Psalms 25:18

Look upon mine affliction - See my distressed condition, and thy eye will affect thy heart.

Forgive all my sins - My sins are the cause of all my sufferings; forgive these.

This is the verse which should begin with the letter ק koph; but, instead of it, we have ר resh both here, where it should not be, and in the next verse where it should be. Dr. Kennicott reads קומה kumah, "arise," and Houbigant, קצר ketsar, "cut short." The word which began with ק koph has been long lost out of the verse, as every version seems to have read that which now stands in the Hebrew text.

Look upon mine affliction and my pain - See Psalm 25:16. This is a repetition of earnest pleading - as if God still turned away from him, and did not deign to regard him. In trouble and distress piety thus pleads with God, and repeats the earnest supplication for His help. Though God seems not to regard the prayer, faith does not fail, but renews the supplication, confident that He will still hear and save.

And forgive all my sins - The mind, as above remarked, connects trouble and sin together. When we are afflicted, we naturally inquire whether the affliction is not on account of some particular transgressions of which we have been guilty; and even when we cannot trace any direct connection with sin, affliction suggests the general fact that we are sinners, and that all our troubles are originated by that fact. One of the benefits of affliction, therefore, is to call to our remembrance our sins, and to keep before the mind the fact that we are violators of the law of God. This connection between suffering and sin, in the sense that the one naturally suggests the other, was more than once illustrated in the miracles performed by the Saviour. See Matthew 9:2.