Bible Commentary - Psalms 36

This psalm does not neatly fall into any of the categories I have previously identified.  Major categories of psalms include the prayer psalms and praise and worship songs.  This is perhaps closest to a prayer psalm given the closing petition in the last few verses, but structurally it is distinct as it does not contain the usual tripartite formula of problem, petition and praise.

Usually the first verse establishes the themes or topic of the psalm, and everything else follows that.  In this psalm, it doesn’t seem to follow the typical structure.  It seems like this psalm can be broken into three sections, and the first verse only really sets the topic for the first section.

The first section, in verses 1-4, is a brief discussion of the nature of evil men.  It describes evil men in a couple ways.  First, it says that evil men have “no fear of God”.  Fear of God, or a concern about God’s opinion of us, will keep us from evil.  If we truly believed that God was always present and always watching us, it would be much harder to sin.  We would not have any sense of anonymity or freedom to sin.  Second, it says that the wicked man “flatters himself in his own eyes”, and as a result he cannot see his own sin.  This is the blindness of pride.  When we cannot see our sin, then we sin all the more freely.  The conclusion of all this is that the wicked man speaks evil (v. 3), plans evil (v. 4), and then “sets himself on a path” of evil.  This is a progression of activity that begins with words, then to thoughts (the “plans”) and finally actions.  This is a common pattern, where people first speak of a deed (but perhaps do not intend to do it), but once spoken they give it consideration, and once considered, they act.  The reason that a wicked man travels on an evil path is because he feels at liberty to do whatever he wants, what the book of Judges calls “doing what is right in his own eyes”.  It is making judgements based on his own will instead of obeying the will of God.

The second section, in verses 5-9, changes topics suddenly.  It is a description of the glory of God. It emphasizes the vast expanses of God’s moral character and holiness, using analogies from the natural world to demonstrate the greatness of God; not the greatness of his power, but of his character and behavior.  Notice the highlight of this section: “How priceless is your unfailing love” (v. 7).  Once again the emphasis is not on the power or capabilities of God, but rather on his loving and caring nature.  Following that, this section moves on to discuss how “the children of men” depend on God.  We take refuge under his wings, drink from his rivers, and see light in his light (v. 7-9).  It’s a picture of a God of abundance, a loving parent sheltering his children.  God’s overwhelming power is implied but never stated; instead, the psalmist chooses to focus on God’s abundant provision and sustenance for those he loves.

The third and final section, in verses 10-12, is a concluding prayer that builds off the themes of the previous two sections.  Having established God’s eternal love and profound righteousness in the second section, David asks God to “continue” both his love and his righteousness “to those who know you”, “the upright in heart” (v. 10).  Having established the depths of evil in the first section, David asks for God’s protection against “the foot” and “the hand” of evildoers, that they would not be able to harm him (v. 11).  In this case, both the foot and the hand are symbolic of the activity and the power of evildoers.  Finally, in verse 12, David makes one final plea for “the evildoers” to be cast down, so that they would no longer be capable of harming others.  This is expanding on verse 11 where David only asks for protection for himself; now he is wishing for the evildoers themselves to be thrown down so that no one would suffer under their evil deeds.

Bible Commentary - Psalms 35

Psalm 35 is yet another prayer psalm.  This time, it is a prayer of deliverance from David’s enemies, which is clearly indicated in verse 1.

This psalm contains many elements we have seen before.  First, and perhaps most significantly, it contains some of the elements of a typical prayer psalm.  However, it does not follow the pattern exactly.  Instead, it appears that the “problem statement” is largely missing.  It can be inferred from context, however.  David has a distinctly martial focus in this psalm.  In verses 2-3 David asks for God to take up his “buckler”, “spear” and “battle axe” to strike down his enemies.  It’s obvious that David is facing a threat against his life and desires for God to fight against his enemies.

The nature of the problem becomes more clear in verses 11-21.  David describes at length how his enemies are repaying evil for good.  In this case, he defines his “good” as how he prayed and fasted for his enemies when they suffered illness and possibly other problems (v. 13).  David believes that he genuinely treated them well, and yet when David himself “stumbled”, his enemies rejoiced and gathered together to attack him (v. 15).  I can’t exactly call this hypocrisy, but it’s clear that these are men who David treated well, and they respond by taking advantage of David’s earliest vulnerability to attempt to destroy him.  As David says in v. 12, “they repay me evil for good”.  Verses 19-21 expand on this point by clarifying that these are people who speak evil against David as well, similar to Psalm 31 which emphasizes even more strongly how the wicked fight against David through evil rumors and lies.

