Psalm 63:1

The heading, “A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah,” belongs to the Hebrew text itself. It tells us who wrote the psalm, that it is a song and a prayer, and where David was when he wrote it. The wilderness of Judah lies east of Jerusalem. It is rugged, rocky country cut by deep ravines, with very little water. Outcasts and fugitives took refuge there, and it was a place of hardship, exposure and danger.

David knew it as a man on the run. While Saul hunted him, “David abode in the wilderness in strong holds, and remained in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph” (1 Samuel 23:14). Years later, when his son Absalom rebelled, David told his servants, “Arise, and let us flee” (2 Samuel 15:14), and the king and all the people with him went out “toward the way of the wilderness” (2 Samuel 15:23). Believers differ on which of these flights the psalm comes from. Some place it in the years of hiding from Saul, and others in Absalom’s rebellion. On either reading David is in danger, alone, and far from the place where Israel worshipped God.

In Israel, water meant life, plenty and God’s blessing, and a dry land was the picture of desolation and death. So the country around David matches what he feels within. He is exposed and cut off, and he needs God as urgently as a man in the desert needs water.

The rest of the psalm follows the path that starts here. After the longing of verse 1 come contentment in God (verses 2 to 5), the memory of God’s help through the night watches (verses 6 to 8), and confidence that God will deal with David’s enemies (verses 9 to 11). Everything later in the psalm grows out of the thirst of its first verse.

David opens with a confession of faith. The Hebrew uses two words for God. The first, Elohim, is the common name for the true God. It is plural in form and is read as a plural of majesty, speaking of the fullness of who he is. The second, Eli, “my God”, comes from ʼêl, a word that means God and also carries the sense of strength, power and might.

The weight of the line falls on “my”. David is speaking to the great God of Israel and claiming him as his own, which is the language of a covenant bond between God and the one who belongs to him. In a wilderness where every human help has fallen away, David begins by saying whose he is. God is the one who can meet his deepest need when nothing else can.

“Early will I seek thee” uses the verb shâchar. It properly means to dawn, and from that it means to be up early at any task, with the idea of earnestness, and so to search for something with painstaking effort. David is promising to seek God first and to seek him wholeheartedly.

The word’s tie to the dawn makes it natural to hear this of the morning as well, with David turning to God at first light before the day’s demands press in. Whether the hour is meant or only the eagerness, the point is the same: God comes first. He has promised to be found by those who seek him this way. “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Israel was told the same in David’s own song of praise: “Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually” (1 Chronicles 16:11).

David seeks God in the worst of times. His danger becomes the occasion of a closer walk with God, and hardship drives him to a more honest dependence on the Lord.

“My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee” is a pair of parallel lines that say the same thing twice, and the pairing shows that the whole person is involved. The word for soul, nephesh, comes from a verb meaning to breathe. It means a living, breathing creature, life itself, the self or the person, and it can also mean appetite and desire. The word for flesh, basar, means the body, and it can stand for a mortal creature, frail beside God. Soul and flesh together cover all of David, his inner life and his weary body alike.

The verb tsâmêʼ, “thirsteth”, means to thirst, literally or figuratively. Said of the soul, it describes a need as basic as the body’s need for water. The verb kâmahh, “longeth”, means to pine after or yearn for, a longing strong enough to leave a person faint. David’s desire for God reaches down into his physical existence.

“In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is” describes the real desert around him. The word for dry is tsîyâh, and the word the KJV renders “thirsty”, ʻâyêph, is also given as “weary”, so the land is parched and worn out. “Where no water is” joins bᵉlîy, “without” or “where there is none”, to mayim, “water”. David is truly thirsty in that land, and his thirst becomes the picture of his soul’s need for God. A man in the desert without water will die, and David knows his need for God is just as much a matter of life and death.

The sons of Korah pray in the same words: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1–2, 42:2). God answers this thirst with an open invitation: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). Our thirst for God is part of how he made us. He made us for himself, and our deepest needs are met in knowing him.

Verse 2 names what David is thirsting for: “To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” He wants God himself, shown in his strength and majesty.

The word for power, ʻôz, means strength or might, and it can also mean a stronghold. It is God’s own might and his ability to act. The word for glory, kâbôwd, means glory, honour and splendour. When God’s glory appeared to Israel it was often seen in cloud or fire, at Mount Sinai and in the tabernacle. When the tabernacle was finished, “a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34).

The Hebrew verbs for seeing here, raʼâh and châzâh, speak of a real, personal perceiving of God, a meeting with him that is far more than knowing about him. David wants God’s reality and his care made plain to him even in the desert.

“So as I have seen thee” looks back. The little word “so” (ken) asks for the same kind of encounter he has known before. David is longing for a meeting with God that he remembers, and his memory of it gives his longing its shape and gives him hope that God will meet him again, even from far away. God has shown himself before, and he has stayed the same. The very next verse gives the reason David’s thirst turns to praise: “Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee” (Psalm 63:3).

The KJV says “sanctuary”, and the Hebrew word, qôdesh, means holiness or a holy place. It is the place God set apart where his presence dwelt among his people, the centre of Israel’s worship, sacrifice and revelation. There David had met God together with God’s people, and there he had seen God’s power and glory.

Now he is in the wilderness, and the contrast is sharp. The sanctuary is holy and full of God’s glory, while the desert is empty and dry. Yet David seeks God from where he is, because God’s character and faithfulness stay the same wherever his worshipper is. The verse also shows how much the gathered worship of God’s people matters. David’s memories of meeting God in the sanctuary carry him through the wilderness.

David’s thirst in a dry land points to the thirst of every person, parched by sin and separation from God and in need of living water. Jesus answers it in person: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). He told the Samaritan woman at the well about the living water he gives (John 4:10–14), “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst” (John 4:14). He promised, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6), and in Christ that righteousness is given freely to all who believe. Through his saving work the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God, is given to believers, as he promised (John 14:16–17). At the end he says, “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely” (Revelation 21:6).

David’s longing to see God’s power and glory is answered in Christ too. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The Son is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus spoke of his own body as the temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The sanctuary where God’s presence dwelt under the old covenant gives way to Christ himself. Through him believers come to God directly, wherever they are, and by the Spirit who lives in them each believer’s body is “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

The world promises satisfaction in possessions, pleasures and success, and this psalm points us to the God who alone satisfies. It asks us to look honestly at where we go for contentment. David shows us how to seek God: first, earnestly, and with our whole being, giving him the best of our time and attention. Many believers take “early will I seek thee” as a pattern for meeting God at the start of the day, in prayer, in Scripture and in quiet thought on his presence.

He also shows us what to seek. Blessings, answers and comfort are good gifts, and David wants more than them. He wants God himself, his power and his glory. When the place we are in feels dry, the times God has met us before, in worship with his people and in our own walk with him, are reasons to seek him again with confidence. He has shown himself before, and the God of the sanctuary is the God of the wilderness. In Christ the living water is freely offered to everyone who comes.