(26) They mount up.--

"Tollimur in c?lum curvato gurgite, et idem

Subducta ad Manes imos desedimus unda."

VIRGIL: 'n. iii. 564.

Their soul is melted.--The recollection of seasickness is the best comment on this and the next verse.

Verse 26. - They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths. Tossed on the foaming billows, now carried up until they seem almost to touch the sky (see Genesis 11:4), anon sinking into the trough of the sea, and as it were swallowed up in its depths. Their soul is melted because of trouble; or, "their soul melteth away in the trouble" (Cheyne).

107:23-32 Let those who go to sea, consider and adore the Lord. Mariners have their business upon the tempestuous ocean, and there witness deliverances of which others cannot form an idea. How seasonable it is at such a time to pray! This may remind us of the terrors and distress of conscience many experience, and of those deep scenes of trouble which many pass through, in their Christian course. Yet, in answer to their cries, the Lord turns their storm into a calm, and causes their trials to end in gladness.They mount up to the heaven,.... The waves which are lifted up by the stormy wind, and the ships which are upon them, and the men in them.

They go down again to the depths: one while they seem to reach the skies, and presently they are down, as it were, in the bottom of the sea, and are threatened to be buried in the midst of it; distress at sea is described in much the same language by Virgil and Ovid (m).

Their soul is melted because of trouble; because of the danger of being cast away; so it was with Jonah's mariner's, and with the disciples in the storm; sea roaring, and men's hearts failing for fear, are joined together in Luke 21:25.

(m) "Tollimur in coelum", Virgil. Aeneid 3. prope finem. "Coelumque aequare videtur pontus". Ovid. Metamorph. l. 12. Fab. 10.