Nevertheless, verses 1-8 open with a request for deliverance.  The rest of the psalm has a fairly complex structure. There are some additional prayers (e.g. v. 17-26), declarations of thanksgiving and praise (v. 9-10, 27-28), and an interesting passage where David explains his own righteous conduct towards his enemies (v. 11-16).  It’s kind of a mashup of several different things.  It clearly has some prayer elements, but it does not follow the typical structure.

Second, verses 7-8 convey a wish of ironic self-destruction upon David’s enemies.  We have seen this pattern before, the notion that David’s enemies are setting traps for him, and that they will plunge into their own traps, with their behavior and trickery resulting in their own deaths rather than their intended target.

Beyond these points, it’s difficult for me to think of what else to say.  I can certainly spend a few minutes pointing out interesting details, but I struggle to grasp the overall structure and intent (beyond the obvious and conventional prayer for deliverance).  It’s clear that David sees many threats coming from people who he feels he treated well, and that David is ultimately looking to God for justice and deliverance from these wicked adversaries.  It’s also clear that while David suggests in the early verses that he faces a physical threat, the later part of the psalm seems to focus much more on destructive rumors, slander and questions (v. 11, “they ask me of things that I do not know”).  Perhaps that is all there is to it; it’s a prayer of deliverance from David’s adversaries and nothing more.

Bible Commentary - Psalms 34

Psalm 34 is another psalm “of David”.  This is very common in the first book.  Since Psalm 33 was untitled, Psalm 34 returns us to the normal pattern for this book through its claim of Davidic authorship.

Psalm 34 is also unusual in that it gives us the specific historical situation when the psalm was composed.  The only other psalms composed for specific situations are Psalm 3 which was composed when David was driven out by Absalom and in desperate need, Psalm 18 when David was saved from Saul’s threats, and Psalm 30 which was for the dedication of the temple.

The story of David and Achish is recorded in 1 Samuel 21, and it is a peculiar story to say the least.  Before going into the details, I want to address one minor inconsistency.  The title of this psalm says that David feigned madness before “Abimelech”, but 1 Samuel 21 names the king of Gath “Achish”.  There are many possible explanations for this inconsistency; it’s possible that Abimelech is an alternative title, or Achish could also be a nickname.  Either one of these names could be an abbreviation.  Regardless of which explanation is correct, what we can say for sure is that both names refer to the same person and the same story.

It’s a strange story.  This moment in 1 Samuel 21 comes right when David is driven away by Saul’s own madness and attempted murder.  David fled to the king of Gath, and when he appeared before the king he was frightened by the king’s recognition.  The king of Gath recalled David’s battle against Goliath, who was a Philistine hero.  Since Gath is also part of the Philistine confederacy, David quite reasonably suspected that the king would see him as an enemy and kill him.

In this context, David decided to “act like a madman” (1 Sam 21:13) so that the king would not perceive him as a threat and let him go.  It worked, but it’s hardly consistent with the faith and boldness that we normally associate with David.  The hero of Israel, slayer of Goliath, acted like a madman to evade the threat of Achish/Abimelech.  It really feels like an act of cowardice, and that makes this psalm even stranger.

The overall theme of this psalm, established in the first verse, is praise.  David writes this psalm to praise God for his deliverance from Saul and from Achish.  Even though David’s behavior was dubious, he nevertheless turns this moment into an opportunity for praise, showing that he ascribes his success and protection to the LORD.

It’s an interesting contrast.  On the one hand, his behavior does not reflect faith or trust in God; on the other hand, praising God is itself an expression of faith.  In a sense, this is an application of Psalm 33:16-19.  In the same way that kings are not protected by the size of their armies, David is implying that he was not saved by his behavior, but rather his salvation came from the LORD.  If David thought that his cunning or deceit was what saved his life, he would not thank God for saving him.  The fact that David is crediting God for his deliverance (e.g. verse 4) means that David does not credit his own actions for protecting himself.

