Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 18:15
Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
15. The waters of the sea retreat, its bed is seen, and the hidden bases of the world are laid bare, owning their Lord and Master, as of old at the Exodus when “He rebuked the Red Sea, and it was dried up.” See Exo 15:8; Psa 106:9; Nah 1:4. Cp. too Mat 8:26. Channels of the sea (2 Sam.) is the preferable reading.
were discovered ] i.e. as R.V., were laid bare, the original meaning of the word discover, which it generally retains in the A.V. Cp. Psa 29:9.
at the blast &c.] Cp. Psa 18:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Then the channels of waters were seen – In 2Sa 22:16 this is, And the channels of the sea appeared. The idea is that, by the driving of the storm and tempest, the waters were driven on heaps, leaving the bottom bare. In the place before us the word used, waters – mayim – would denote waters of any kind – seas, lakes, rivers; in the corresponding place in 2 Samuel, the word used – yam – denotes, properly, the sea or the ocean. The word rendered channels means a pipe or tube; then a channel, or bed of a brook or stream, Isa 8:7; Eze 32:6; and then the bottom of the sea or of a river. The allusion is to the effect of a violent wind, driving the waters on heaps, and seeming to leave the bed or channel bare.
The foundations of the world were discovered – Were laid open; were manifested or revealed. People seemed to be able to look down into the depths, and to see the very foundations on which the earth rests. The world is often represented as resting on a foundation, Psa 102:25; Isa 48:13; Zec 12:1; Pro 8:29; see the note at Job 38:4.
At thy rebuke – At the expression of his anger or displeasure; as if God, in the fury of the tempest, was expressing his indignation and wrath.
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils – At the breathing forth of anger, as it were, from his nostrils. See the note at Psa 18:8.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 15. The channels of water were seen] This must refer to an earthquake; for in such cases, the ground being rent, water frequently gushes out at the fissures, and often rises to a tremendous height. Whole rivers were poured out of the chasms made by the earthquake in Jamaica, A. D. 1694; and new lakes of water were formed, covering a thousand acres of land!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
By mighty and terrible earthquakes, which overturned the earth, and made its lower parts uppermost and visible.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. The tempest of the air isattended by appropriate results on earth. The language, though notexpressive of any special physical changes, represents the uttersubversion of the order of nature. Before such a God none can stand.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then the channels of water were seen,…. Or, “of the sea”; as in 2Sa 22:16. There seems to be an allusion to the drying up of the sea when the Israelites passed through it. Aben Ezra interprets this of the discovery of the secrets of enemies, and of their deep schemes and counsels, which they seek to hide, but are made known by him who sees all things in the dark; and so the following clause;
and the foundations of the world were discovered; but it rather seems to intend the utter extirpation and ruin of the Jewish nation, both in their civil and ecclesiastic state, the foundation of which was rooted up and laid bare; unless with Jerom we understand this of the ministers of the word, in whom the doctrines of grace were channelled, and who were as fountains of water; and of the foundation of the apostles and prophets made known in the Gospel: but the former sense is best; since it follows,
at thy rebuke, O Lord; at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils; for the destruction of the Jews was the effect of divine wrath and vengeance: so ends the account of the wonderful appearance of God in favour of the person the subject of this psalm, and against his enemies; the deliverance wrought for him is next described.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
15. And the sources of the waters were seen. In this verse, David doubtless alludes to the miracle which was wrought when the chosen tribes passed through the Red Sea. I have before declared the purpose for which he does this. As all the special benefits which God in old time conferred upon any of the children of Abraham as individuals, were so many testimonies by which he recalled to their remembrance the covenant which he had once entered into with the whole people, to assure them that he would always continue his grace towards them, and that one deliverance might be to them a token or pledge of their perpetual safety, and of the protection of God, David fitly conjoins with that ancient deliverance of the Church the assistance which God had sent from heaven to him in particular. As the grace which he declares God had shown towards him was not to be separated from that first deliverance, since it was, so to speak, a part and an appendage of it, he beholds, as it were at a glance, or in an instant, both the ancient miracle of the drying up of the Red Sea, and the assistance which God granted to himself. In short, God, who once opened up for his people a way through the Red Sea, and then showed himself to be their protector upon this condition, that they should assure themselves of being always maintained and preserved under his keeping, now again displayed his wonderful power in the defense and preservation of one man, to renew the remembrance of that ancient history. From this it appears the more evidently, that David, in using these apparently strange and exaggerated hyperboles, does not recite to us the mere creations of romance to please the fancy, after the manner of the heathen poets, (407) but observes the style and manner which God had, as it were, prescribed to his people. At the same time, we ought carefully to mark the reason already adverted to, which constrained him to magnify the grace of God in a style of such splendid imagery, namely, because the greater part of the people never made the grace of God the subject of serious consideration, but, either through wickedness or stupidity, passed over it with shut eyes. The Hebrew word אפיקים, aphikim, which I have rendered sources, properly signifies the channels of rivers; but David, in this passage, evidently means that the very springs or sources of the waters were laid open, and that thus it could be discerned whence proceeds the great and inexhaustible abundance of waters which supply the rivers, and by which they always continue to flow on in their course.
(407) “ En usant de ces hyperboles et similitudes qui semblent estranges et excessives ne nous recite pas des fables et contes faits a plaisir a la fakon des Poietes profanes.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(15) The channels.The description of the storm ends with the fury of the wind and the effects of the tempest on the earths surface. Comp. Psalms 29, and Milton:
Either tropic now
Gan thunder and both ends of heaven the clouds,
From many a horrid rift abortive pourd
Fierce rain with lightning mixd, water with fire,
In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rushd abroad
From the four hinges of the world and fell
On the vexd wilderness.
