Psalm 60:12

David asks for a leader into Edom, and the leader he needs is God. Psalm 60 is called a “Michtam of David”, a term often taken to mean a golden psalm or a psalm of instruction, and its title sets it in a time of war. David was fighting Aram-naharaim and Aram-zobah, that is, Mesopotamia and Syria of Zobah, and Joab returned and struck twelve thousand of Edom in the Valley of Salt, a battlefield most likely south of the Dead Sea. Scripture records that victory over Edom in the Valley of Salt in 2 Samuel 8:13 and 1 Chronicles 18:12, among the accounts of David’s wars.

The psalm opens in grief. Its first verses describe a land broken and shaken and a people staggering under God’s displeasure (Psalm 60:1–3). Then God speaks his claim over the nations around Israel, Edom among them (Psalm 60:6–8). These four verses take up the prayer again in the light of that promise, which is why the passage is a renewed petition for victory. David has the word of God, and he still needs God to go before him and make it good.

His first question is “Who will bring me into the strong city?” The verb yâbal, “bring”, comes from a root meaning to flow, and in this form it means to bring or lead forth, especially with pomp, as a procession is led into a place. The word for “strong”, mâtsôwr, means something that hems in. It can be a siege mound, a siege or, figuratively, distress, and here it means a fastness or fortress. ʻîyr is the ordinary word for a city or town, which Strong’s traces to a root meaning to wake, a place guarded by a watch. Together they describe a walled fortress city, built to hold out against an army.

The second question names the place: “who will lead me into Edom?” The verb nâchâh means to lead or guide, to bring someone along the way to where he is going. ʼĔdôm means “red”. It was another name for Esau, the elder twin brother of Jacob, and then the name of the land his descendants held to the southeast of Israel, later called Idumaea. The country is mountainous and rugged, and its cities were strongly fortified, which made them a hard place for any army to take. The Edomites were Israel’s kin through Esau, yet they were often its enemies, so Edom was both the foe of this campaign and a long-standing one.

Both questions look for the same answer. David was a seasoned king with Joab at the head of his army, and he knew that walls like Edom’s fall when God leads. Israel had long been taught this. The LORD told Joshua to be strong and of a good courage because he would be with him (Joshua 1:9). The law promised Israel that the LORD goes with them to fight for them against their enemies (Deuteronomy 20:4). A psalm sets those who trust in chariots and horses beside those who trust in the name of the LORD their God (Psalm 20:7), and Proverbs says that safety is of the LORD (Proverbs 21:31).

Verse 10 answers the questions of verse 9 with a question of its own. The one who can lead Israel into Edom is God, the very God who “hadst cast us off” and “didst not go out with our armies”. David turns to God in the same breath in which he names God’s withdrawal, and his grief and his hope are held together in one prayer.

ʼĕlôhîym, “God”, is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is read as a plural of majesty, with its verbs usually singular. The one David questions is the almighty God who is Israel’s strength, and he speaks to him directly, “O God”, which makes the sense of being cast off all the sharper. The verb zânach, “cast off”, is a word of strong rejection, of turning someone away. yâtsâʼ means to go or come out, and it is the word for going out to battle. To picture God marching out with Israel’s soldiers is to describe his leading presence in war in terms we can see.

Israel knew the LORD as a warrior who fought for his people. Moses told them at the sea that the LORD would fight for them (Exodus 14:14), and after the crossing they sang, “The LORD is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3). God promised Joshua his presence and support (Joshua 1:5). So when Israel lost in battle, the people took it as a sign of God’s displeasure and withdrawal. A defeat was a crisis of faith as well as a military loss, and it brought shame on the nation. Verse 10 speaks from inside that crisis, and it carries the plea that God would go out with them again.

This is honest prayer. David brings his pain and his questions to the very God he is questioning, and Scripture gives us his lament to pray. Faith that speaks to God this way is still faith, and the rest of the psalm shows it moving on to confidence.

Verse 11 turns the questions into a plain request: “Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.” The “us” is the whole people, praying together in their distress. The word for help, ʻezrâh, means aid or help. In a prayer from the battlefield it asks God for the deliverance and the victory that he alone can give.

The word for trouble, tsar, comes from a root meaning to cramp. It can mean something narrow, distress or an adversary, and most often it means an adversary. The KJV takes it here as distress, the narrow place of a nation hemmed in by its enemies.

The reason for the request follows: “vain is the help of man.” shâvᵉʼ means empty, worthless and futile, even deceitful, a thing of nothing. Human help, alliances and strategies may bring relief for a time, and against trouble like this they are empty. The help that rescues comes from God.

Scripture says this often. A psalm warns against putting trust in princes (Psalm 146:3), and another asks where help comes from and finds it in the LORD (Psalm 121:1–2). Isaiah pronounces woe on those who go down to Egypt for help (Isaiah 31:1), and Jeremiah pronounces a curse on the man who trusts in man (Jeremiah 17:5). From the crossing of the Red Sea to the coming of the promised Messiah, the whole Bible tells of God as the one who rescues his people.

The passage ends in confidence: “Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.” The people who had been beaten now speak of their own victory to come, and they rest it wholly on God. The God named here is the same ʼĕlôhîym who had cast them off in verse 10.

chayil means strength, ability, wealth or an army. To “do valiantly” is to act with strength and effect, to do mighty deeds and win. The word “through” translates the Hebrew preposition be, which here means by means of, in the power of God. The second half gives the reason, brought in by ki, “for”, and its emphasis falls on God himself: “he it is”. bûwç, “tread down”, means to trample, to tread underfoot. It is a vivid picture of enemies brought down completely, like grapes trodden in a winepress or dust under the feet.

Both halves are true together. Israel’s army will fight and do valiantly, and God is the one who wins the battle, working for his people and through them. Scripture shows him doing this again and again. He gave Samson strength to defeat his enemies at Lehi (Judges 15:14–15), and he brought Israel through the sea.

Sin, death and the devil are strongholds beyond any human strength, and Christ is the leader who brings his people through them. On the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). By his death he destroyed the one who had the power of death, the devil, and set free those who all their lives were held in bondage by the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). Of his church he says, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Revelation shows him riding out as the victorious warrior (Revelation 19:11–16), and Paul says that he must reign until all enemies are under his feet, and that God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:25–28). At the last he brings his redeemed people into the strong city of the New Jerusalem.

David felt cast off in defeat. Jesus, the Son of David, bore the forsaking itself on the cross as he carried the weight of the world’s sin, and he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He went out to the cross as the true warrior, and there, in what looked like weakness, he won the victory. So those who trust in him are kept in the love of God, from which nothing can separate them (Romans 8:38–39), and he has promised, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

Verse 11 is answered in him as well. Human effort, law-keeping and self-improvement are all vain help against sin and death, and God gave his own help in his Son, whose name, Jesus, means “the LORD saves”. God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the one in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17), and the only way to the Father (John 14:6).

Verse 12 is answered in him too. Believers, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, do valiantly in the battle against sin and the devil, and Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). Christ put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26), God gives us the victory over death through him (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), and Paul promises that “the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16:20). The God who treads down his people’s enemies finishes that work in Christ.

These verses give us words for the time when the fight has gone against us. David names the strong city in front of him, brings his questions to God even about God’s own absence, asks plainly for help, and ends by speaking of victory. Each step is prayer, and each one rests on who God is. The strong cities that face God’s people may be a hard trial, a sin that holds on, or a trouble too great for any help we can find. The same God hears, and his help is real where the help of man is vain. Through him his people do valiantly, and he it is that treads down their enemies.