Psalm 144:7
Send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children;
Send thine hand from above,.... From the high heavens, as the Targum; that is, exert and display thy power in my deliverance, and in the destruction of my enemies; as follows:
rid me, and deliver me out of great waters; out of great afflictions, which, for quantity and quality, are like many waters, overflowing and overwhelming; see Isaiah 43:2; or out of the hands of enemies, many, mighty, and strong, whom he compares to waters; as Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and Ben Melech observe: and so the Targum,
"deliver me from the multitudes or armies, that are like to many waters;''
see Revelation 17:1. It may be applied to the sorrows and sufferings of Christ, the antitype of David, with which he was overwhelmed; to the billows of divine wrath which went over him; to the floods of ungodly men that encompassed him; and to the whole posse of devils, Satan, and his principalities and powers, that attacked him; see Psalms 18:4;
from the hand of strange children; which explains what is meant by "great waters": wicked men chiefly; either Gentiles, the children of a people of a strange nation, and of a strange language, and of strange sentiments of religion, and that worship a strange god: such as the Edomites, Moabites, Philistines, &c. who were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise: or else the Israelites, who were degenerated from their ancestors, such of David's subjects that rebelled against him; so the Ziphims are called strangers that rose up against him, Psalms 54:3; and such were the enemies of Christ, both the Romans, who were Heathens and aliens; and the people of the Jews, his own countrymen, who were a generation of vipers; see Acts 4:27; such as Juvenal calls {l} "filii morum", who inherited the vices of their fathers.
{l} Satyr. 14. v. 52.