Psalm 56 – Trusting And Not Afraid

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 31 Dec. 2023

Introduction:

• This is the first of 5 Mikhtam Psalms in a row by David in the second book of the Psalms. (Psalm 16 was the only Mikhtam of David in the first book of the Psalms). And “Mikhtam” basically means something that has been ‘written down.”

• There are three Hebrew words in the superscription which give translators fits, and that is yonat elem rekhokim.

  • Many think it may be the name of a musical instrument or the name of a musical tune¹.

  • The ancient Greek and Latin versions interpreted the phrase to refer to when Israelite “people” had been “distanced” from God’s “holy” place. Now, that is rather different from the Hebrew text available to us, so it’s possible that the superscription has been edited over the years.

  • The ESV and NLT followed the NIV in translating it as “a dove on distant oak-trees.” The problem with this translation is that nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible is the word for “oaks/terebinths” spelled like the word here.

  • The ancient Aramaic version interprets it as a “quiet dove when they are far away.” This is how the old English Geneva Bible reads, and it makes the most sense to me, although it suffers from the problem that the Hebrew word for “far away” is plural whereas the Hebrew words for “quiet” and “dove” are singular.

  • So, since nobody seems to be able to come up with a completely-satisfactory translation, that’s why the KJV and NASB took the safe route of transliterating it “Jonath elem rehokim.”

  • But whichever translation you follow, the sense of displacement comes through. The Dove or the people are “far away.” So far away that its voice can barely be heard. All is not right.

• This can fit with the final part of the superscription about the psalm describing the time when David was “seized/taken/held in Gath” far away from his homeland.

  • 1 Samuel 21:10-22:1 “Then David got up and fled on that day from the presence of Saul, so he went to Acish, king of Gath. But the servants of Akish said…, ‘Isn't this David... the guy [in the song] ‘Saul struck down his thousands, but David his... tens of thousands ?’ Then David sank these words into his heart and became very scared of the presence of Akish, king of Gath. So he resorted to duplicity... and acted insanely while in their control... So Akish said to his servants, ‘Look, y'all can see the man is raving-mad! What are you bringing him to me for?...’ So David ... escaped to the cave of Adullam...” (NAW)

  • Although the word “seized/held” does not occur in the 1 Sam. account, the words “in their hands/in their control” is in the 1 Sam. account, along with the statement that “David escaped,” so it does appear that King Akish’s guards held David in their custody for a brief time.

  • If you put the words of verses1 & 2 together from the KJV and NASB and NIV and ESV, the description is vivid of being hotly-pursued by a fighting-man who was pressing an attack against him because he wanted to swallow him up, and that this oppressor had mobilized others – proud enemies - to join him in the relentless pursuit and attack against David. This is exactly David’s plight as he was hounded by Saul and Saul’s army through the wilderness of Judea and eventually into exile in Philistine territory. And the initial hostile response of the Philistines to David’s request for Assylum in Gath must have sent David’s already-overloaded stress response through the roof! What can we do when it feels that we are stressed to the bursting point?

• Translation: God, be gracious to me, for a man has been hounding me all day long – a fighting-man has been putting pressure on me. My opponents have hounded {me} all day long – indeed there are many who are fighting against me from an advantage. {But} as for me, in the day when I am afraid, it is to You that I will trust. In God I will praise His word; in God I have trusted. I will not be afraid. What can flesh do against me? All day long they misconstrue my words. All their reckonings are toward evil against me. They are a marauding band {and} they keep in hiding. It is they who are hedging-in my footsteps like when they lay in wait for my soul. So let there be no escape for them; in anger, put down nations, O God! My ups-and-downs {I} have recounted [to] You. Please set my tears in your {presence}. Are [they] not in your record? Then my enemies will turn back on the day that I call out. I know this: that God is for me. In God I will praise the word; in Yahweh I will praise the word. In God I have trusted. I will not be afraid. What can man do against me? God, Your vows are upon me; I will make good on thanks-offerings to You. For You have rescued my soul from death and my feet from straying in order that I may {be pleasing} before the presence of God in the light of those who are living.

vs. 1-2 Request for God’s Mercy in a Stressful Situation

• It’s hard to tell for sure whether David intended this in the wording of v.1, but three words describing the stress he was under are suggestive of the image of squeezing grapes to get wine.

