Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

Attend to my supplication: for I am brought very low. Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

Attend Thou unto my loud cry, For I have become very low, Deliver Thou me from my pursuers, For they have been stronger than I.

Give ear to my cry, for I am made very low: take me out of the hands of my haters, for they are stronger than I.

I have cried unto Thee, O LORD; I have said: 'Thou art my refuge, My portion in the land of the living.'

Attend unto my cry - Give ear to me when I cry to thee. Do not turn away and refuse to hear me.
For I am brought very low - I am reduced greatly; I am made very poor. The language would be applicable to one who had been in better circumstances, and who had been brought down to a condition of danger, of poverty, of want. It is language which is commonly applied to poverty.
Deliver me from my persecutors - Saul and his followers.
For they are stronger than I - More in number; better armed; better suited for battle.

I am brought very low - Never was I so near total ruin before.
Deliver me from my persecutors - They are now in full possession of the only means of my escape.
They are stronger than I - What am I and my men against this well-appointed armed multitude, with their king at their head.

Attend unto my cry,.... His prayer and supplication for help in his distress, which he desires might be hearkened unto and answered;
for I am brought very low; in his spirit, in the exercise of grace, being in great affliction, and reduced to the utmost extremity, weakened, impoverished, and exhausted; wanting both men and money to assist him, Psalm 79:8;
deliver me from my persecutors; Saul and his men, who were in pursuit of him with great warmth and eagerness;
for they are stronger than I; more in number, and greater in strength; Saul had with him three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, ablebodied men, and expert in war; veteran troops, and in high spirits, with their king at the head of them; David had about six hundred men, and these poor mean creatures, such as were in distress, in debt, and discontented, and in want of provisions, and dispirited; see 1-Samuel 22:2. So the spiritual enemies of the Lord's people are stronger than they, Jeremiah 31:11.

(Compare Psalm 17:1).

His request now ascends all the more confident of being answered, and becomes calm, being well-grounded in his feebleness and the superiority of his enemies, and aiming at the glorifying of the divine Name. In Psalm 142:7 רנּתי calls to mind Psalm 17:1; the first confirmation, Psalm 79:8, and the second, Psalm 18:18. But this is the only passage in the whole Psalter where the poet designates the "distress" in which he finds himself as a prison (מסגּר). V. 8b brings the whole congregation of the righteous in in the praising of the divine Name. The poet therefore does not after all find himself so absolutely alone, as it might seem according to Psalm 142:5. He is far from regarding himself as the only righteous person. He is only a member of a community or church whose destiny is interwoven with his own, and which will glory in his deliverance as its own; for "if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it" (1-Corinthians 12:26). We understand the differently interpreted יכתּירוּ after this "rejoicing with" (συγχαίρει). The lxx, Syriac, and Aquilaz render: the righteous wait for me; but to wait is כּתּר and not הכתּיר. The modern versions, on the other hand, almost universally, like Luther after Felix Pratensis, render: the righteous shall surround me (flock about me), in connection with which, as Hengstenberg observes, בּי denotes the tender sympathy they fell with him: crowding closely upon me. But there is no instance of a verb of surrounding (אפף, סבב, סבב, עוּד, עטר, הקּיף) taking בּ; the accusative stands with הכתּיר in Habakkuk 1:4, and כּתּר in Psalm 22:13, in the signification cingere. Symmachus (although erroneously rendering: τὸ ὄνομά σου στεφανώσονται δίκαιοι), Jerome (in me coronabuntur justi), Parchon, Aben-Ezra, Coccejus, and others, rightly take יכתּירוּ as a denominative from כּתר, to put on a crown or to crown (cf. Proverbs 14:18): on account of me the righteous shall adorn themselves as with crowns, i.e., shall triumph, that Thou dealest bountifully with me (an echo of Psalm 13:6). According to passages like Ps 64:11; Psalm 40:17, one might have expected בּו instead of בּי. But the close of Ps 22 (Psalm 22:23.), cf. Psalm 140:12., shows that בי is also admissible. The very fact that David contemplates his own destiny and the destiny of his foes in a not merely ideal but foreordainedly causal connection with the general end of the two powers that stand opposed to one another in the world, belongs to the characteristic impress of the Psalm of David that come from the time of Saul's persecution.