In my commentary on Psalm 31, I mentioned that the prayer psalm is an expression of faith.  A standard prayer psalm has a problem statement, a petition for deliverance, and thanksgiving in anticipation of God’s response.  A typical prayer psalm is written before salvation occurs, because the petition for deliverance only makes sense if the problem is still there.  As such, the praise and thanksgiving in a prayer psalm is anticipatory; it looks forward to the moments after deliverance when praise becomes appropriate, and praises in expectation of that moment.

Psalm 34, in contrast, is clearly a praise psalm.  This means that it is basically the third part of a prayer psalm, but extended to greater length.  It is also no longer anticipatory; David has already been saved, and the problem has already been solved.  I claim that Psalm 34 is still an expression of faith.  Praising God in anticipation of deliverance is an expression of faith because it shows a belief that God’s deliverance is coming before the deliverance is ever visible or apparent to the ordinary human senses.  Faith is virtually defined as a belief in the invisible and the unseen, and that belief is expressed through praise.

After deliverance has occurred, it is no longer possible to have “anticipation” of deliverance.  However, as described above it is still possible to have faith through our belief that deliverance came from the LORD.  There are some situations where belief in a “natural” deliverance is virtually impossible.  Miracles like the division of the Red Sea or manna coming down from heaven leave no room for earthly, natural explanations with which we can steal God’s glory.  However, in the same way that they have no natural explanation they also leave us no room for faith.  Because deliverance from God is the only possibility when a clearly supernatural event occurs, it does not require the exercise of any faith to believe the supernatural in those cases.

Supernatural deliverance is remarkable when it occurs, but it robs us of the opportunity to exercise faith by our praise and worship.  However, in the case of “natural deliverance”, faith becomes a choice.  By natural deliverance, I mean instances when a supernatural origin for our deliverance is not obvious.  To demonstrate my point, consider David’s victory over Goliath.  Goliath’s defeat is not obviously supernatural; David cast a slingstone and struck Goliath in the head, killing him in one blow.  A fortuitous shot, to be sure, but not necessarily supernatural in any way.  Slings are incredibly deadly and a well-trained slinger could easily kill a man with a single stone and a lucky shot.  They were a standard issue weapon for hundreds of years in ancient times, and it’s quite possible that their ubiquity and simplicity are the reasons that David used a sling at all.

In these cases, faith becomes a choice.  We can either choose to believe that David was saved by the strength of his arm and the skill of his throw, or we can believe that he was saved by the strength of the LORD and the might of the LORD’s hand.  One choice is a belief in ourselves, the other is a belief in God.  To believe in God is to live by faith.  To praise God is to believe in him, and thus it is also faith.

We can imagine any moment of praise to be an expression of faith for some particular deliverance.  This psalm takes it even further: in verse 1, it tells us that the psalmist will continuously bless God, and will be praising him in every moment.  This is a stunning claim.  Rather than treating praise (and by extension, faith) as a momentary habit, David treats it as a lifelong expression of continuous adoration.

Many people view praise as a response to particular circumstances.  Even people of great faith will praise God as a reaction to individual moments, as if they are living their lives traveling from one island of faith to another, through barren seas of normalcy.  This is not the faith that David imagines.

Instead, David proclaims a faith that praises God continuously, because David believes that God is continuously saving and continuously delivering us.  God’s intervention in our lives is not fragmentary; it is perpetual and ongoing, and our continual praise should be a reflection of God’s continual activity.

This is an amazing thing.  Even though Psalm 34 was composed in response to a particular moment, David’s reflection is that praise (and by extension, God’s activity) should last forever.

The rest of the psalm is great, so I encourage reading and reflecting on all of it, but I’m only going to write about two other verses.

Verse 8 says that we should “taste and see that the LORD is good”.  This is a fascinating verse because of the remarkable intimacy and immediacy that it assumes.  I’ve been heavily emphasizing the faith in this psalm, how it is a belief in God, the spiritual realm, and things unseen.  In spite of that, David tells us that not only should we see that the LORD is good, we can even taste it.  Taste is one of the most intimate senses, and while it doesn’t directly say that we should taste the LORD, it does say that through what we taste we can arrive at the knowledge of God’s goodness.  Many people draw a contrast between the immediacy and directness of sensual experience and the abstraction of spiritual experience; David defies this contrast by bringing sensual experience and spiritual experience together.  We can taste and see the LORD’s goodness.

Through experience, we can come to know God’s nature and character.  Through our experiences in daily life, we can come to know God more and more.  Our knowledge of God does not have to be abstract or purely “spiritual”.

