Psalms 56

FOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN; SET TO JONATH ELEM REHOKIM. A PSALM OF DAVID: MICHTAM: WHEN THE PHILISTINES TOOK HIM IN GATH.

1. Be merciful unto me, O God; for man would swallow me up: All the day long he fighting oppresseth me.2 Mine enemies would swallow me up all the day long: For they be many that fight proudly against me.3 What time I am afraid, I will put my trust in thee.4 In God I will praise his word: In God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid; What can flesh do unto me?5 All the day long they wrest my words: All their thoughts are against me for evil.6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, They mark my steps, Even as they have waited for my soul.

7. Shall they escape by iniquity? In anger cast down the peoples, O God.8 Thou tellest my wanderings: Put thou my tears into thy bottle; Are they not in thy book?9 Then shall mine enemies turn back in the day that I call: This I know, that God is for me.10 In God will I praise his word: In the LORD will I praise his word.11 In God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid; What can man do unto me?12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render thank offerings unto thee.13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death. Hast thou not delivered my feet from falling? That I may walk before God In the light of the living.

HERE again the title is a sufficient guide. The Psalm is connected with the seizure of David by the Philistines, and his presentation to Achish, the King of Gath, as the champion of Israel (1 Sam. 21: 10-15). De Witt.—It is a characteristic possessed in common by the Psalms of this period, that the prospect of the judgment that will come upon the whole of the hostile world is combined with David’s prospect of the judgment that will come upon his enemies (7: 8; 55: 8; 59: 5). D.

The complaint of one who, though hard pressed by enemies, nevertheless trusts in God, rests in His promises, flees to Him for succor, and renders thanks for His mercy. Throughout, his confidence never forsakes him. Indeed, we see here the victory rather than the struggle of faith. Hence the refrain, with which the first and second parts conclude, “In God will I praise His Word. What can flesh (man) do unto me?” The Psalm falls naturally into three divisions: The first and second scarcely differ in their subject-matter. They each contain a cry for help against enemies, and an expression of confidence in God; the second, however, being somewhat more emphatic than the first. The first consists of vs. 1-4; the second of vs. 5-11. The Psalm then concludes (vs. 12, 13) with words of devout thankfulness. P.

2. The word translated “O Thou Most

High” (A. V.) is commonly an adverb, meaning proudly, as from a higher position and with superior claims. In this sense it would here describe the spirit of their fighting against Him. Hebrew usage does not sustain our translators in taking it as a name of God. C.

3. Trust in God does not make us cease to be men, and to have the feelings of men; but it gives a better than any stoical calmness; it lifts the man who is trembling in himself above the fear which assails him; in the very midst of fear it listens to the voice which says, Fear not, for I am with thee. “Assuredly,” says Calvin, “this is the true test and proof of our faith: when fears harass us, so far as our fleshy nature is concerned, but do not overthrow and unsettle our minds.” P.

It is a good maxim with which to go into a world of danger; a good maxim in a storm, and when in danger on the land; a good maxim when we are sick; a good maxim when we think of death and the judgment—“What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” Barnes.—If we accustomed ourselves to think of our common mercies, to study God as an affectionate parent in His every-day dealings; if we thought of His love as sustaining us at night, awakening us in the morning, and guarding us during the daytime; if we saw His love in everything; felt it in the beating of the pulse, heard it in the voices of friendship around us, it could hardly be that we should think it withdrawn from us the moment we were overtaken by any sorrow. We should have this truth, then, graven upon our minds: our common mercies are the best preparations for trials. We may have to go down into the deep, the great deep of God’s judgments; and our faith may be shaken because we lose sight of the mountains of God’s righteousness which are round about us, those attributes which guarantee the fitness of every dealing; but it will cheer us, it will sustain us, if we have stored our minds with the tokens of God’s unvaried loving-kindness, and have been in the habit of pondering our daily mercies. Then we can say, “Thou art good, and doest good continually.” “Whatsoever time we are afraid, we will trust in Thee.” E. Mason.