Par. Reg. iv. 409416.
Here, to suit the poets purpose (see next verse), the rage of the tempest is made to spend itself on the water-floods. The channels are either torrent beds (Isa. 8:7; Psa. 42:1; Job. 6:15), or as in Samuel (where for waters the text has sea) the depths of ocean. (Comp. Jon. 2:5.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. Then Emphatic: when the divine judgments had been fully executed. The psalmist describes (to Psa 18:19) the wonderful effects of the divine interference.
Channels of waters In the parallel place (2Sa 22:16) it reads, “channels of the sea.” The plural denotes the Red Sea and Jordan. Exo 14:21-22; Jos 3:15-17.
Foundations of the world The Hebrews had no knowledge of the interior of the earth below the bottom of the sea and the rocky foundations of the mountains.
Jon 2:6. The figure is in harmony with ancient geogony, and poetically admissible in any age. See notes on Psa 24:2; Psa 104:5; Psa 104:9
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 18:15. Then the channels of water were seen This is a description of the effects of the earthquake, by which the earth was riven or rent in sunder, and such clefts made in it, that the subterraneous passages of the waters were discovered by the eruption of vast quantities of water proceeding from the breaches of it, as have frequently been the effects of violent earthquakes. In that great one which happened at Jamaica in the year 1692, in some places out of the clefts issued forth whole rivers of water, spouting up a great height into the air, which seemed to threaten a deluge even twelve miles from the sea; in others, there were formed new lakes of water covering a thousand acres. Many other instances of the like sort might be mentioned. These dreadful eruptions of water may well be called the channels, or rather torrents of water, or of the sea, which discovered themselves as the effect of the earthquake. The Psalmist adds, The foundations of the world were discovered; i.e. such large and deep chasms, or apertures, were made by the violence of the shock, that one might almost see the very foundations; or, as Jonah calls them, the bottoms, or rather the extremities of the mountains, in the bottom of the sea. These may be well called the foundations of the world, as their bases run deep into the earth, and thereby add greatly to the security and stability of it. Chandler. Dr. Delaney, in his first volume, b. i. c. 11. of his Life of David, has made a judicious and pleasing comparison between this description, and a fine passage of much the same kind in the first Georgic of Virgil, to which we must refer the reader.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 18:15 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
Ver. 15. Then the channels of waters were seen ] The force of this terrible tempest is further set forth by the effect of it, a dreadful concussion of the universe; not without an allusion to the drying up of the Red Sea and of Jordan before Israel: which deliverances stood for archetypes, or chief patterns, to all posterity.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
channels. Hebrew. ‘aphikim. See note on 2Sa 22:16.
world. Hebrew. tebel = the habitable world. Greek. oikoumene.
blast. Hebrew. neshamah. App-16.
breath. Hebrew. ruach. App-9.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 18:15-17
Psa 18:15-17
“Then the channels of waters appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare,
At thy rebuke, O Jehovah,
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
He sent from on high, he took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from them that hated me; for they were too mighty for me.”
“Channels of the waters … foundations of the earth laid bare.” “This language is reminiscent of the exodus”; but it also fits the event of the Final Judgment mentioned by Zephaniah (Zep 1:2) in which all the “fishes of the sea: will be consumed on that Day when God will “cut off man from the face of the ground.” The language here will allow the meaning that the waters of the whole earth shall be dried up, exposing the “channels of the waters” and laying bare the foundations of the earth, possibly exposing the very bottoms of the seas themselves. We freely admit that this might not be what is intended here; we only affirm that the language certainly allows such an understanding of it.
At the blast of the breath of his nostrils. Again from Ash, “This line implies divine wrath. Indeed it does; and again we have another element of the Psa 18:16-17 has the psalmist’s statement of God’s saving him, drawing him out of many waters, etc. The “many waters” here are a “reference to the psalmist’s enemies.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 18:1-50. I have made one paragraph of this whole chapter because it is practically identical with 2 Samuel 22. Detailed comments are made on the chapter which is at the regular place in this commentary and will not be repeated here. The reason for giving the comments at the other place is the fact that it came in more direct connection with the history belonging to it. I will call attention to one special circumstance in the differences between the two chapters. The statements that are placed as a heading here are included in the text in 2 Samuel 22. When the collection of the Psalms of David was made into one book, the one he wrote at the time of his conflicts with Saul and other enemies was brought and included in the document. Since the two occurrences of the psalm are alike, the reader of the commentary would have no advantage offered him were I to repeat the comments in this place. I therefore urge him to see my remarks in the other place.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
channels: Psa 74:15, Psa 106:9, Exo 15:8, Jos 3:13-16, 2Sa 22:16
foundations: Psa 104:5, Job 38:4-6, Jer 31:37, Jon 2:6, Mic 6:2
O Lord: 2Ki 19:7, Job 4:9, Isa 11:4, Isa 30:27, Isa 30:28, Isa 30:33
Reciprocal: 2Sa 22:9 – went Psa 76:6 – At thy Psa 91:15 – He shall Isa 24:18 – the foundations Eze 21:31 – I will blow Hab 3:10 – the overflowing Mat 27:51 – the earth 2Th 2:8 – the spirit
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 18:15. Then the channels of waters were seen This is a description of the effects of the earthquake, by which the earth was rent in sunder, and such clefts made in it that the subterraneous passages of the waters were discovered, as has frequently been the case in violent earthquakes, whole rivers of waters sometimes issuing from the clefts, and spouting up a great height into the air. The foundations of the world were discovered That is, Such large and deep chasms, or apertures, were made by the violence of the shock that the lower parts of the earth were laid open to view, and made perfectly visible.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
18:15 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the {l} foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.
(l) That is, the deep bottoms were seen when the Red sea was divided.