What Does Psalms 146:9 Mean?

(9) The stranger, the widow, and the orphan are constantly presented in the Law as objects of compassion and beneficence. The orphan and widow are mentioned as under God’s care (Psalm 68:5). **Relieveth.**—Or rather, *restoreth, *by taking up their cause and seeing justice done. Certain forms of the verb are used of bearing witness, and possibly here there is allusion to a court of justice, in which God appears as witnessing on the side of the weak and defenceless. **Turneth upside down.—**Rather, *bends aside. *The same word in Psalm 119:78 is rendered” dealt perversely.” The idea seems in both cases to be that of interference, to thwart and impede a course of action. In Psalms 119 it is an evil-disposed person who interferes with the righteous. Here it is the Divine providence which, when the wicked man has laid out his plans, and looks as it were along a plain and level road of prosperity, bends the prosperous course aside; makes the path crooked, instead of straight; full of trouble and calamity, instead of prosperous and sure.