Psalm 30:4

Psalm 30 carries its own heading: “A Psalm and Song at the dedication of the house of David.” It calls the psalm both a mizmôr, a psalm sung to stringed instruments and often used in worship, and a šîr, the general word for a song. The word for dedication, chanukkah, was used when a building, an altar or an object was set apart for sacred use, and in Israel such occasions were marked with sacrifices, feasts and songs of thanks.

The house is most likely David’s palace in Jerusalem, built with the help of Hiram king of Tyre (2 Samuel 5:11). David had come through years of wandering and war, and the new palace in his new capital stood for a kingdom God had made secure. Once David was settled in that house he longed to build a house for God as well (2 Samuel 7:1–2), and some believers read the heading as looking ahead to the temple or its site. Others take the house to mean David’s life and reign, given back to God after a crisis. On every reading the psalm itself tells of a personal rescue from death, and David makes that rescue the reason for the celebration. The house became a monument to God’s saving power, and a private testimony became public worship.

“I will extol thee, O LORD” is a resolve. The verb rûwm means to be high or to rise, and when it is used of praise it means to lift God up in honour and declare him higher than every circumstance. The reason follows at once: “for thou hast lifted me up.” The LORD lifted David, and so David lifts up the LORD.

The verb for “lifted me up”, dâlâh, means to let something down and draw it up, the way a bucket is lowered into a well and drawn out full of water. David had been down in a deep place, and God reached down and drew him out. The next two verses name that place: sickness, the grave and the pit. David uses a like picture in Psalm 18:16, “he drew me out of many waters”, and in Psalm 40:2–3, where the LORD “brought me up also out of an horrible pit” and “put a new song in my mouth”.

“O LORD my God” joins two names. Yᵉhôvâh, printed “the LORD” in the KJV, is God’s own covenant name, the name of the self-existent God who keeps his word to his people. ʼĕlôhîym, God, is plural in form and is read as a plural of majesty, and its verbs are usually singular. It speaks of the Creator’s power and his rule over all things. When David says “my God”, he claims this God as his own. That is the language of the covenant, in which the LORD promises that he “will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). David’s cry rests on that bond, and so does his confidence that God would answer.

“I cried unto thee” uses shâvaʻ, which means to call out aloud for help. It is the cry of someone in trouble who needs to be set free, a whole heart poured out in urgent need. David cried, and God answered. The LORD says, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee” (Jeremiah 33:3), and David says of another day of trouble, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple” (Psalm 18:6).

“Thou hast healed me” uses râphâʼ, to mend or cure. Scripture uses it of God’s healing and also of human physicians. The LORD made himself known to Israel by this word soon after the Red Sea: “I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). David blesses him for it again: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases” (Psalm 103:2–3).

“Thou hast brought up my soul from the grave” tells how far down David had gone. The word for soul, nephesh, means a breathing creature, life, self or person, so David means his very life, all of him. The grave is shᵉʼôwl, Sheol, the realm of the dead and the place of no return. David was at its door, and God brought him back up.

The second line says it again in other words, as Hebrew poetry often does. “Thou hast kept me alive” translates a verb that can mean “you have given me life”, “you have revived me” or “you have preserved my life”. The pit, bôwr, is literally a cistern, a dungeon or a deep hole, and the Psalms and the Prophets use it for death, ruin and helplessness. Set beside shᵉʼôwl, it makes the danger plain: David was on his way down, and God turned him around. David tells more of that time later in the psalm, when he had felt secure and then was troubled (Psalm 30:6–7).

Having told what God did for him, David turns to everyone who belongs to God: “Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his.” One man’s rescue becomes a reason for the whole people to worship. The verb zâmar means to sing praise or make music in praise of God, with instruments or without them, to a set tune or a new one.

The saints are the châçîyd, the godly or faithful ones, and in this verse they are “his”, chasidav. The word belongs with hesed, God’s steadfast love and covenant loyalty. The saints are the people who have received that love and answer it with loyal devotion, the members of God’s covenant people, set apart for him. The call goes out to all who truly belong to him.

“And give thanks” is a second command beside the first. Its verb, yadah, means to praise, thank or confess, to acknowledge openly who God is and what he has done. Singing and thanks are a public, spoken answer to God.

Verse 5 gives the reason the saints can sing: “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life.” The word for anger, ‘aph, literally means the nose or nostril, and it came to mean anger from the flared nostrils and heavy breathing of someone who is angry. Used of God, it is his righteous displeasure at sin, often shown in discipline. David says it lasts a moment.

Favour, râtsôwn, is delight, good will and acceptance. It is God’s pleasure in his people and his readiness to bless them, and the verse sets it against his anger. In that favour is life, chay, here in a plural form, meaning life in its fullness: health, well-being and blessing, the opposite of death and decay. David had just been brought back from death, so life is exactly what God’s favour gave him. This is the God who proclaimed himself to Moses as “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6–7).

The fullest meaning of this rescue is found in Jesus. David was lifted up from the edge of death. Jesus was lifted up on the cross, as he said he would be (John 3:14, John 12:32), went down into death itself, and was raised by God, “because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24). God then highly exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name (Philippians 2:9–11). On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and “made a shew of them openly” (Colossians 2:15), so sin, death and the devil, the foes who would gladly rejoice over us, lose their triumph.

David was healed of his sickness, and Christ heals the deeper wound of sin. He is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29), he healed all manner of sickness among the people (Matthew 4:23), and by his stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5, 1 Peter 2:24). We are reconciled to God by the death of his Son and saved by his life (Romans 5:10). He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25–26), whoever believes in him has everlasting life (John 3:16), and God has begotten us to a lively hope and an inheritance incorruptible (1 Peter 1:3–4). Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), and those who belong to Christ are kept from the pit for ever. The darkest night, his suffering on the cross, gave way to the brightest morning, his resurrection on the third day, and he came that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10).

Christ also shows us the holiness of verse 4. He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and the glory of God shines “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). We are sanctified through his offering (Hebrews 10:10) and made “an holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), for he “is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). That is how sinners become saints who can sing. The dedicated house points to him as well, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and to his church, built of lively stones into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

Psalm 30 teaches us to remember out loud. When God has lifted you out of a low place, healed you, or carried you through danger, the fitting answer is to extol him by name and to tell others, so that they can sing with you. David dedicated his house, and your life, your home and all he has given you can be dedicated in the same way to the One who lifted you up.

When you cry to the LORD in trouble, you are calling on your own God, who hears and heals. His anger toward his children is brief and his favour gives life. The weeping that lodges with you is a guest for the night, and morning is coming, whether in this life or in the morning of eternity. Thank him for who he is, holy and faithful, as well as for all that he has done.