Finally, I want to briefly discuss verse 19.  Verse 19, like the book of Job, challenges “conventional” wisdom that the righteous will never faces affliction.  Job’s three friends had a belief that bad things would never happen to good people, and that Job’s suffering was positive proof that he had sinned in some way.  In verse 19, we see that righteous people really do suffer afflictions, but that the power of God “delivers” them from what they have been suffering.

For example, think about the Israelites living in slavery in Egypt.  They were living in terrible suffering for a long time, but when they cried out to the LORD, he sent Moses who brought ten plagues on Egypt and split the Red Sea so that they might escape to freedom in the promised land (eventually).  Without going into all the details of that story, it is sufficient to show this as a model for how any righteous person might suffer for a time, but in the right moment the LORD breaks in and brings them to freedom.

Our challenge is to simply live by faith.  We bring our struggles before the LORD, we petition him for deliverance, and we praise him both before and after we are freed from slavery and brought into the place that he has promised us.  We praise him because we believe.  We believe that God will set us free, and when we are freed we do not recant our belief and we continue to hold that God freed us rather than praise and glorify our own strength or wisdom.  We always praise God because we hold by faith that God is always working in our lives in every moment.

Whether we are still in the midst of trials or whether we are living in freedom, God is working in our lives in every moment.

Bible Commentary - Psalms 33

Psalm 33, as the first verse tells us, is a psalm of thanksgiving.

First, note that this is an untitled psalm.  It seems like almost all of the last 20 or 30 psalms have all been psalms “of David”.  Although the title “of David” does not necessarily imply Davidic authorship (scholars debate this point), it does clearly indicate a common grouping of psalms, perhaps coming from a particular collection with a common origin or thematic ties.  The fact that this is not a Davidic psalm therefore indicates that it may have structural differences with the Davidic psalms we have read so far.

This psalm is defined by several ideas.  I’m going to say a few words that I see in this psalm: praise, the word of the LORD, the eyes of the LORD, and creation.  We praise God because he created, by the power of his word, and that he is constantly watching the earth with a special focus on the righteous ones whom he watches for their protection and blessing.

In verses 1-5, we praise.  The praise is centered on verse 4 which declares the goodness of the LORD in both word and action.  This is a common pair of ideas in the bible; when combined, words and actions represent the entirety of one’s behavior and activity.  In this context it means that everything about the LORD is good.

In verses 6-9 the psalmist zooms in on God’s creation of the world.  Since the overall theme is praise and thanksgiving, we are still thinking about the LORD in a mindset of thankfulness.  By describing the creation of the world, our praise is directed and focused on God’s creative nature, authority and supremacy over the world, which he expressed through creation.  This passage repeatedly describes creation as the result of God’s spoken word.  Talking about creation as the result of God’s word highlights God’s authority and power.  There is one extra thing worth pointing out here.  The power of words is implicitly a royal characteristic.

This connection may not be obvious, so let me make a hypothetical example.  Imagine you are living in an absolute monarchy, where the king is the ultimate authority who can issue any law or decision he wants without any checks and balances.  In this situation, the king rarely “does” anything; if he wants somebody killed, he doesn’t grab a sword and go chase that person.  Instead, he will issue a declaration or edict, simply ordering that the person should be killed, and his soldiers or administrators will carry out the command.  The power of a king is in his authority, and his authority is expressed through his words.

Let’s take this analogy back to the creation story.  In this story, God issued a “command” that the world should exist.  Because the LORD is the great king who rules over the whole world, his command was carried out and the world was created as a result.

These verses echo the creation narrative of Genesis 1, which also described creation as a product of God’s word.  It is likely that the psalmist was aware of the Genesis narrative and indirectly referencing it.

In verses 10-12, it continues emphasizing the power of God’s word but instead of directing it towards creation, it stands in opposition of the words and plans of “the nations”.  In verse 10 we see “the plans of the peoples” are frustrated, and verse 11 tells us that it is “the plans” of God that override them.  The nations have “plans”, but the LORD is greater and stronger, and the LORD’s plans are imposed upon the nations against their will.  Verse 12 calls the nation of Israel “blessed” because the LORD’s plans is to bless them.

