Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

17 He reached out of the height, He laid hold of me; Drew me out of great waters: 18 Saved me from my enemy strong; From my haters, because they were too strong for me. 19 They fell upon me in my day of calamity: Then Jehovah became my stay, 20 And led me out into a broad place; Delivered me, because He had pleasure in me. The Lord stretched His hand from the height into the deep abysses, which had been uncovered through the threatening of the wrath of God, and drew out the sinking man. ישׁלח without יד is used to denote the stretching out of the hand, and in the sense of reaching out to a thing (as in Sa2 6:6). רבּים מים (great waters) does not refer to the enemy, but to the calamities and dangers (waves of death and streams of Belial, Sa2 22:5) into which the enemies of the Psalmist had plunged him. ימשׁני, from משׁה (Exo 2:10), from which the name of Moses was derived, to whom there is probably an allusion made. As Moses was taken out of the waters of the Nile, so David was taken out of great (many) waters. This deliverance is still further depicted in a more literal terms in Sa2 22:18. עז איבי, my enemy strong, poetical for my strong enemy, does not refer to one single enemy, namely Saul; but, as the parallel "my haters" shows, is a poetical personification of all his enemies. They were stronger than David, therefore the Lord had to deliver him with an almighty hand. The "day of calamity" in which the enemy fell upon him (קדּם: see at Sa2 22:6) was the time when David wandered about in the desert helpless and homeless, fleeing from the pursuit of Saul. The Lord was then his support, or a staff on which he could support himself (vid., Psa 23:4), and led him out of the strait into the broad, i.e., into a broad space where he could move freely, because God had pleasure in him, and had chosen him in His grace to be His servant. This reason for his deliverance is carried out still further in what follows.