Psalms 142:3
When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.
The verse is David's prayer from deep affliction while fleeing Saul, when he was overwhelmed and hunted yet knew God saw the path he walked. His distress gave rise to a psalm that assured his soul, and shows that God's chosen may endure long hardship before being raised up. Being overwhelmed describes being brought low and fainting inwardly under trouble, in a condition of sore need for God's help.
The snare means enemies in darkness secretly laid a trap along the very way walked, to hedge the way and plan the soul's overthrow. The verse teaches crying aloud to the Lord who knows all sorrow when no one else is near, pouring out wants, wishes, trouble and complaint in deep supplication before His throne, and making Him refuge and stay in that danger. When the spirit is overwhelmed within, God still knows the person's path, even with the hidden snare upon it.
God knows that path with gracious pity as Father toward the sufferings of the weak and weary frame, seeing even what is best concealed from human eyes, and that knowledge tranquillizes and heals. That knowledge covers each secret conflict with indwelling sin, each sickening fear of never winning the prize, each pang from irritation, turmoil and din, each morning waking unrefreshed and each night of little sleep. Every affliction is ordered, chosen and planned by God, with each day's portion and cup measured out and prescribed by His hand for ills no one else can understand.
He sends such suffering as the effectual means to cure what is deplored, to restore His longed-for likeness in the sufferer and to dethrone self so it never governs more, so that continual feebleness that seems to unnerve and incapacitate will work the hoped-for cure and can be left to Him. The bitter draught is made welcome and precious by His Spirit when recalling the Son of His dear love, whose cup was not removed but was drunk to the dregs for others in draining a wrath no sufferer can fully know, so the believer willingly takes a little drop of suffering for His sake in a path fully known to God.
The verse also reveals the depths of human suffering and sorrow Christ entered when He assumed human nature to prepare to minister as priest for His brethren, when His spirit was overwhelmed and He looked for someone to recognize and sympathize with Him but no one cared for His welfare. That loneliness under sore trial and contradiction of sinners belonged to being tempted like men, resisting unto blood and striving against sin, learning by actual experience the agony of humanity so He could help everyone under every phase of temptation. That soul-trouble reached its climax when the inner-circle disciples sought rest instead of entering His wrestling in Gethsemane. In that overwhelmed state God sustains and rescues the person, leading to grateful worship.