Psalm 54:3

The heading of Psalm 54, which the KJV prints as part of verse 1, names the moment the psalm was born: “when the Ziphims came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?” David was a fugitive at the time. Saul, driven by jealousy and fear, was hunting him to kill him, although God had already anointed David as the future king. David took refuge in the wilderness of Ziph, a region of Judah, and the people living there went to Saul and offered to hand him over. 1 Samuel tells of the Ziphites doing this on two occasions (1 Samuel 23:19–24, 1 Samuel 26:1–5).

What made it so bitter was who did it. The Ziphites were David’s own people, fellow men of Judah, and in a society that prized hospitality and loyalty to kin, giving away a man who had come to hide among you was deep treachery. David had no human ally to call on and no court that could protect him from the reigning king. The psalm is the prayer of a man whose only recourse was God, and so every word of it is spoken to God.

David’s first words are a cry for rescue: “Save me, O God”. The verb yâshaʻ at its root means to be open, wide or free, and so to be safe, and when it is used of bringing someone else into that safety it means to free or help him: to defend, deliver, preserve and rescue. David’s life is in danger, and he asks God to bring him out into safety.

He asks God to do it “by thy name”. God’s name, shêm, stood in Israel for all that God had made known of himself: his character, his reputation, his authority, his presence and his faithfulness to his covenant. To pray “by thy name” is to ask God to act as the God he has shown himself to be, so that the rescue brings glory to him. Proverbs speaks with the same confidence: “The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

Beside the name stands God’s strength, gᵉbûwrâh. The word means might, ability and greatness, and also mighty deeds. Scripture uses it of people, of nations and even of a horse, and when the might is God’s, it is irresistible. David cannot match Saul’s power with his own, so he rests his case on God’s. Together, “thy name” and “thy strength” bring before God both who he is and what he is able to do, and David’s trust takes in both. He prays the same way for deliverance from his enemies in Psalm 3:7.

“Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.” David says the same thing twice in different words, the way Hebrew poetry often does, and the second line strengthens the first. The repetition carries the urgency and sincerity of a man pleading for his life.

To hear, shâmaʻ, is to listen with attention, and when Scripture speaks of God hearing his people it carries the thought that he will act on what he hears. David wants God to take up his petition and answer it. “Hear” is a command in form, and it comes from a man who knows that God listens to his people. The Psalms praise him for exactly this. A psalmist loves the LORD because he has heard his cry (Psalm 116:1), and David says that the LORD hears the righteous when they cry and delivers them (Psalm 34:17).

To give ear, ʼâzan, is a verb made from the Hebrew word for ear. It means to broaden out the ear, that is, to listen, and here it stands parallel to “hear”. The word for prayer, tᵉphillâh, is the ordinary word for a prayer, from a root, pâlal, meaning to judge, and by extension to intercede and pray. David’s prayer is the plea of verse 1 and the complaint of verse 3, spoken aloud as “the words of my mouth”. He pours it out to God, who is his rock and his fortress (Psalm 18:2), and it rests on the confidence John writes of, that God hears us when we ask according to his will (1 John 5:14).

Verse 3 begins with “For”, and it gives the reason for the prayer. “Strangers” translates zûwr, from a root meaning to turn aside, and so to be foreign, strange or profane. The Ziphites were Israelites of Judah, so the word describes how they acted. They behaved as outsiders to the loyalty David had a right to expect from his own people, and they turned hostile. They “are risen up against me”, a deliberate, open attack on his life.

“Oppressors” translates ʻârîyts, which describes people who are fearful in the sense of powerful: tyrannical, mighty, strong, terrible, violent. David’s enemies had power and used it cruelly, and they “seek after my soul”. The soul, nephesh, is David’s life itself, and to seek a man’s soul is to seek to kill him.

David, innocent and hunted, betrayed by his own countrymen to a king who wanted him dead, points forward to Jesus Christ. Jesus was betrayed by Judas, one of his closest disciples (Matthew 26:47–50, Luke 22:47–48), and opposed by religious and political rulers who, in his own words, had seen and hated both him and his Father (John 15:24). In Gethsemane he poured out his soul to the Father and gave himself to his will (Matthew 26:39, Luke 22:42). David prayed to be delivered from his enemies, and Jesus willingly went into the hands of his, because he is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

David’s appeal to God’s name and strength is answered fully in Christ. The Father glorified his name through the Son (John 12:28), and his strength was shown when he raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:24), declaring him to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4). By his death Jesus destroyed the one who had the power of death and set free those held in fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), so the vindication David asked for comes in the end from Christ’s hand. Salvation is found in no other name (Acts 4:12), and we come to God through Jesus’ name and his merit.

The God whom David asked to hear him is made known to us in Jesus, the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). Through Christ’s sacrifice we may come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16) and say, as David did, “Hear my prayer, O God”.

These three verses give us a prayer for the day when people we trusted turn against us. David brings God everything at once: his danger, his cause, the words of his mouth and the godlessness of his enemies. He rests his plea on God’s name and God’s strength, so the weight of the prayer lies on God’s faithfulness and might.

The psalm shows us a God who hears the words of a hunted man, sees betrayals made in secret, judges rightly between the wronged and those who wrong them, and has the strength to save. David had God before him, and his enemies did not, and that is where the whole difference between them lay. The same God hears us in Christ, and David’s words are ours to pray: “Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength.”