Psalms 56:8

“Awake up, my glory, etc.] Meaning his soul, whom Jacob calls his honour, (<014906>Genesis 49:6); it being the most honourable, glorious, and excellent part of man; is the breath of God, of his immediate production; is a spirit incorporeal and immortal; is possessed of glorious powers and faculties; had the image of God stamped upon it, which made man the glory of God, (<461107>1 Corinthians 11:7); and has the image of Christ on it in regenerated persons; and is that with which God and Christ are glorified; and is, upon all accounts, of great worth and value, even of more worth than the whole world: and this sometimes in the saints is as it were asleep, and needs awaking; not in a literal…”

“God is mindful of his exile and remembers his tears. The custom of bottling the tears of mourners as a memorial, which has existed in some Eastern nations, may explain the figure.”

“Thou tellest my wanderings - Thou dost “number” or “recount” them; that is, in thy own mind. Thou dost keep an account of them; thou dost notice me as I am driven from one place to another to find safety. “My wanderings,” to Gath, 1 Samuel 21:10; to the cave of Adullam, 1 Samuel 22:1; to Mizpeh, in Moab, 1 Samuel 22:3; to the forest of Hareth, 1 Samuel 22:5; to Keilah, 1 Samuel 23:5; to the wilderness of Ziph, 1 Samuel 23:14; to the wilderness of Maon, 1 Samuel 23:25; to En-gedi, 1 Samuel 24:1-2. Put thou my tears into thy bottle - The tears which I shed in my wanderings. Let them not fall to the ground and be forgotten. Let them be remembered by thee as if they were gathered up and placed…”

“Wanderings - How I have been hunted from place to place. Put - Regard and pity them. Are they not - But why do I pray to God to do that which he hath already done? Psalms 56:12”

“56:8 The psalmist makes a play on the Hebrew words translated sorrows (Hebrew nod) and bottle (Hebrew no’d).”

“tellest: Psa 105:13, Psa 105:14, Psa 121:8; Num. 33:2-56; Sa1 19:18, Sa1 22:1-5, Sa1 27:1; Isa 63:9; Co2 11:26; Heb 11:8, Heb 11:13, Heb 11:38 put: Psa 39:12, Psa 126:5, Psa 126:6; Kg2 20:5; Job 16:20; Rev 7:17 are they: Psa 139:16; Mal 3:16; Mat 10:30; Rev 20:12 Psalms 56:9”

“What the poet prays for in Psa 56:8, he now expresses as his confident expectation with which he solaces himself. נד ( Psa 56:9) is not to be rendered "flight," which certainly is not a thing that can be numbered (Olshausen); but "a being fugitive," the unsettled life of a fugitive ( Pro 27:8), can really be numbered both by its duration and its many temporary stays here and there. And upon the fact that God, that He whose all-seeing eye follows him into every secret hiding-place of the desert and of the rocks, counteth (telleth) it, the poet lays great stress; for he has long ago learnt to despair of man. The accentuation gives special prominence to נדי as an emphatically placed object, by…”