This verse promises divine deliverance from both the fowler’s snare and fatal sicknesses. 

The fowler, the Psalmist warns us about in this psalm, is identified for us in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul (1 Timothy 3:7). It is the devil’s hidden snares with which our paths are strewn (Hosea 9:8 NIV), which explains the necessity of us walking circumspectly—very cautiously—through our lives (Ephesians 5:15). One careless step by us into one of Satan’s hidden nooses and we’ll suddenly find ourselves hanging by our heels.

Of all the snares of the fowler, none have claimed more captives than the fear of death. According to Hebrews 2:14-15, God became a man in the man Christ Jesus so that He could don a mortal body and die for us mortals so that we could become immortal and be freed forever from the fear of death. Thanks to Christ’s conquering of death and the grave, death is no longer to be feared by the Christian, since the grave has been transformed from a place of interment into a place of triumphant, as well as into nothing more than a mere passage through which we pass into the very presence of God (1 Corinthians 15:55; 2 Corinthians 5:8).

Panic is presently proving to be a far greater problem in our country than pandemic. People’s phobia over the “noisome pestilence” of the coronavirus pandemic is symptomatic of them having an abundance of faith in human physicians and an absence of faith in the Great Physician—Jesus Christ. Unlike the psalmist, who believed in divine inoculations, today’s petrified Americans anxiously await a manmade vaccine from our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although such a vaccination would certainly be welcomed, divine inoculations are still far better, for the man who has received a divine immunization is invulnerable to all viruses, not just the coronavirus.

Although we should be grateful for human physicians and manmade vaccines, we should always remember that all immunization and healing ultimately come from God. Therefore, we should cling to our faith in Christ during this time of crisis, since Christ alone can promise us protection from pestilence and pandemic.