  • First is the word “Gath,” which is the name of a Philistine city-state, but as a word, it means “winepress.” In God’s poetic design, Gath was a place where David was put under pressure in order to finish preparing him to become the next king of Israel.

  • Second is the word “Shaf,” occurring in v.1 and in v.2, which ancient versions, followed by the NASB and ESV, translated “crush/trample/tread upon.”

    • The old-fashioned way to make grape juice was to lay the fresh-picked berries out on a stone and (with clean feet) walk all over them to press the juice out, then collect the juice in a container as it ran off the stone.

    • Now, the Hebrew word can have another meaning of “panting with desire,” and that’s the meaning the KJV and NIV chose. It changes the word-picture from the stress of squeezing to the stress of being chased by hunters, but it is a picture of stress either way.

  • The third word which suggests the image of squeezing grapes is the last verb in verse 1, “lakhatz,” translated “oppress” or “press an attack” – another word about putting pressure on someone.

    • Consider what Augustine said in his sermon on this psalm around the year 400: “If don’t think that you have troubles, you have not yet begun to be a Christian. And where is the voice of the Apostle, ‘But even all that will live godly in Christ, shall suffer persecutions.’ [2 Tim. 3:12] If therefore you don’t suffer any persecution for Christ, take heed if it be the case that you have not begun to live in a godly way in Christ. But when you have begun godly to live in Christ, you have entered into the winepress; get yourself ready for pressings so that you may not prove dry, lest from the pressing nothing go forth.”

    • What is it that comes out of you when you are squeezed by stress or opposition? Is it anger? Self-pity? Escapist behavior? Or is it cries and prayers to God and praises of His word, like what came out of David’s mouth?

• At the end of v.2, there is a Hebrew word which gets translated a few different ways. It literally means “to be high,”

  • so a few versions chose to interpret it as a shout out to God “most high.” However, this word occurs nowhere else in the Bible with this meaning,

  • so most of the contemporary English versions instead interpret it as the bad guys being “haughty.” It is used in this sense in one other psalm (73:8),

  • But a much more common way this Hebrew word is used is in the sense of “high ground” where meetings were held and monuments were erected and battles were fought, and this seems to be the sense in which the ancient Greek and Latin versions interpreted it.

  • Any way you cut it, the main point is the same: there is tremendous stress on David – not only from the singular warrior mentioned in v.1 (maybe that’s Saul or maybe that’s Doeg), but also from the many other soldiers which have been recruited to hunt him down and kill him.

• And what does all this stress lead David to do? It leads him to cry out to God and write two songs (this one and Psalm 34). The first words out of his mouth in this psalm are “God be gracious/merciful to me!”

vs. 3-4, 10-11 The Righteous Response to Stress: Trust & Praise

• Remember that when David fled to Gath, 1 Sam. 21:1 says it was “for fear of Saul.”

• And in this state of fear, the first positive thing David does as a response to this stress is “I have trusted/I will trust” (the verb occurs in the Hebrew equivalent of the future tense in v.3 and in the Hebrew equivalent of past tense in v.4)

  • “The true proof of faith consists in this, that when we feel the solicitations of natural fear, we can resist them, and prevent them from obtaining an undue ascendancy.” ~J. Calvin

• The second thing David does when he experiences fear it to praise God’s word.

  • This is the only place in the Bible where “praise” is directed to the “word” of God rather than to God Himself. Everywhere else it is “I will praise You/Your name/the LORD.²”

  • Possibly it is an acknowledgment of the Word as the second person of the Trinity.

  • But certainly it relates to the words God had already communicated to David through the prophets: Moses, who had written the Torah, as well as Nathan who had delivered God’s promise that the Messiah would be one of David’s descendants.

  • Believing what God has said is a way to praise (or celebrate) God’s word³. When His words (which are true) do not look like they will come true, it is even more honoring to God’s word to believe it.

