Psalm 59:1

The heading of the psalm ties it to one night in David’s life: “when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him.” The story is told in 1 Samuel 19:11–17. Saul, troubled by an evil spirit and jealous of David’s popularity and of the LORD’s favour on him, had tried again and again to kill him. This time he sent messengers to surround David’s house by night and kill him in the morning. David’s wife Michal let him down through a window, and she used a household idol and a pillow of goats’ hair to deceive the men who came for him.

David had served Saul loyally and had already been anointed as Israel’s future king, yet he was still under Saul’s authority. A king’s word was law in that day, and anyone the king counted a threat could be put to death as a traitor. A king was also meant to protect his people and uphold justice, so Saul was betraying his own office by hunting a faithful servant. David therefore takes his case above the king, to the LORD, whose authority stands over every earthly ruler.

The rest of the heading belongs to Israel’s worship. “To the chief Musician” marks the psalm for public singing. “Altaschith” means “Do not destroy”, and it stands over Psalm 57, Psalm 58 and Psalm 75 as well, probably as the name of a tune or as a note of the theme, a plea to be kept from destruction. “Michtam of David” is often translated “golden psalm” or “inscription”, which would mark a psalm of lasting worth.

The psalm is a lament, a prayer that lays trouble before God, like Psalm 3 and Psalm 35. It moves from petition in verses 1–5 to confidence in God’s power in verses 6–10, and it ends in praise (Psalm 59:16–17). Along the way David pictures his enemies as dogs in verse 6 and asks God to bring them down (Psalm 59:11–13). These first five verses are the cry on which all the rest is built.

The prayer begins with its request, and the request is urgent. “Deliver” is nâtsal, to snatch away or rescue. The person rescued is the object of the verb and the danger is marked by “from”, which is exactly how David prays: deliver me “from mine enemies”, and in verse 2, with the same verb, deliver me “from the workers of iniquity”. He is asking God to reach in and take him out of the house that is being watched.

“Defend” is sâgab, to be lofty or to make high and inaccessible. David asks to be set up high, in a place his pursuers are unable to reach. The same picture of God as a high, safe place runs through David’s other songs. He calls the LORD his rock, his fortress and his deliverer (Psalm 18:2, 2 Samuel 22:3), another psalm calls God our refuge and strength (Psalm 46:1), and Proverbs calls the name of the LORD a strong tower (Proverbs 18:10). In verse 2 a third verb joins these two: “save”, yasha, means to preserve and bring to safety.

David prays all of this to “my God”. He is speaking to the God he knows and belongs to, and that relationship is the ground of his confidence that he will be heard. The word for “enemies”, ʼôyêb, comes from a verb meaning to be hostile and is the ordinary Hebrew word for an enemy. In Israel an enemy could be a foreign army, and he could just as well be a personal foe who attacked a man’s name, living or life by treachery, slander or violence. “Them that rise up against me” describes people who have taken the first step themselves and are on the move against him.

Verses 3 and 4 give God the reason for the prayer. “Lo” asks him to look. The enemies “lie in wait”, a verb (‘ârab) for an ambush or a hidden plot, and their target is David’s “soul”. The word is nephesh, which means a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person, so the men outside want his life. They are “the mighty” (ʻaz, strong and fierce), which fits the armed servants of a king, and they are “gathered”, an organised company against one man.

Verse 4 shows them in motion. “Run” is rûwts, and “prepare themselves” is kûwn, to establish, set up or make ready. They hurry to take up their positions, so the attack is eager and planned.

Against all this David sets three words for wrongdoing and denies each one as the cause. “Transgression” is peshaʻ, rebellion, an act by which someone defies an authority. This is the very charge a king might bring against a rival, and David says before the LORD that he has committed no such revolt. “Sin” is chaṭṭâʼâh, the general word for sin, an offence. In verse 4 “fault” is ʻâvôn, iniquity or moral evil, and the phrase in Hebrew is simply “without iniquity” (b’li-ʻâvôn), with “my” supplied in English. He says these things “O LORD”, to the one who sees the truth of the matter and judges rightly.

The plea carried extra weight in David’s world, where a man’s misfortune was often put down to his own sin or to God’s judgment on him. David is telling God, and anyone who sings the psalm, that this trouble has another explanation, which is the malice of his enemies.

“Awake to help me” is the language of a man who needs God to act now. The LORD is fully aware of all that is happening to David, and David speaks to him in human terms, as Scripture often does, asking him to rouse himself and step in where everyone can see it. From where David stands, with the house surrounded and the night passing, God’s help has yet to appear, and he asks for it with all the urgency he feels. Another psalm prays the same way with the word “Arise” (Psalm 7:6).