Now that the psalmist has described God’s authority and power to impose his will upon the world, verses 13-19 show us how God watches all the people in the world to enforce his will.  The reason God is watching is to ensure that his “plans” are fulfilled in every person’s life.  God’s diligence in observing everyone means that God is always ready to act.  He is always aware of exactly what is happening in every person’s life, and he will intercede to bring about his will every moment that it is necessary.

Verses 16-17 point out that we cannot be saved by strength or might of any kind.  It might not be obvious, but this is intentionally contrasted with verses 18-19.  The contrast is that earthly strength cannot save, but the strength and power of God can save us.  This contrast follows from the previous sections.  Because God has “plans” for everyone, because God has ultimate authority and because he is watching everyone, he is the sole power that is capable of delivering anyone because there is no earthly power that can resist his will.  The reason why God is the only one who can save is because his decisions about your life cannot be overruled by anyone else.

Finally, in verses 20-22, we are reminded to “wait”, “trust” and “hope” in the LORD.  This is a logical conclusion of the preceding sections.  Because God is the only one who can deliver, we should trust in him for our deliverance.  Even though it might feel like a circuitous path, this actually follows from the previous thoughts in this psalm, from verse 6-19.  Beginning from the creation of the world, we understand that God has authority over all things, and therefore he is the only source of deliverance and salvation from trouble, because his will and his plans are enacted in every person’s life by his power.

In conclusion, I hope my readers understand that while this psalm is meant to praise God, it also contains a latent theology; a theology of God’s power and goodness, our relationship to him and dependence upon him, and the immutability of God’s will and plans for our lives no matter what the “mighty armies” of the world seek to do.  There is no power that can overrule the LORD, and this is a great blessing because ultimately God desires to “deliver” the righteous “from death”.

Bible Commentary - Psalms 32

Psalm 32 is a psalm of thanksgiving for God’s forgiveness.  We see this clearly defined in the first verse, when David says “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven”.  This makes a couple things clear.  First, it is not a prayer, it is a declaration of praise or thanksgiving.  David is not asking for forgiveness, he is declaring the “blessing” of forgiveness.  Second, he sets the topic very clearly to be forgiveness in particular.  David is not talking about the blessings of God in general or anything like that.  In this way the psalm is very specific.  In other ways, this psalm shares the generalities that we find in nearly every psalm.  For instance, David does not describe forgiveness for any particular thing, it is only “my sin” or “my transgressions” (v. 5).  In this way, Psalm 32 is specific in some ways and generic in others.

Structurally, I would divide this psalm into three sections.  The first section is verses 1-2, which constitutes the introduction.  This introduces the general themes and summarizes the message of the psalm as a whole.

The second section is verses 3-5.  Some commentators extend the second section from v. 3-7, based on the three “selahs” in verses 4, 5 and 7.  Certainly I think these three selahs suggest some kind of thematic grouping of these verses between 3-7.

In my opinion, verses 3-5 are more narrowly focused on David’s own story.  In these verses he is describing his own moment of crisis, when his unresolved personal sin resulted in physical distress.  “When I kept silent, my body waste away” (v. 3), but when David confessed his sin, “you forgave the guilt of my sin” (v. 5) and the pressure and physical suffering was resolved.  This is David’s own story of sin and forgiveness, highlighting the wonders of God’s forgiveness.

The third section is verses 6-11.  This is the section where David takes his own personal story and encourages other people to follow his example and seek God’s forgiveness.  The language is not entirely clear and some sections are actually pretty confusing, but we see David’s conclusion in verse 6: “Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you”.  The conclusion is that we should all pray and seek forgiveness in the same way that David sought forgiveness.  In verses 8-9 David says “I will instruct you and teach you”, and that is speaking of the message we have already received.  The instruction of David is from his story in verses 3-5, that we suffer from our sin until we pray to God and seek forgiveness.  Verses 10-11 are a fairly standard conclusion, with David offering a final moment of praise and joy on behalf of the righteous and an admonition to fear the LORD and avoid wickedness.

Even though this is a psalm about forgiveness, I noticed that the word “forgive” in any form only appears twice in the psalm: first in verse 1, and second in verse 5.  The sparsity of the word “forgive” in a psalm that is clearly about forgiveness is interesting.  The overall effect is to place the focus squarely on verse 5, “and you forgave the guilt of my sin”.  This is what the psalm is all about; when David petitioned God for forgiveness, it was granted to him.  This is what we are supposed to learn from, this is what we are supposed to emulate in our own life.  This is the blessing that was described in verse 1: when we make mistakes and sin against the LORD, we can turn to him and he will forgive us.

