kindness · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
great
גָדֹ֣לga.Dol
H1419
great (in any sense) · adjective, masculine singular absolute
heavens
שָׁמַ֣יִםsha.Ma.yim
H8064
the sky (as aloft · noun, common masculine plural absolute
truth
אֲמִתֶּֽךָ'a.mi.Te.kha
H571
stability · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
clouds
שְׁחָקִ֥יםshe.cha.Kim
H7834
a powder (as beaten small) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 108:4 For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.
Psalms 36:5 Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.
Psalms 103:11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
Isaiah 54:7-10 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
Psalms 71:19 Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great things: O God, who is like unto thee!
Hebrews 6:17-18 Where in God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
Psalms 85:10-11 Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Psalms 89:1-2 I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 57:7–end
How strangely is the tune altered here! David's prayers and complaints, by the lively actings of faith, are here, all of a sudden, turned into praises and thanksgivings; his sackcloth is loosed, he is girded with gladness, and his hallelujahs are as fervent as his hosannas. This should make us in love with prayer, that, sooner or later, it will be swallowed up in praise. Observe,
I. How he prepares himself for the duty of praise (Psa 57:7): My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed. My heart is erect, or lifted up (so some), which was bowed down, Psa 57:6. My heart is fixed, 1. With reference to God's providences; it is prepared for every event, being stayed upon God, Psa 112:7; Isa 26:3.…
As His mercy and truth, so shall His praise, fill the universe.
Next: Psalms Chapter 58
John Gill on Psalms 57:10
For thy mercy is great unto the heavens,.... Which denotes the exceeding greatness and largeness of it; as it is in the heart of God, who is plenteous in mercy; as it is expressed in the covenant of grace, where are stores of it; as it is shown forth in the choice of persons to eternal life; in the mission of Christ into this world to die for them; in the regeneration of them, the pardon of their sins, and eternal life: and this mercy is not only extended to persons in the several parts of the earth, but is as high as the heaven above it, Psalm 103:11;
and thy truth unto the clouds; the faithfulness of God in performing his purposes and his promises; or the Gospel, and the doctrines of it,…
Psalm 57:7-11
7. My heart is prepared, O God! my heart is prepared: I will sing, and give praise. 8. Awake up, my tongue: awake, psaltery and harp: I myself shall be awaked [343] at dawn of day. 9. I will praise thee, O Lord! among the peoples: I will sing unto thee among the nations. 10. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. 11. Be thou exalted, O God! above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth.
7. My heart is prepared, O God! [344] Some read fixed, or confirmed, and the Hebrew word nkvn, nacon, bears that signification as well as the other. If we adopt it, we must understand David as saying that he had well and duly meditated upon the praise…
The Church Fathers
Therefore there has risen psaltery and harp in the dawn, and he confesses to the Lord; and says what? "I will confess to You among the peoples, O Lord, and will play to You among the nations: for magnified even unto the Heavens has been Your mercy, and even unto the clouds Your truth." Heavens above clouds, and clouds below heavens: and nevertheless to this nearest heaven belong clouds. But sometimes clouds rest upon the mountains, even so far in the nearest air are they rolled. But a Heaven above there is, the habitations of Angels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers. This therefore may perchance seem to be what should have been said: "Unto the Heavens Your truth, and even unto the clouds Your mercy." For in Heaven Angels praise God, seeing the very form of truth, without any darkness of vision, without any admixture of unreality: they see, love, praise, are not wearied. There is truth: but here in our own misery surely there is mercy. For to a miserable one must be rendered mercy. For there is no need of mercy above, where is no miserable one. I have said this because that it seems as though it might have been more fittingly said, "Magnified even unto the Heavens has been Your truth, and even unto the clouds Your mercy." For "clouds" we understand to be preachers of truth, men bearing that flesh in a manner dark, whence God both gleams in miracles, and thunders in precepts.. ..Glory to our Lord, and to the Mercy of the Same, and to the Truth of the Same, because neither has He forsaken by mercy to make us blessed through His Grace, nor defrauded us of truth: because first Truth veiled in flesh came to us and healed through His flesh the interior eye of our heart, in order that hereafter face to face we may be able to see It.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Altaschith — Destroy not, the title of Ps. 57, 58, 59, and 75. It was probably the name of some song to the melody of which these psalms were to be chanted.
Truth Of God, The · Described as: Great — Described as: Great
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
In this second half of the Psalm the poet refreshes himself with the thought of seeing that for which he longs and prays realized even with the dawning of the morning after this night of wretchedness. The perfect in Psa 57:7 is the perfect of certainty; the other perfects state what preceded and is now changed into the destruction of the crafty ones themselves. If the clause כּפף נפשׁי is rendered: my soul was bowed down (cf. חלל, Psa 109:22), it forms no appropriate corollary to the crafty laying of snares. Hence kpp must be taken as transitive: he had bowed down my soul; the change of number in the mention of the enemies is very common in the Psalms relating to these trials, whether it be…
God’s glory extends to the whole universe, as will praise for his unfailing love and faithfulness.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 57:10
For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds.
For thy mercy is great unto the heavens. Right up from man's lowliness to heaven's loftiness mercy reaches. Imagination fails to guess the height of heaven, and even thus the riches of mercy exceed our highest thoughts. The psalmist, as he sits at the cave's mouth and looks up to the firmament, rejoices that God's goodness is more vast and more sublime than even the vaulted skies. And thy truth unto the clouds. Upon the cloud he sets the seal of his truth, the rainbow, which ratifies his covenant; in the cloud he hides his rain and snow, which prove his truth by bringing to us seedtime and harvest, cold and heat. Creati…
