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PSALM 30

A Psalm, a Song at the dedication of the house of David,

1. I will extol you, O jehovah, for you have raised me up, and not suffered my foes to rejoice over me.
2. O jehovah, my god, I cried to you, and you have healed me.
3. O jehovah, you have brought up my soul from hell; you have kept me alive from them that go down to the pit.
4. Sing to jehovah, O you his saints, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
5. For his anger is but for a moment, in his favour is life; weeping may endure for a night, but in the morning there is singing.
6. And in my security I said, I shall never be moved.
7. O jehovah, in your favour you have made my mountain to stand strong; you did hide your face, I was troubled.
8. Unto you, O jehovah, I cried, and to you, O jehovah, did I make my supplication.
9. What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit? Shall dust praise you? Shall it declare your truth?
10. Hear, O jehovah, have mercy upon me; O jehovah, be you my helper.
11. You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and girded me with joy.
12. Therefore my glory shall sing praise to you and not be silent; O jehovah my god, I will give thanks to you for ever.

Verse 2. You have healed me. That hereby is signified that the lord alone preserves from evils, appears from the signification of healing, as denoting to cure and also to preserve from evils, for when diseases signify evils, to heal signifies their cure and preservation from them; as also in several passages in the Word; thus in Moses, "I kill and make alive, I smite and heal," Deut 32:39: and in Jeremiah, "Heal me jehovah, that I may be healed, preserve me that I may be preserved," Jer 17:14; again, "I will cause health to come up upon you, and I will heal you of your plagues," Jer 30:17. And in David, "You have turned his whole bed in his disease; I said, jehovah have mercy upon me, heal my soul because I have sinned against you" Psalm 41:3, 4; besides in many other passages, as Isaiah 6:10; 53:5; 57:18, 19. Jer 3:22; and because to heal has this signification, the lord also calls himself a physician, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the just but sinners to repentance," Matt 9:12, 13; Mark 2:17. Luke 5:31, 32. AC 8365.

There were three reasons why faith in the lord healed the sick in the gospel, the first was, their acknowledging his Divine Omnipotence, and that he was god; the second was, because faith is acknowledgement and from acknowledgement contemplation, and all contemplation from acknowledgement causes another to be present, which is a common thing in the spiritual world, in this case therefore contemplation from the acknowledgement of the lord's Omnipotence, which was the acknowledgement from which they were first to view the lord, when a new church should be established by him; hence it may appear, what is there understood by faith: the third reason was, that all the diseases which the lord healed, represented and thence signified spiritual diseases, to which natural diseases correspond, and spiritual diseases cannot be healed except by the lord, and indeed by looking to his Divine Omnipotence, and by repentance of the life, wherefore also he sometimes said, your sins are remitted you, go and sin no more; this faith also was represented and signified by their miraculous faith: but the faith whereby spiritual diseases are healed by the lord, can only be given by truths from the Word, and by a life according to them, the truths themselves and the life according to them constituting the quality of the faith. AE 815.

Verse 7. You did hide your faces and I was troubled. For the proper signification of hiding the face, when applied to jehovah, or the lord, see the extract from the AE at verse 9 of chap. xxvii.

Verse 11. You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sackcloth, and girded me with joy. Dancing is here predicated of truths, and joy of goods, as also in other passages of the Word;. thus to put off sackcloth denotes to take away mourning over destroyed good, for by putting on sackcloth is signified mourning on account of the destruction of good. AC 4779.