note; Psa 39:11, note. It is not the same word which is used in Psa 91:6, and translated “pestilence;” and it does not refer to what is technically called the “plague.” It may denote anything that would be expressive of the divine displeasure, or that would be sent as a punishment. The word rendered “dwelling” here means a tent; and the idea is, that no such mark of displeasure would abide with him, or enter his tent as its home. Of course, this also must be understood as a general promise, or as meaning that religion would constitute a general ground of security.

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

To wit, so as to destroy thee, as the next verse limits and expounds it. For surely this promise is not made to all that dwell nigh to his children and servants, who may possibly be wicked men, and so strangers from God’s covenant and promises. How far this secures his own person, See Poole "Psa 91:7".

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

10. Come nigh thy dwelling—The allusion is to Exo_12:23. Compare Isa_54:14

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. The faithful man is to be preserved from evil of every kind. His very "dwelling" is to be protected so that his family may suffer no hurt.

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

No evil will overtake you

The writer speaks of a person experiencing bad or evil things as if evil were a person who overtakes another person. AT: "Nothing evil will happen to you" (See: Metaphor and Personification)

no affliction will come near your home

The psalmist speaks of people who afflict others as though they were the harm they cause. AT: "no one will be able to harm your family" (See: Personification and Metonymy)

For he will direct

"Yahweh will command"

in all your ways

The psalmist speaks of the way a person lives his life as if it were a path down which the person walked. AT: "in everything you do" or "at all times" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

evil

afflicted

angel

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

No...will befall Heb. לא תאנה, will not happen. Similarly, (Exod. 21:13): “and God allowed it to happen (אנה) to his hand.”

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.