*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
They [1] cried, and Jehovah heard them. The Psalmist's meaning is, that they are heard as often as they cry. This is a doctrine applicable to all times; and David does not merely relate what God has done once or twice, but what he is accustomed to do. It is also a confirmation of the preceding sentence, where he had said that the ears of the Lord are open to the cry of the righteous; for he now demonstrates by the effect, that God is not deaf when we lay our complaints and groanings before him. By the word cry we are taught, that although God defend the righteous, they are not exempt from adversity. He regulates the protection which he affords them in such a wonderful manner, as that he notwithstanding exercises them by various trials. In like manner, when we here see that deliverance is promised only to those who call upon God, this ought to prove no small encouragement to us to pray to him; for it is not his will that the godly should so regard his providence as to indulge in idleness, but rather that, being firmly persuaded that he is the guardian of their safety, they should direct their prayers and supplications to him.
1 - It is wicked men who are spoken of in the immediately preceding verse; but they here evidently refers not to them, but to the righteous, mentioned in the fifteenth verse; and, accordingly, in all the ancient versions, and in our English Bible, the words the righteous are supplied. It is supposed by those who make this supplement, that the word tsdyqym, tsaddikim, has been lost out of the text. But if we read the 16th verse as a parenthesis, it will not be necessary to make any supplement, and the words may be read exactly as they are in the Hebrew, They cried.
The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth - That is, one of the advantages or benefits of being righteous is the privilege of crying unto God, or of calling on his name, with the assurance that he will hear and deliver us. No one has ever yet fully appreciated the "privilege" of being permitted to call upon God; the privilege of prayer. There is no blessing conferred upon man in his present state superior to this; and no one can fully understand the force of the argument derived from this in favor of the service of God. What a world would this be - how sad, how helpless, how wretched - if there were no God to whom the guilty, the suffering, and the sorrowful might come; if God were a Being who never heard prayer at all; if he were a capricious Being who might or might not hear prayer; if He were a Being governed by fitful emotions, who would now hear the righteous, and then the wicked, and then neither, and who dispensed His favors in answer to prayer by no certain rule!
And delivereth them out of all their troubles -
(1) He often delivers them from trouble in this life in answer to prayer.
(2) he will deliver them literally from all trouble in the life to come.
The promise is not indeed, that they shall be delivered from all trouble on earth, but the idea is that God is able to rescue them from trouble here; that He often does it in answer to prayer; and that there will be, in the case of every righteous person, a sure and complete deliverance from all trouble hereafter. Compare the notes at Psalm 34:6 : see Psalm 34:19.
The righteous cry - There is no word in the present Hebrew text for righteous; but all the versions preserve it. I suppose it was lost through its similitude to the word צעקו tsaaku, they cry צעקו צדיקים tsaaku tsaddikim, the righteous cry.
The righteous cry,.... The word "righteous" is not in the original text, but is rightly supplied in our version, as it is in the Targum, and by Jarchi; and so Kimchi and Ben Melech observe, that these words are not to be connected with Psalm 34:16, but with Psalm 34:15; and they are indeed an amplification of the last clause of it; and the cry of the righteous is meant, to which the ears of the Lord are open; though Aben Ezra thinks that these words are to be understood of them that do evil, and of their cry to the Lord, when they turn from their evil ways; but the former sense is best;
and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles; their inward troubles, through the workings of corruption in their hearts; through the violent assaults of Satan, the blasphemous thoughts he injects into them, and his solicitations of them to sin; and through divine desertions, and their outward troubles; through afflictions of body, losses of estate and friends, and the reproaches and persecutions of men; out of all these the Lord sooner or later delivers his people who cry unto him.
Humble penitents are objects of God's special tender regard (Psalm 51:19; Isaiah 57:15).
*More commentary available at chapter level.