I would also like to direct my readers to view the three sentences that immediately precede the “selahs”.  These three sentences form the central story and message of the psalm as a whole.  Read them in order: “my vitality was drained away”, “you forgave the guilt of my sin”, “you surround me with songs of deliverance”.

The first one is the “problem statement”.  It’s not a problem statement in the same way as what we see in prayer psalms, where the psalmist is specifically praying for the relief of some particular crisis, but it is a problem statement in the sense of David describing some of the trouble in his life at the time.  Throughout verses 3-4, David is emphasizing the connection between his unforgiven sin and physical problems of an undefined nature.

Forgiveness is once again at the center, and its position in the middle makes it the most “active” part of the psalm.  If we divide the psalm into three parts (which we can easily do), then effectively it breaks down into background, middle and conclusion.  The background is basically the “problem statement”, it is the motivation behind the psalm, what justifies the “action”.  The conclusion is praise and thanksgiving, which is the result of the “action”.  What goes in the middle is the active part of the psalm, which transforms us from the background into the conclusion.  The action is what turns the problems into praise.  In the case of prayer psalms, the action is the act of prayer or petition.  It is the moment of crying out for help, and it turns our problems into praise through God’s intervention.  In the case of this psalm, prayer is not at the center.  Instead, the center of this psalm is acknowledging our guilt and receiving forgiveness from God.  Forgiveness is the activity at the “center” and like the prayer or petition, forgiveness i what transforms David’s “wasting away” into “songs of deliverance”.

As I just mentioned, the third section is the conclusion, which is “songs of deliverance”.  This is the moment of David’s praise that God has forgiven him, God has healed him and restored him.

After David’s story concludes, he urges us to follow him and follow his example.  It is a strangely didactic moment that we don’t normally see in many of the other psalms.  For example, the prayer psalms rarely have these moments of “you should pray too and God will help you also”.  The notion that we should learn from the psalms and follow their example is typically implicit and the narrative is given to us without additional commentary.  In this case, the “narrative” refers to the three-part structure of problem statement, action, and praise for deliverance.

Not only does this psalm have a didactic conclusion, the action is mostly past-tense; at the time the psalm was written, David had already asked for forgiveness; he had already been healed and restored.  This loss of immediacy heightens the didactic nature of the psalm.  If David’s plea for forgiveness was present tense, then that becomes the focus or purpose of the psalm.  In other words, if David still needed forgiveness then that is what he would care about the most, and that’s what he would be thinking about.  Since he’s already been forgiven, the focus shifts to outside of the immediacy of his problems and towards the rest of us, the ones reading or listening to this psalm.  It becomes less about David and more about us.

Every psalm does this to some degree.  Since the psalms were written down and transmitted for other people and for later generations, every psalm is at least a little bit for others.  However, every psalm also has an author and a motivation and for psalms written in the moment of crisis, the motivation shifts more heavily towards that immediate situation and the author himself.  For psalms written after the fact, the focus shifts towards the audience for whom it was written.  This psalm is past tense, which shifts the focus towards the audience, and this tendency is reinforced by the didactic conclusion in verses 8-11.

In conclusion, it should be evident by now to my readers that this psalm utilizes much of the structure and organization of the prayer psalms even though the motivation is different.  I have made similar comments before, such as e.g. Psalm 11 and especially Psalm 20.  In both of those cases, I described in my commentary how the psalms utilized elements of the standard prayer psalm formula, but reorganized and adapted for the specific purpose at hand.  I would say that Psalm 32 is very much the same kind of thing, where the basic formula of the prayer psalm has been adapted to the purpose of highlighting God’s forgiveness.  What this shows is a common literary tradition, if not a shared authorship, between these psalms and the prayer psalms.  It shows a conventional pattern that was deeply understood by the psalmist(s), who could use the same general pattern to express different kinds of thought beyond the original design.  Of this tradition, Psalm 32 shows us another example of a unique evolution, still showing the hallmarks of the pattern behind it even as it is repurposed to bring us new ideas.

Bible Commentary - Psalms 31

As with so many other psalms, the first verse clearly sets the tone here: this is a prayer psalm, and it is structured much like other prayer psalms.

