The psalmist's swift thought vibrates throughout this part of the song between his own experience and the general truths exemplified in it. He is too full of his own deliverance to be long silent about it, and, on the other hand, is continually reminded by it of the wide sweep of the beneficent laws which have been so fruitful of good to him. The most precious result of individual mercy is the vision obtained through it of the universal Lover of souls. "My God" will be widened into "our God," and "our God" will rest upon "my God," if either is spoken from the heart's depths. So in vv. 27-29 the personal element comes again to the front. The individualising name "My God" occurs in each verse, and the deliverance underlying the theophany is described in terms which prepare for the fuller celebration of victory in the last part of the psalm. God lights the psalmist's lamp, by which is meant not the continuance of his family (as the expression elsewhere means), but the preservation of his own life, with the added idea, especially in ver. 28 _b_, of prosperity. Ver. 29 tells how the lamp was kept alight, namely by the singer's victory in actual battle, in which his swift rush had overtaken the enemy, and his agile limbs had scaled their walls. The parallelism of the clauses is made more complete by the emendation adopted by Lagarde, Cheyne, Baethgen, etc., who read ver. 29 _a_, "I [can] break down a fence," but this is unnecessary. The same combination of running and climbing occurs in Joel ii. 7, and the two clauses of ver. 33 seem to repeat those of ver. 29. The swift, agile warrior, then, traces these physical powers to God, as he does more at large in later verses.
Once more, the song passes, in ver. 30, to the wider truths taught by the personal deliverance. "Our God" takes the place of "my God"; and "all who take refuge in Him" are discerned as gathering, a shadowy crowd, round the solitary psalmist, and as sharing in his blessings. The large truths of these verses are the precious fruit of distress and deliverance. Both have cleared the singer's eyes to see, and tuned his lips to sing, a God whose doings are without a flaw, whose word is like pure gold without alloy or falsehood, whose ample protection shields all who flee to its shelter, who alone is God, the fountain of strength, who stands firm for ever, the inexpugnable defence and dwelling-place of men. This burst of pure adoration echoes the tones of the glorious beginning of the psalm. Happy they who, as the result of life's experience, solve "the riddle of this painful earth," with these firm and jubilant convictions as the very foundation of their being.
The remainder of the psalm (ver. 32 to end) describes the victorious campaign of the psalmist and the establishment of his kingdom. There is difficulty in determining the tenses of the verbs in some verses, and interpreters vary between pasts and futures. The inclination of the greater number of recent commentators is to carry the historical retrospect uninterruptedly through the whole context, which, as Hupfeld acknowledges, "allerdings das bequemste ist," and those who suppose occasional futures interspersed (as the R.V. and Hupfeld) differ in the places of their introduction. "Everything here is retrospective," says Delitzsch, and certainly that view is simplest and gives unity to the whole. The name of God is never mentioned in the entire section, except as vainly invoked by the flying foe. Not till the closing doxologies does it appear again, with the frequency which marks the middle part of the psalm. A similar sparse use of it characterises the description of the theophany. In both cases there is a peculiar force given by the stream of verbs without expressed nominatives. The hurrying clauses here vividly reproduce the haste of battle, and each falls like the blow of a battle mace wielded by a strong arm. The equipment of the king for the fight (vv. 32-36), the fierce assault, flight of the foe and their utter annihilation (vv. 37-42), the extension by conquest of the singer's kingdom (vv. 43, 44), successively pass before us as we listen to the panting words with the heat of battle in them; and all rises at last into exuberant praise, which re-echoes some strains of the introductory burst of thanksgiving.