  • “[H]owever much he might seem to be forsaken and abandoned by God, he satisfied himself by reflecting on the truthfulness of [God’s] promises... It was no small attainment in David, that he could thus proceed to praise the Lord, in the midst of dangers, and with no other ground of support but the word of God... And it would be well if all the saints of God were impressed with such a sense of His superiority to their adversaries as would lead them to show a similar contempt of danger. When assailed... it should never escape [our] recollection, that the contest is in reality between [our] enemies and God… [who] is standing at our right hand, able with one movement of His finger, or one breath of His mouth, to dissipate their hosts, and confound their… machinations… The repetition⁴ [of this in vs. 4, 10, and 11] amounts to an expression of his determination that, notwithstanding all circumstances which might appear to contravene the promise, he would trust in it, and persist in praising it both now, henceforth, and for ever. How desirable is it that the Lord’s people generally would accustom themselves to think in the same manner, and find, in the word of God, matter of never-failing praise amidst their worst trials!” ~J. Calvin

• There are two very important prepositions in these verses.

  • One is the Hebrew beth preposition in the phrase “in God/in the LORD” which occurs five times in this Psalm: v.4 In God I will praise His word; in God I have trusted... 10 In God I will praise the word; in Yahweh I will praise the word. 11 In God I have trusted…” (NAW)

    • This phrase is found throughout the Psalms, for instance:

      • 3:2 “Many are saying to my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’” (NAW)

      • Psalm 44:8 “It is in God that we have boasted all the day, and it is Your name forever that we will praise!” (NAW)

      • Psalm 60:12 “Through God we will do valiantly, For it is He who shall tread down our enemies.” (NKJV)

      • Psalm 62:7 “In God is my salvation and my glory; The rock of my strength, And my refuge, is in God.” (NKJV)

      • Psalm 63:11 “But the king shall rejoice in God...” (NKJV)

    • It is important to define “in” properly, however, because there are all sorts of wrong ideas about what it means to be “in God.”

      • It does not mean that God is some kind of physical or spiritual substance (like air) that we are immersed in and become one with.

      • And it is not a feeling that comes and goes – like we use the preposition in the phrase “in love.”

      • To be “in God/in Christ” means to be in a covenant relationship with Him where He is our God and we are His people. We believe the truth He has revealed to us; we depend on Him to provide our needs, and we loyally do what He commands. Or as 1 John 4:19 puts it, “We love Him because He first loved us.” That’s what it means to be “in God.”

    • This phrase carries over into the New Testament in passages like:

      • Romans 5:11 “...we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” (NKJV)

      • Colossians 3:3 “For you died, and your life has been hidden together within the Christ in God.” (NAW)

      • 1 John 4:15-16 “Whoever agrees that Jesus is the Son of God, God stays in him, and he in God. And we ourselves have known and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and the one who stays in love stays in God, and God [stays] in him.” (NAW, Cf. Eph. 1:1-13)

  • The other key preposition in this text is the Hebrew lamed preposition, which shows the positions of the three main characters:

    • The position of the enemy

v.2 many who are fighting against me (לִי)

v.5 their thoughts are against me (עָלַי)

v. 4 What can flesh do to/against me? (לִי)

v. 11 What can man do against me? (לִי)

v.7 no salvation for them (לָמוֹ)

• The position of the psalmist

v.3 I will trust in you (אֵלֶיךָ)

v.12 vows are upon me (עָלַי); I will make good on thanks-offerings to You (לָךְ)

v.13 that I may walk/be pleasing before the presence of God (לִפְנֵי אֱלֹהִים)

• The position of God

v.9 God is for me (לִי)

God is the deciding factor in the end of each story.

• And what is the result of this trust in God which reveals the unseen realities of where everyone is and where they are going? A loss of unhealthy fear.

  • When I am afraid, I will trust... and then I won’t be afraid of men anymore!

  • Isaiah 12:2 "Look, God is my salvation I will trust and will not dread For Yah Yahweh is my strength and song And He has become my salvation.” (NAW)

  • Hebrews 13:6 “Thus we have courage to say, ‘The Lord is a helper to me, so I will not be frightened by what man will do to me.’” (NAW, cf. 2 Tim. 1:12)

  • If you are afraid, the best way not to be afraid anymore is to trust in God and praise His word by believing the Bible.

