“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.” -Psalm 40:1–3
The Psalmist waited hopefully, and rightly so, because the Lord acted. The metaphor used to describe his deliverance reminds us of the occasion when Jeremiah was held captive in a dung/mud pit, though this would happen later in history (Jeremiah 38).
The expression, “pit of destruction,” can be rendered numerous ways, but the sense of the expression gives us an image of a pit at the bottom of which is only a deep collection of residue slime, the way the bottom of a vessel looks after all the water has been evaporated and only the sludge remains.
The use of the word “pit” is not arbitrary. It figures into the metaphor reminding us of the grave, of which it is frequently synonymous in biblical and in other literature. In other words, the Psalmist was as good as dead; he was doomed with no hope of rescuing himself.
But the Lord did not just lift him out of the miry bog of death. He established the Psalmist, put his foot on solid ground, specifically, on a rock that made his steps secure. This also is no capricious choice of words. The metaphor of the Rock has a biblical history of being synonymous with Messiah (1 Corinthians 10:4 cf. Exodus 17:6 and see also Matthew 7:24-27).
Finally, The Lord not only lifted him from the pit of destruction and establish his feet solidly on the rock, but he also put a new song in his mouth, a song of praise to God that testifies to the world of God’s goodness. And because of what the Lord has done—let us not lose sight of who the actor is in the passage—many will see God’s transformative work in the life of the fallen and fear! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), and the now wise people will put their trust in the Lord.
“This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” -Psalm 118:23