GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
Our help is in the name of the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.

King James Bible
Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Darby Bible Translation
Our help is in the name of Jehovah, the maker of heavens and earth.

English Revised Version
Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Webster's Bible Translation
Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

World English Bible
Our help is in the name of Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. A Song of Ascents.

Young's Literal Translation
Our help is in the name of Jehovah, Maker of the heavens and earth!

Cross References

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.

Psalm 115:15 May you be blessed of the LORD, Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:2 My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 134:3 May the LORD bless you from Zion, He who made heaven and earth.

Commentary

Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

Verses 6-8

Here the psalmist further magnifies the great deliverance God had lately wrought for them.

I. That their hearts might be the more enlarged in thankfulness to him (v. 6): Blessed be the Lord. God is the author of all our deliverances, and therefore he must have the glory of them. We rob him of his due if we do not return thanks to him. And we are the more obliged to praise him because we had such a narrow escape. We were delivered, 1. Like a lamb out of the very jaws of a beast of prey: God has not given us as a prey to their teeth, intimating that they had no power over God's people but what was given them from above. They could not be a prey to their teeth unless God gave them up, and therefore they were rescued, because God would not suffer them to be ruined. 2. Like a bird, a little bird (the word signifies a sparrow), out of the snare of the fowler. The enemies are very subtle and spiteful; they lay snares for God's people, to bring them into sin and trouble, and to hold them there. Sometimes they seem to have prevailed so far as to gain their point. God's people are taken in the snare, and are as unable to help themselves out as any weak and silly bird is; and then is God's time to appear for their relief, when all other friends fail; then God breaks the snare, and turns the counsel of the enemies into foolishness: The snare is broken and so we are delivered. Isaac was saved when he lay ready to be sacrificed. Jehovah-jireh-in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

II. That their hearts, and the hearts of others, might be the more encouraged to trust in God in the like dangers (v. 8): Our help is in the name of the Lord. David had directed us (Ps. 121:2) to depend upon God for help as to our personal concerns-My help is in the name of the Lord; here as to the concerns of the public-Our help is so. It is a comfort to all that lay the interests of God's Israel near their hearts that Israel's God is the same that made the world, and therefore will have a church in the world, and can secure that church in times of the greatest danger and distress. In him therefore let the church's friends put their confidence, and they shall not be put to confusion.

Calvin's Commentary

6. Blessed be Jehovah! who gave us not for a prey to their teeth [79] 7. Our soul has been rescued as a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare has been broken, and we have been delivered [80] 8. Our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.

6. Blessed be Jehovah! The Psalmist now exhorts the godly to a grateful acknowledgment of the divine goodness, and as it were puts words into their mouth. Here also he shows by another similitude, that it would have been all over with them had not God succoured them; affirming that they were delivered not otherwise than if some one had plucked the prey from the teeth of a wild and cruel beast. Of the same import is the third similitude, That they were on all sides entrapped and entangled in the snares of their enemies, even as little birds caught in the net he stretched under the hand of the fowler; and that when they were delivered, it was just as if one should set at liberty birds which had been taken. The amount is, that the people of God, feeble, without counsel, and destitute of aid, had not only to deal with blood-thirsty and furious beasts, but were also ensnared by bird-nets and stratagems, so that being greatly inferior to their enemies as well in policy as in open force, they were besieged by many deaths. From this it may be easily gathered that they were miraculously preserved.

8. Our help is in the name of Jehovah. David here extends to the state of the Church in all ages that which the faithful had already experienced. As I interpret the verse, he not only gives thanks to God for one benefit, but affirms that the Church cannot continue safe except in so far as she is protected by the hand of God. His object is to animate the children of God with the assured hope, that their life is in perfect safety under the divine guardianship. The contrast between the help of God, and other resources in which the world vainly confides, as we have seen in Psalm 20:7,

"Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,"

is to be noticed, that the faithful, purged from all false confidence, may betake themselves exclusively to his succor, and depending upon it, may fearlessly despise whatever Satan and the world may plot against them. The name of God is nothing else than God himself; yet it tacitly conveys a significant idea, implying that as he has disclosed to us his grace by his word, we have ready access to him, so that in seeking him we need not go to a distance, or follow long circuitous paths. Nor is it without cause that the Psalmist again honors God with the title of Creator. We know with what disquietude our minds are agitated till they have raised the power of God to its appropriate elevation, that, the whole world being put under, it alone may be pre-eminent; which cannot be the case unless we are persuaded that all things are subject to his will. He did not show once and in a moment his power in the creation of the world and then withdraw it, but he continually demonstrates it in the government of the world. Moreover, although all men freely and loudly confess that God is the Creator of heaven and of earth, so that even the most wicked are ashamed to withhold from him the honor of this title, yet no sooner does any terror present itself to us than we are convicted of unbelief in hardly setting any value whatever upon the help which he has to bestow.

Footnotes:

[79] The Church's escape, be it observed, as appears from verse third, is likened to a rescue from the jaws of a ferocious animal, which swallows its prey quick, or alive.

[80] The reader will perceive, that as the imagery goes on it becomes the more beautiful. Pleasing and tender ideas are associated with the escape of an innocent bird from the snares which the art and cruelty of man had contrived, to deprive it of life, or rob it of liberty.

Links

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New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. All rights reserved. For Permission to Quote Information visit http://www.lockman.org.

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