(4) Is sore pained.--Better, writhes with pain.

Terrors of death--i.e., terrors caused by death, a horror of death.

Verse 4. - My heart is sore pained within me. The attacks of his enemies (ver. 3) deeply grieve and pain the heart of the psalmist. It is not as if they were foreigners, whose hostility was to be expected. They are his own countrymen; one of them is his own familiar friend (ver. 12). Yet they threaten his life. And the terrors of death are fallen upon ms. When a king is the object of a conspiracy, he well knows, especially in the East, that nothing but his death will satisfy the conspirators. So on David, long before he made up his mind to quit Jerusalem (2 Samuel 15:14), the "terrors of death" must have fallen.

55:1-8 In these verses we have, 1. David praying. Prayer is a salve for every sore, and a relief to the spirit under every burden. 2. David weeping. Griefs are thus, in some measure, lessened, while those increase that have no vent given them. David in great alarm. We may well suppose him to be so, upon the breaking out of Absalom's conspiracy, and the falling away of the people. Horror overwhelmed him. Probably the remembrance of his sin in the matter of Uriah added much to the terror. When under a guilty conscience we must mourn in our complaint, and even strong believers have for a time been filled with horror. But none ever was so overwhelmed as the holy Jesus, when it pleased the Lord to put him to grief, and to make his soul an offering for our sins. In his agony he prayed more earnestly, and was heard and delivered; trusting in him, and following him, we shall be supported under, and carried through all trials. See how David was weary of the treachery and ingratitude of men, and the cares and disappointments of his high station: he longed to hide himself in some desert from the fury and fickleness of his people. He aimed not at victory, but rest; a barren wilderness, so that he might be quiet. The wisest and best of men most earnestly covet peace and quietness, and the more when vexed and wearied with noise and clamour. This makes death desirable to a child of God, that it is a final escape from all the storms and tempests of this world, to perfect and everlasting rest.My heart is sore pained within me,.... At the civil war in his kingdom; at the battle likely to ensue between his forces and Absalom's, and at the issue of it; see Jeremiah 4:19; this was true of Christ in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death, and he was in pain, as a woman in travail, as the word (q) here used signifies; and on the cross, when his heart, like wax, melted in the midst of his bowels;

and the terrors of death are fallen upon me; see 2 Samuel 15:14; thus it was with the human nature of Christ, when he desired, if possible, the cup might pass from him.

(q) "operuit me", Pagninus, Montanus, Gejerus, Michaelis; "operit", Cocceius; "obtegit", Junius & Tremellius; "obtexit", Piscator; so Ainsworth.