Psalms 41:3

The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

Sickness

No one who has not felt the pains of sickness can fully appreciate the blessing of health. The lassitude and sufferings of sickness are hard to bear; and yet it is a wholesome discipline, which all of us greatly need. The design of sickness may be threefold. Sometimes it is sent to punish the wicked (1 Samuel 5:6). Or to try the patience and constancy of the righteous. Or to show forth God’s glory (John 9:3; John 11:4).

I. Our duty toward the sick, who may need assistance, Those who are well off in life, can have things arranged to suit themselves. The large and well-ventilated room, the comfortable bed with its clean and wholesome linen, the varied delicacies to suit the morbid appetite, the gentle and unwearied attentions of kindred and friends--all this, and more, money may readily command. But there are many who can have no such alleviation to their suffering. The kind physician comes--may God reward at the last day the many visits of mercy which he makes to the afflicted poor. But he leaves directions that the sick man should be kept quiet. Quiet indeed! He may as well command the mill dam to stop its ceaseless roar, or the hard hailstones not to rattle upon the roof. The minister of God arrives he asks of the welfare of the sick. He prays for his recovery. His petition in such a case is nothing more nor less than asking God to work a miracle in the sufferer’s behalf, because he must be left in “a condition much more likely to make a well man sick, than a sick man well.”

II. Think seriously of the time when all will be called to lie down upon the bed of languishing. There will be some morning of your lives, when business will be going on in the shops, and on the streets, but you will be far otherwise engaged. And suppose you that the bed of sickness is a convenient or suitable place to arrange your long-neglected account with God? (A. M. Sadleir.)

The sick man healed

The precise meaning of this verse is questioned, some regarding both clauses as descriptive of tender nursing, which sustains the drooping head and smooths the crumpled bedding, while others, noting that the word rendered “bed” in the second clause means properly “lying down,” take that clause as descriptive of turning sickness into convalescence. The latter meaning gives it a more appropriate ending to the strophe, as it leaves the sick man healed, not tossing on a disordered bed, as the other explanation does. Jehovah does not half cure. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)