• But there are many things in life which really are a threat to us, and, even if we can be freed from fear about them, something still needs to be done about the threat; that’s when we can pray, like David did, for God to intervene and rescue us.

vs. 5-6 The Seriousness of the Situation Makes God’s Deliverance Necessary

• David already mentioned in v.2 that his opponents are “many” and that the stress they have been putting on him has been unrelenting and overwhelming. Now in vs. 5-6 he gives more concrete reasons why it is imperative that God deliver him.

• v.5 makes the point that there will be no justice unless God intervenes.

  • Not only are people taking David’s “words” and “twisting/distorting/wresting/misconstruing” them, but there is no one who will even give him the benefit of the doubt in justice: “ALL their reckonings are for evil/harm [to come] against me.⁵”

  • Saul misconstrued David’s motives and even David’s words, for instance, when David secretly got bread and a sword from the priest at the tabernacle while he was running for his life, Saul interpreted it as a plot to overthrow his government.

  • Saul projected on David what he himself would have thought, for Saul himself was deceptive and kniving – remember how he had offered his daughter’s hand in marriage for free without a dowry in order to trap David and get him killed by the Philistines (1 Sa. 18:25)?

• v. 6 makes the point that this is no harmless prank; these adversaries are determined to kill David, another reason why it is imperative that God come to his rescue.

  • The picture in v.6 is that the enemy has gathered together a band of assassins and hatched a plot with them to steadily push David into a corner and then conduct a deadly surprise attack against him⁶.

  • The Hebrew word translated “watch” as in “they watch my steps,” is not the word for “see” or “stare at,” but the word for “keeping under guard” or “preventing from escape.”

  • Cf. Psalm 49:5 “...The iniquity of those at my heels surrounds me” (NAW),
    Psalm 119:95 “The wicked wait for me to destroy me, But I will consider Your testimonies.” (NKJV)

  • When the wicked persecute us, we can and should cry out to God for justice and deliverance.

  • Jeremiah provides another example for us. In chapter 20, Jeremiah was beaten and put in stocks by the high priest for warning the people of Jerusalem that God was going to send them into exile if they did not get right with God. So Jeremiah prayed and made the case before God that the seriousness of the situation warranted God’s intervention: Jeremiah 20:10-12 “...I heard many mocking: ‘Fear on every side!’ ... All my acquaintances watched for my stumbling, saying, ‘Perhaps he can be induced; Then we will prevail against him, And we will take our revenge on him.’ … O LORD of hosts, You who test the righteous, And see the mind and heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them; For I have pleaded my cause before You.” (NKJV) Go ahead and plead your cause before God!

vs. 7-9 David asks God to listen to him and punish the wicked.

• In v.7, there is some dispute over the second word in the Hebrew text: The ancient Greek, Latin, and Aramaic manuscripts indicate that it is a negative, but the modern Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts indicate that it is the word for “iniquity.”

  • So the NIV followed the ancient versions with “on no account let them escape,”

  • the NASB followed the Masoretic Hebrew (somewhat) with “Because of wickedness cast them forth,”

  • and the KJV & ESV turned it into a question, “Shall they escape by iniquity?”

  • But any way you read it, David is reasoning with God to bring accountability to these men for their iniquity. He’s saying it would be just for God to get “mad” at them and “bring them down.”

• We too can appeal to what God has already revealed to us about His justice and lay it before Him in prayer. That means we need to know what the Bible says about justice, for instance:

  • Proverbs 19:5 “A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who speaks lies will not escape.” (NKJV)

  • Psalm 55:23 “But You, O God, will send them down to the grave to rot. As for murderous and deceitful men, their days will not receive dividends, meanwhile, as for me, I will trust in You!” (NAW)

  • 2 Sam 22:48 “This God is the One who deals out retributions for me, and who brings down peoples under me” (NAW, cf. Isaiah 63:6, Ezekiel 17:15, Rom. 2:3)

• There is also a dispute over how to translate two words at the beginning and end of v.8.

  • From the time of the early church, Latin and Greek-speaking Christians understood it to mean, “I have recounted my life to you, O God; put my tears before Your presence...”

  • Meanwhile Syriac-speaking Christians have always understood it to mean, “I have declared my faith; put my tears before You…”

  • However, for the last thousand years, readers of Hebrew have understood it to mean, “You Yourself have kept account of my wandering back-and-forth and put my tears in Your bottle...”

