Psalms 30:1-3

An Expression Of Gratitude To YHWH For His Deliverance From Death (Psalms 30:1).

Psalms 30:1

I will exalt you, O YHWH, for you have raised me up,

And have not made my foes to rejoice over me.

O YHWH my God, I cried to you, and you have healed me.

O YHWH, you have brought up my soul from Sheol,

You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.

The Psalmist praises God for having raised him up (Psalms 30:1) and healed him (Psalms 30:2). He had been very conscious of two things while he was ill, firstly that his opponents had been waiting, hoping that he would die so that they could then rejoice over his coffin and pursue their own ends, and secondly of the gaping jaws of the grave that had been waiting to receive him and had been seeking to drag him in. But he recognised that God in His goodness had thwarted both and had spoiled their hopes. God had triumphed on his behalf. His soul had not, of course, actually been in Sheol, it was just that it had seemed to be so as he lay there in his fever, for God had ‘kept him alive', and had not allowed him to go down into the Pit. The ideas of Sheol (the grave world) and the Pit are parallel. They are the places where the dead go.

Note the parallel ‘I will exalt you' because ‘you have raised me up'. He cannot raise up God, for it is God Who is the giver, but he can at least lift up His Name in order that it might be exalted. And that he will do with all his heart.