Verses 1-5 open with repeated declarations of trust and faith in God’s power to save.  I personally find the language here to be quite similar to Psalm 18:1-3, which also calls God a “rock”, “fortress”, “strength”, etc.  Positionally, both psalms open with these declarations of God’s strength and stability; more than that, both psalms also emphasize the personal nature of this relationship.  David calls God “my strength”, “my fortress”, “my rock”.  God is not a power in the abstract, unrelated to David’s problems.  David finds God to be not just a stronghold, but his own stronghold and his own strength in the time of trouble.

I’m not sure how to read verses 6-8.  David is continuing to praise God for deliverance, but I’m not sure how to fit that into the overall poetic structure.

Verses 9-13 resumes with the problem statement.  David describes, in allusive and general ways, the troubles that have come upon him.  His trouble comes in two forms.  First, David has trouble because of his “iniquity” (v. 10).  Secondly, his problems are from his “adversaries” (v. 11).  This fits the narrative of David’s life pretty well.  After his sin with Bathsheba, Nathan the prophet declared that “what you have done secretly”, i.e. sleep with Uriah’s wife, “will be done to you publicly”.  That was later fulfilled when David’s son Absalom slept with his concubines on the palace roof.  Absalom was only one of David’s many enemies, and from Nathan’s prophecy it is clear that at least some of this persecution was God punishing David for his sin with Bathsheba.

In any case, I have mentioned over and over that the psalms are intentionally generic and almost never reference specific historical incidents, so that they can remain broadly applicable to future generations.  This psalm does likewise, and while we can possibly find historical events from David’s life that fit the psalm, it does not directly mention any of them.

Verses 14-18 are the plea for deliverance.  This is where David breaks out the imperative verbs, saying “deliver me”, “save me”, “let me not be put to shame”, and similar things.  Verses 17 and 18 in particular emphasize the traditional dichotomy between the wicked and the righteous.  David asks for “the wicked” to be put to shame, and for them to be silenced when “they speak arrogantly against the righteous”.  It leaves us imagining these “voices” that are “speaking against” David by plotting evil against him (v. 13).  David’s prayer is for the voices to be silenced, that they can speak no more and are buried in death in the grave.

Verses 19-24 conclude with thanksgiving and praise in anticipation of God’s response.  This is conventional for a prayer psalm and shares many similarities with Psalm 18.  Even in his praise, David continues to think about the “tongues” that are speaking and plotting against him (v. 20).  He imagines himself as one living in a besieged city (v. 21) because of the wicked men surrounding him.  In “his alarm”, he imagines himself destroyed and cut off, but in the end he realizes that God saves the righteous and that his life will be preserved.  This is basically David’s emotional reaction at the scope of the threat and disaster looming over him, that he views his situation as hopeless and that God has abandoned him.  However, in faith he declares that God hears and saves his righteous ones and that he is destined for God’s goodness, “which you have stored up for those who fear you” (v. 19).

As with most prayer psalms, one of the central messages here is faith.  We lay our problems before God, we ask for help, and then we praise him even before the help arrives.  These are all declarations of faith in their own way.  Laying our problems before God and asking for help are statements of faith because we are implicitly trusting God to answer us when we ask.  Nobody would ever ask for help from God if we did not believe, at least in some small way, that God was perhaps capable of answering our prayer and helping us.  This belief is faith.  Praising God before he saves us is also a statement of faith for a similar reason; even before seeing the answer to our prayer, we trust and believe that God wishes to help us, and we praise him in the expectation that an answer is coming.  This belief is faith.

In both cases, we only pray because we believe that God exists and that he blesses and protects his righteous ones, those who love and fear him.  This belief is faith.

One important point of clarification here.  Prayer is only a statement of faith if it comes from a genuine belief, however small, that God might answer that prayer.  If someone is praying because of a religious tradition or similar, and there is no genuine expectation that God would ever do anything in response, then it does not require any faith at all.  Faith is a belief that God exists and an expectation that he will respond to our prayer.  For example, in many Christian communities it is conventional to pray before eating food; while this is an admirable practice, it rarely involves any expectation of God’s response and consequently does not represent any meaningful quantity of faith.

This kind of faith is not specific to this one psalm, it’s generally true of all prayer psalms, but it’s worth mentioning since I have not previously discussed how prayer is an aspect of faith.