  • I am partial to the older traditions which seem to mean, “O.K. God, I’ve just spent the first 7 verses of this psalm crying in Your presence and telling You about how bad my life is right now, and I expect You will take account of all that and that You will decide fairly how to bring justice to bear.”

  • But it is also true that the God who “counts [our] steps” (Job 31:4) and who knows how many hairs are on our head (Mat. 10:30) also knows our whole history without us telling Him, and since He is paying such close attention to us, we can trust Him not to miss any injustice that is done to us. So, despite the variety of textual traditions, they land us in the same place.

  • However, if you go with the word “bottle,” don’t picture a little amber glass medicine bottle with a dropper in the lid; this Hebrew word is the one for a sheep-skin that has been sewn into a big sack for transporting water or wine or milk. That’ll hold a lot of tears!

• We know God has a Book of Life with the names of everyone He saves in it, but God keeps track of much more than just your name. Here He tells us that He records our tears too!

  • Psalm 139:3 “You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways… 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” (NKJV)

  • Later on, when King Hezekiah got terminally ill and cried out to God, God said in Isaiah 38:6 “...I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears… and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and will defend this city.” (NAW)

  • “God takes cognizance of all the afflictions of his people; and he does not cast out from his care and love those whom men have cast out from their acquaintance... God has a bottle and a book for his people's tears... he observes them with compassion and tender concern; he is afflicted in their afflictions, and knows their souls in adversity. As the blood of his saints, and their deaths, are precious in the sight of the Lord... The tears of God's persecuted people are bottled up and sealed among God's treasures; and, when these books come to be opened, they will be found vials of wrath, which will be poured out upon their persecutors, whom God will surely reckon with for all the tears they have forced from his people's eyes...” ~M. Henry

• And so, in v.9, David expresses confidence that, since God is for him, God will cause his enemies to beat a hasty retreat whenever he asks God for deliverance.

  • Now, the way this works, you have to call upon God.

  • And you also have to believe that God is “for you.”

  • Psalm 118:6-7 “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? The LORD is for me among those who help me; Therefore I shall see my desire on those who hate me.” (NKJV) Psalm 9:3 “...my enemies turn back. They will stumble and perish before Your face” (NAW)

  • Isaiah 8:10 “...God is with us.” - Immanuel (NAW)

  • Romans 8:31 “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (NKJV)

• Finally, when God rescues David, David promises to thank God for it.

vs. 12-13 God’s response of Deliverance; David’s response of Thanks

• In verse 12, David promises to make good on his vows to offer thanks-offerings to God.

  • Offering animal sacrifices was the way they thanked God back in David’s day, but in the New Testament (Heb. 13:15), God has let us know that He is satisfied when we simply express our thanks and praise to Him verbally through prayer and song.

  • Psalm 76:11 “Make vows to the LORD your God, and pay them; Let all who are around Him bring presents to Him who ought to be feared.” (NKJV)

• We don’t do a lot of vows in our church tradition, but consider the vows you have taken in church membership.

  • You promised that you would “seek for all the members of your household to be baptized.” Are you doing what you can toward that end?

  • You promised to “rely upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, to live in a way that is appropriate for followers of Christ.”
    Are you following through on that?

  • And you promised “to support the ministry of CTR in its worship and work.”
    Are you making good on that?
    These are ways to show your thankfulness to God for saving you.

• In v.13, David testifies that God “delivered [his] soul from death” to life in God’s presence.

  • “If God has delivered us from sin, either from the commission of it (by preventing grace) or from the punishment of it (by pardoning mercy), we have reason to own that he has thereby delivered our souls from death, which is ‘the wages of sin.’ If we, who were by nature dead in sin, are quickened together with Christ, and are made spiritually alive, we have reason to own that God has delivered our souls from death.” ~M. Henry

  • “Therefore... from God let us never depart. Our patrimony let Him be, our hope let Him be, our safety let Him be. He is Himself here a comforter, there a remunerator, everywhere Maker-alive, and of life the Giver… who said, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life:’ in order that both here in the light of faith, and there in the light of sight, as it were ‘in the light of the living,’ ‘in the sight of the Lord [we] may be pleasing.’” ~Augustine

Psalm 56 – Side-by side comparison of versions^A