There is nothing like faith to help at a pinch; faith dissolves doubts as the sun drives away the mists. And the time for believing is always. There are times when some graces may be out of use, but there is no time wherein faith can be said to be so. Wherefore faith must be always in exercise. Faith is the eye, is the mouth, is the hand, and one of these is of use all the day long. Faith is to see, to receive, to work, or to eat; and a Christian should be seeing, or receiving, or working, or feeding all day long. Let it rain, let it blow, let it thunder, let it lighten, a Christian must still believe. “At what time,” said the good man, “I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” Banyan.

Faith in God clears the mind and dispels fears, so it is the most sure help—What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee. It resolves the mind concerning the event, and scatters the multitude of perplexing thoughts that arise. No matter, says faith, though all fail, I know one thing that will not; I have a refuge that all the strength of nature and art cannot break in upon or demolish; a high defence, my rock in whom I trust. The firm belief of and resting on His power and wisdom and love gives a clear, satisfying answer to all doubts and fears. It makes day in the soul, and so chases away those fears that vex us only in the dark, as affrightful fancies do. This is indeed to sanctify God and give Him His own glory, to rest on Him. And it returns us peace and victory over fears and troubles, and persuades us that nothing can separate from His love. Leighton.

3. 4. Notice how beautifully there comes out here the occasion of trust. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” That goes deep down into the realities of life. It is when we are afraid that we trust in God, not in easy times, when things are going smoothly with us. This principle—first fear and only then faith—applies all round the circle of our necessities, weaknesses, sorrows, and sins. And very beautifully, too, these two clauses give us the victory of faith. “In God I have put my trust; I will not fear.” He has confidence, and in the strength of that he resolves that he will not yield to fear. The one true antagonist and triumphant rival of all fear is faith, and faith alone. The true way to become brave is to lean on God. That, and that alone, delivers from otherwise reasonable fear. Faith bears in her one hand the gift of outward safety and in her other that of inward peace. A. M.

4. In God (I give praise for His Word). The rendering, “In God will I praise His Word,” is unmeaning. Such a combination occurs nowhere else. But nothing is more natural, in connection with an avowal of fearless trust in God’s mercy and power in great peril, than a thankful reference to His faithful promise of deliverance. The ejaculation included in the parenthesis, with the repetition of the name of God required after it, gives great emphasis to the avowal. This emphasis is greatly increased at the recurrence of the refrain in vs. 10 and 11, by a repetition of the ejaculation of praise, with the Divine name Jehovah, and followed by the exact echo of the closing line here, “In God do I trust, and am fearless.” Immense weight and power are thus gained, in preparation for the thankful sentences that close this beautiful hymn. De Witt.

6. The enemies of religion have not anywhere so quick an eye as in observing the ways of such as seek after God; my remarkers, David calls them (Psalm 56 : 6), they that scan my ways, as the word is, and will not let the least step pass unexamined. If nothing be found faulty, then their invention works, either forges complete falsehoods, or disguises something that lies open to mistake; or if they can catch hold on any real failing, they aggravate and raise it to the highest. L.

8. As in the last Psalm we noticed the sudden transition from sadness to anger, from a tone of weariness and despondency to one of stern indignation, so here we have the contrary. For a moment the Psalmist prays for destruction upon his adversaries; then he turns, with words of touching entreaty, to God. He knows that each day of his wandering, each nook in which he has found shelter, each step that he has taken, every artifice by which he has baffled his foes—all have been numbered by his Heavenly Keeper. Yea, no tear that he has shed, when his eye has been raised to heaven in prayer, has fallen to the ground. He asks God to gather them all in His bottle, and trusts that He will note them in His book. The bottle is the skin-bottle which in Eastern lands is used for keeping water, milk, wine, etc. In this he prays God, by a bold figure, to treasure his tears. P.—A very bold but expressive metaphor. As the traveller carefully preserves water, milk, or wine in leather bottles or bladders for a journey, so David trusts that God keeps in memory every tear which he sheds. They are precious as memorials of many a sorrowful pleading, many a prayer offered with streaming eyes. Cook.

