For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.
David pours out his prayer in extremity, fleeing into the cave with danger pressing upon him. The psalm divides into two movements: first his urgent plea for mercy, then his confident rise to praise. We cannot settle what Al-tascheth means, whether it names a familiar tune or catches his own desperate cry, but either way, the inscription marks the circumstance of true anguish in which these words were born.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 57:1-11
For thy mercy is great unto the heavens. Right up from man's lowliness to heaven's loftiness mercy reaches. Imagination fails to guess the height of heaven, and even thus the riches of mercy exceed our highest thoughts. The psalmist, as he sits at the cave's mouth and looks up to the firmament, rejoices that God's goodness is more vast and more sublime than even the vaulted skies.
Prayer, when it works by true faith, turns at once into praise; sackcloth is loosed and replaced with gladness. The heart must be fixed first, prepared for every event by being stayed on God, before the tongue can truly sing His glory.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 57:7-11