Psalms 116:3

“The sorrows of death compassed me, etc.] Christ, of whom David was a type, was a man of sorrows all his days; and in the garden he was surrounded with sorrow; exceeding sorrowful even unto death, in a view of the sins of his people imputed to him, and under a sense of wrath for them, he was about to bear; and his agonies in the article of death were very grievous, he died the painful and accursed death of the cross. This was true of David, when Saul and his men compassed him on every side, threatening to cut him off in a moment; when he despaired of life, and had the sentence of death in himself, and saw no way to escape; and such a case is that of the people of God, or they may be said to…”

“The sorrows of death - What an expression! We know of no intenser sorrows pertaining to this world than those which we associate with the dying struggle - whether our views in regard to the reality of such sorrows be correct or not. We may be - we probably are - mistaken in regard to the intensity of suffering as ordinarily experienced in death; but still we dread those sorrows more than we do anything else, and all that we dread may be experienced then. Those sorrows, therefore, become the representation of the intensest forms of suffering; and such, the psalmist says, he experienced on the occasion to which he refers. There would seem in his case to have been two things combined, as they…”

“The sorrows - Dangerous and deadly calamities. Pains - Such agonies and horrors, as dying persons use to feel. Psalms 116:7”

“116:3 It isn’t clear if the psalmist’s crisis was a literal near-death experience or if he was using the term figuratively.”

“sorrows: Psa 18:4-6, Psa 88:6, Psa 88:7; Jon 2:2, Jon 2:3; Mar 14:33-36; Luk 22:44; Heb 5:7 gat hold upon me: Heb. found me I found: Psa 32:3, Psa 32:4, Psa 38:6; Isa 53:3, Isa 53:4 Psalms 116:4”