The act of counting implies particular attention. The idea of recollection is expressed by the strong figure which follows, put my tears into Thy bottle—i.e., preserve them in Thy memory. The interrogation in the last clause has the force of a direct assertion. Thy book, the book of Thy remembrance, another figurative expression for the memory itself. (Compare Mal. 3 : 16.) A.—“Thou tellest”—by record in a book; literally, thou dost book them. So also bottle Thou my tears, for a permanent record, to keep them ever before Thine eye. Is it not even so? Precious thought—that the Great Father lets no tear of His child escape His notice or fail from His memory! C.

It is the witty observation of one, that God is said in Scripture to have a bag and a bottle, a bag for our sins and a bottle for our tears; and that we should help to fill this, as we have that. There is an allusion here in the original that cannot be Englished. Trapp.—God has a bottle and a book for His people’s tears, both those for their sins and those for their afflictions. This intimates that 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, so are their tears—not one of them shall fall to the ground. I have seen thy tears (2 Kings 20 : 5); I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself (Jer. 31 : 18). God will comfort His people according to the time wherein He has afflicted them, and give to them to reap in joy, who sowed in tears. What was sown a tear will come up a pearl. H.

Tears are here employed as exponents of sorrows and troubles. They have a sort of sacramental meaning, being outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grief, and sometimes, too, though more rarely, of an inward and visible joy. One class of tears that are treasured up by God are those which are wept in the spiritual conflicts of life. There are the earlier and the latter rains in the life of God in the soul of man. The chief sorrows of a Christian life are those which arise from a sense of sin, and defect, and unbelief, and ingratitude. It is but a poor life which has not its hours of secret self-examination, and its hours, therefore, of secret grief. The tears we shed then are seen by Him who ever seeth in secret, and they are put into His bottle and recorded in His book. Another sort of tears which are equally dear to God are the tears wept over the wickedness of men and the apparent slowness with which the kingdom of God makes its way. Blessed are they that thus mourn, for they shall be comforted. E. Mellor.

The tears of which David speaks in this Psalm were such as any one may shed in ordinary disappointment or distresses of life. The Psalmist knew that such tears would be dear to God. He uses three metaphors: the arithmetical table; the process of preserving precious wine; the memorandum book. “Thou tellest my flittings, my changes, my flutterings, my agitations.” Thou tellest my flittings; put Thou my tears into Thy bottle; are they not (written)

in Thy book? Things so treated by God cannot be wrong. It would be a very severe creed, and little suited to man and his world, which should exclude tears from the Christian’s vocabulary of language. Sorrow is not our normal condition. That graceful verse seems written as for this very end, to show that sorrow is the parenthesis: “Weeping may endure for a night.” Still sorrow is a very real thing. No one can despise it. And when it comes God sends it so that it shall be felt. And sorrow comes with many missions. Sorrows tell of sin—sin that would else be latent and unknown. Sorrows break up the ground; the ploughshare passes through the clods to break them. Sorrows draw out graces which were sleeping. Sorrows throw us into the arms of Jesus. But we must deal with our sorrows measuredly. If we are not to despise them, we are not to faint under them. There are tears which, if they do not actually rebel, are nevertheless murmuring tears. They complain of God. There are selfish tears and too protracted tears. The highest exercise of sorrow is to return to duty bravely, throwing into duty more of Christ and more of heaven. J. V.

Faith sets the soul in God, and where is safety if it be not there? It believes that He fits and rules the affairs of the world with an all-seeing eye and all-moving hand. He orders the march of all armies and the events of battles, and yet thou and thy particular condition slips not out of His view. The very hairs of thy head are numbered. Are not all thy steps, and the hazards of them, known to Him, and all thy desires before him? Doth He not number thy wanderings, every weary step thou art driven to, and put thy tears in His bottle? Thou mayest assure thyself that, however thy matters seem to go, all is contrived to subserve thy good, especially thy chief and highest good. There is a regular motion in them, though the wheels do seem to run cross. All those things are against me, said old Jacob, and yet they were all for Him. Leighton.—It is possible, if a man puts all his wanderings and tears into the hand of God, that they may be seen at last to end in a plan, man freely contributing his part and God suggesting and guiding. We cannot but think that this shall be one of the occupations of eternity—to read the meaning of the past in the possessions of the future. Ker.

