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Have we heard of that day? Is it a day in some exhausted calendar? Is this an ancient phrase that needs to be interpreted to us by men cunning in the use of language and in the history of terms? It might have been spoken in our own tongue: we might ourselves have spoken it. So criticism has no place here; only sympathy has a fight to utter these words; they would perish under a process of etymological vivisection; they bring with them healing, comfort, release, and contentment when spoken by the voice of sympathy. Is the day of trouble a whole day — twelve hours long? Is it a day that cannot be distinguished from night? and does it run through the whole circle of the twenty-four hours? Is it a day of that kind at all? In some instances is it not a life day, beginning with the first cry of infancy, concluding with the last sigh of old age? Is it a day all darkness, without any rent in the cloud, without any hint of light beyond the infinite burden of gloom? Whatever it is, it is provided for; it is recognised as a solemn fact in human life, and it is provided for by the grace and love of the eternal God. He knows every hour of the day — precisely how the day is made up; He knows the pulse beat of every moment; He is a God nigh at hand; so that we have no sorrow to tell Him by way of information, but only sorrow to relate that with it we may sing some hymn to His grace. The whole world is made kin by this opening expression. There is no human face, rightly read, that has not in it lines of sorrow — peculiar, mystic writing of long endurance, keen disappointment, hope deferred, mortification of soul unuttered in speech, but graved as with an iron tool upon the soul and the countenance.

(Joseph Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee;

WEB: May Yahweh answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob set you up on high,