| Geneva Study Bible The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me. Wesley's Notes 18:5 Sorrows - Which brought me to the brink of the grave. Death - Had almost taken hold of me, before I was aware. King James Translators' Notes sorrows: or, cords Scofield Reference Notes Margin hell Heb. "Sheol," See Scofield Note: "Hab 2:5" Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary 5. death-and hell (compare Ps 16:10) are personified as man's great enemies (compare Re 20:13, 14). prevented-encountered me, crossed my path, and endangered my safety. He does not mean he was in their power. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 18:1-19 The first words, I will love thee, O Lord, my strength, are the scope and contents of the psalm. Those that truly love God, may triumph in him as their Rock and Refuge, and may with confidence call upon him. It is good for us to observe all the circumstances of a mercy which magnify the power of God and his goodness to us in it. David was a praying man, and God was found a prayer-hearing God. If we pray as he did, we shall speed as he did. God's manifestation of his presence is very fully described, ver. 7-15. Little appeared of man, but much of God, in these deliverances. It is not possible to apply to the history of the son of Jesse those awful, majestic, and stupendous words which are used through this description of the Divine manifestation. Every part of so solemn a scene of terrors tells us, a greater than David is here. God will not only deliver his people out of their troubles in due time, but he will bear them up under their troubles in the mean time. Can we meditate on ver. 18, without directing one thought to Gethsemane and Calvary? Can we forget that it was in the hour of Christ's deepest calamity, when Judas betrayed, when his friends forsook, when the multitude derided him, and the smiles of his Father's love were withheld, that the powers of darkness prevented him? The sorrows of death surrounded him, in his distress he prayed, Heb 5:7. God made the earth to shake and tremble, and the rocks to cleave, and brought him out, in his resurrection, because he delighted in him and in his undertaking. | 