9. What doth not prayer overcome and conquer? What doth not resistance drive back when accompanied by distrust of self and trust in God? And in what battle can he be conquered who stands in the presence of God with an earnest resolve to please Him? “When I cry unto Thee, then shall mine enemies turn back.” Scupoli.—What a God is this who hearkens to the cry of His children, and in a moment delivers them from the mightiest adversaries! “This I know.” This is one of the believer’s certainties, his infallible, indisputable verities. “God is for me.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Who will restrain prayer when it is so potent? S.

10. “In God will I praise His Word: in the Lord will I praise His Word.” The first word, Elohim, is a name belonging to God as a Judge; the second word, Jehovah, is a name of mercy. I will praise God whether He deal with me in a way of justice or in a way of mercy, when He hath thunder in His voice as well as when He hath honey under His tongue. Oh, how should we praise God, and pleasure ourselves by such a frame! Charnock.

11. The words “in God,” repeated here, give a striking prominence to his precious relations to his God. We might translate, “In God will I exult, even in His Word (of promise); in God have I put my only trust; I will not fear; what can man do against me while God is on my side?” C.—It is the picture of a human mind at rest, and at rest in view of the Word and the character of the living God, and this, too, in the hour of trial. The language is not that of a man who is at rest because there is nothing in his present condition to annoy and disturb him, and nothing seen in the future to awaken painful apprehensions, but that of a man in the most depressing circumstances, uttered in an hour of peril, when the present was all disaster and the future all gloom; when earthly confidences failed him, and the vanity of human help was demonstrated, and nothing was left upon which to stay his spirit but simple confidence in God. E. Mason.—This triumphant word, so expressive of a holy magnanimity, the apostle puts into the mouth of every true believer, whom he makes a Christian hero (Heb. 13: 6). We may each of us boldly say, The Lord is my Helper, and then I will not fear what man shall do unto me; for he has no power but what he has given him from above. H.

12. Thy vows are upon me. David, when overwhelmed by afflictions and oppressed by dangers, often established his heart with the reflection that the vows of his God were upon him. There is no privilege, no exaltation of blessedness, comparable with that by which a sinner is permitted to avouch the Lord to be his God. Everything of good, whether for this world or that which is to come, is embraced in the compendious declaration, I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee. The vow corresponds to this promise, and presents the man as an oblation to the Lord, holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ. It is an exercise of faith which strengthens faith. Thornwell.

Vows made in his trouble David does not lightly forget, nor should we. We voluntarily made them, let us cheerfully keep them. All professed Christians are men under vows, but especially those who in hours of dire distress have rededicated themselves unto the Lord. S.—It ought to be the matter of our consideration and joy that the vows of God are upon us; our baptismal vows, renewed at the Lord’s table, our occasional vows under convictions, under corrections, by these we are bound to live to God. H.

Psalms of thanksgiving are not all reserved for the end of the book. Even in those which read like the very sobs of a broken heart there is ever present some tone of grateful acknowledgment of God’s mercy. He sends us sorrow, and He wills that we should weep; but they should be tears like David’s, who, at the lowest point of his fortunes, when he plaintively besought God, “Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle,” could say in the same breath, “Thy vows are upon me, O God; I will render praises unto Thee.” God works on our souls that we may have the consciousness of sin, and He wills that we should come with broken and contrite hearts, and like the King of Israel wail out our confessions and supplications—“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness.” But, like him, we should even in our lowliest abasement, when our hearts are bruised, be able to say along with our contrition, “Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.” Our sorrows are never so great that they hide our mercies. The sky is never covered with clouds, so that neither sun nor stars appear for many days. And in every Christian heart the low tones of lamentation and confession are blended with grateful praise. A. M.

13. Thou hast delivered my soul from death; wilt Thou not deliver my feet from falling? Here, as in the beggar’s Psalm (chap. 85), we are emboldened to ask other benefits by the remembrance of what the Lord has already done for us. If God has saved our souls from perdition, may we not surely trust the same grace to keep us from falling? Pierson.—He gratefully refers, in conclusion, to the personal experiences which constrained him thus to “offer thank-offerings” unto God. His life had been preserved and his steps made firm, so that he might still honor God in his further life, that he might continue to “walk before God in the light of the living.” B.

Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings—a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness, a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first should make us grateful, the second humble, and the third moderate. Hannah More.