Standing at the head of the fifth book of the Psalms, this Psalm voices the theme of

that book which embraces Psalms 107:-150: Those who are called upon to "say so" are

those who are called the redeemed of the Lord, and who have been redeemed from the

hand of the enemy. The reference to the gathering of this redeemed people from the

lands of the east and west, north and south, clearly looks to that day when Israel's

dispersion shall be over and the ransomed of the Lord shall have returned to their rest and

their inheritance.

There is much in the Psalm, however, that applies to the redeemed of all

dispensations, and it is with the desire that the redeemed of the Lord may be encouraged

to "say so" that we draw attention to the experiences detailed in the body of the Psalm.

The necessity for redemption is brought before us in four tableaux, each leading on to the

extreme condition of the lost, and the gracious intervention when all hope in self had

Let us see the four pictures together, and observe their parallels and contrasts.

The first picture sums up mankind in the one word "lost". The "solitary" way of

verse 4 means a trackless, pathless desert. The Hebrew word occurs in the A.V. as the

proper noun Jeshimon in six passages (see Numb. 21: 20, etc.). There, no "city to dwell

in" is to be found. It is a picture of unrest and anxiety. Added to the bewilderment of the

trackless desert and the comfortless character of its uninhabitable dreariness is "hunger

and thirst". Their condition is summed up in the words, "their soul fainted in them".

Thirst is often used in a figurative sense in association with a felt need for the presence of

God:--