“And behold” asks God to look. David wants the LORD to see the men at the door and his own innocence, trusting that when God looks at injustice he acts. The English word “awake” returns in verse 5, where the request widens from help for one man to judgment on the wicked.

“Thou therefore” turns everything David has described into an appeal, and he makes it with the fullest titles in the passage. The name Yᵉhôvâh ʼĕlôhîym tsâbâʼ joins three words. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s personal covenant name, the name of the one who exists of himself and keeps faith. ʼĕlôhîym is the word for God, plural in form and used of the one supreme God in his majesty and power. Tsâbâʼ means a mass of people organised for war, an army, so the “LORD of hosts” (the familiar Sabaoth) is the commander of every army in heaven and on earth. He fought for his people at the Exodus and in the conquest of Canaan, and a handful of Saul’s soldiers is a small matter to him.

“The God of Israel” adds the covenant. This is the God who bound himself to Abraham and his descendants and named himself by that bond when he spoke to Moses (Exodus 3:6). David appeals to God’s power and to God’s promise together.

“Visit” is pâqad, a verb that can mean to attend to, inspect, muster, appoint or punish. Here it means to visit in judgment. “Heathen” is gôwy, a foreign nation or Gentile (goyim in the plural). The nations were usually thought of as hostile to Israel and to God’s purposes, and in this prayer the word reaches to every ungodly adversary, foreign or Israelite, who sets himself against God’s ways as the nations did.

“Wicked transgressors” translates bâgad ʼâven (bogdey aven). Bâgad at root means to cover, as with a garment, and so to act covertly, to deal deceitfully or treacherously. ʼâven is the same word for wickedness that stood in verse 2. These are people who are treacherous in their evil, deliberate and persistent in it. David asks that God would show them no mercy, which is a plea for God’s justice to fall on evil that will not turn. The psalm goes on to ask this at greater length (Psalm 59:11–13), and David is confident that the LORD sees the day of the wicked coming (Psalm 37:13).

“Selah” closes the verse. The word comes 71 times in the Psalms and 3 times in Habakkuk. Its exact meaning is uncertain, and it is most often taken as a musical direction, a pause or an interlude, or as a signal for the congregation to stop and consider what has just been sung. Here it leaves us for a moment with the weight of what David has asked.

David was innocent in this matter and still a sinner in need of grace. Jesus, the Son of David, was innocent altogether, “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and David’s night in the watched house foreshadows what was done to him. The chief priests plotted to take Jesus by craft and kill him (Matthew 26:3–4), and they looked for false witnesses against him (Matthew 26:59–60). The rulers of his day gathered against him (Acts 4:27), and he was tried, condemned and handed over to be crucified while the crowd called for his blood (Matthew 27:1–26). He went like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and he who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Where David prayed to escape death, Jesus went to it willingly. He entrusted himself to his Father, saying as he died that he committed his spirit into the Father’s hands (Luke 23:46), and for the men who killed him he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). The Father’s answer to him came through death. God raised him up (Acts 2:24), death has no further dominion over him (Romans 6:9–10), and by the resurrection he was declared to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4).

His deliverance is ours. He was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25), and the gift of God in him is eternal life in place of the death our sin earned (Romans 6:23). Through death he broke the power of the devil and freed those held in fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15), and God has delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13–14). He lives always to intercede for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25).

David’s request that God would awake and visit the nations will also be answered in Christ. When he comes again he will gather the nations before him and judge them (Matthew 25:31–32), riding out as the faithful and true judge (Revelation 19:11–16). The wrath of God remains on those who refuse the Son (John 3:36), and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11).

These verses give us words for the hour when trouble is at the door. David’s first move is to speak to God, by name and in detail, and the psalm treats that as the natural thing for one of God’s people to do. Prayer here is the first response to danger, and it is addressed to “my God”, the God who has bound himself to his people and commands the hosts of heaven.

The passage also shows us that God welcomes honesty. David says plainly who is against him, what they intend and that he has done them no wrong, and he asks God to wake and look. The LORD is able to hear a prayer as raw as that. He sees what is hidden from human courts, and he is the defender of those who are wronged, so a believer who is slandered, opposed or treated unjustly may lay the whole matter before him. Deliverance may come by a way we did not expect, as it came to David through a window in the night, and it comes from his faithful hand.

Finally, the prayer hands justice to God. David has enemies he could hate, and he gives them to the LORD of hosts. In Christ we know even more of the God to whom he prayed: the judge of all the earth is the one who was hunted without a cause, who prayed for his killers, and who now intercedes for us.