into ישׁעי צוּר אלהי (the God of my refuge, or rock, of salvation), i.e., the God who is my saving rock (cf. 2Sa 22:3). In the predicates of God in 2Sa 22:48, 2Sa 22:49, the saving acts depicted by David in vv. 5-20 and 29-46 are summed up briefly. Instead of מוריד, “He causes to go down under me,” i.e., He subjects to me, we find in the psalm ויּדבּר, “He drives nations under me,” and מפלטי instead of מוציאי; and lastly, instead of חמס אישׁ in the psalm, we have here חמסים אישׁ, as in Psa 140:2. Therefore the praise of the Lord shall be sounded among all nations.
Verses 50-51
2Sa 22:50-51 50 Therefore will I praise Thee, O Jehovah, among the nations,
And sing praise to Thy name. 51 As He who magnifies the salvation of His king,
And showeth grace to His anointed,
To David, and his seed for ever.
The grace which the Lord had shown to David was so great, that the praise thereof could not be restricted to the narrow limits of Israel. With the dominion of David over the nations, there spread also the knowledge, and with this the praise, of the Lord who had given him the victory. Paul was therefore perfectly justified in quoting the verse before us (2Sa 22:50) in Rom 16:9, along with Deu 32:43 and Psa 117:1, as a proof that the salvation of God was intended for the Gentiles also. The king whose salvation the Lord had magnified, was not David as an individual, but David and his seed for ever-that is to say, the royal family of David which culminated in Christ. David could thus sing praises upon the ground of the promise which he had received (2Sa 7:12-16), and which is repeated almost verbatim in the last clause of 2Sa 22:51. The Chethib מגדיל is the Hiphil participle מגדּיל, according to Ps. 18:51; and the Keri מגדּול, “tower of the fulness of salvation,” is a singular conjecture. The psalm of thanksgiving, in which David praised the Lord for all the deliverances and benefits that he had experienced throughout the whole of his life, is followed by the prophetic will and testament of the great king, unfolding the importance of his rule in relation to the sacred history of the
