Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the
fowler
These are the words of the psalmist, either speaking to himself,
for the encouragement of his own faith and trust in the Lord; or
to the man that dwells in the secret place, and under the shadow
of the most High; which latter seems most agreeable; though
Cocceius thinks they are the words of God in one of his Persons,
speaking of another divine Person that should deliver such that
trust in him: the Targum makes them to be the words of David to
Solomon his son. By the "fowler" and his "snare" may be meant
either Saul, who laid wait for David, spread snares for him, and
hunted him as a partridge on the mountains, from whom he was
delivered; or rather any tyrannical enemy and persecutor of the
saints, who lay snares for them; and these are broken by the
Lord, and so they escape, as a bird out of the hands of the
fowler, ( Psalms 124:6
Psalms
124:7 ) or it may, best of all, be understood of Satan and
his temptations, which are as snares that he lays to catch the
people of God in, and from which they are delivered by the power
and grace of God; see ( 1 Timothy
3:7 ) ( 2 Timothy
2:26 )
and from the noisome pestilence;
the most pernicious and destructive one; which may be literally
understood of any pestilential distemper; from which the Lord, by
his powerful providence, sometimes protects his people, when in
danger of it: or, spiritually, of the pestilential disease of
sin, that noisome and deadly one, the plague of the heart, which
is the worst of all plagues; and from the ruinous and destructive
effects and consequences of which the Lord saves his saints.