Psalms 57

FOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN; SET TO AL-TASHHETH. A PSALM OF DAVID: MICTAM: WHEN HE FLED FROM SAUL, IN THE CAVE.

1. Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; For my soul taketh refuge in thee: Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I take refuge, Until these calamities be overpast. 2 I will cry unto God Most High; Unto God that performeth all things for me. 3 He shall send from heaven, and save me, When he that would swallow me up reproacheth; God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. 4 My soul is among lions; I lie among them that are set on fire, Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, And their tongue a sharp sword. 5 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; Let thy glory be above all the earth.

6. They have prepared a net for my steps; My soul is bowed down: They have digged a pit before me; They are fallen into the midst thereof themselves. [Selah 7 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing, yea, I will sing praises. 8 Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake right early. 9 I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the peoples: I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. 10 For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, And thy truth unto the skies. 11 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; Let thy glory be above all the earth.

THIS Psalm also belongs to the time of David’s persecution by Saul. The cave mentioned is probably the cave of Adullam, to which he made escape from the sharp pursuit of Saul (1 Sam. 22), rather than the cave in the wilderness of Engedi, where later on he sojourned for a time (1 Sam. 24). There are various resemblances in style and expression in this group of Psalms that indicate the same time and authorship. De Witt.

This Psalm is in many respects like the last, and, like that, was probably written by David. Both Psalms open with the same cry to God for mercy; both are written in circumstances of no common peril; both are full of the same lofty trust in God, and courage in the midst of danger, and of the same joy and thankfulness in the assurance of deliverance. Both have even the same peculiar and characteristic expression, by which the enemy is described as one ready to swallow up the Psalmist, and both have a double refrain at the conclusion of the two principal divisions of the Psalm. But this Psalm is written in a still more triumphant strain of holy joy than the last, and closes with a shout of exultation. P.—A refrain verse of grand purport closes the first and last strophes. In the first courageous resignation predominates; in the second assurance of victory, which breaks out beforehand into strains of praise. D.

TITLE. The cave. There was a cave in the darkened cool of which David and his men were hid. Such caves in Palestine and the East are frequently enlarged by human hands, and so capacious that they accommodate hundreds of people. This song of complaint was written during the hours of suspense which David spent there, to wait until the calamity was overpast (v. 2); in which he only gradually gains a stout heart (v. 8). His life was really suspended by a hair, if Saul or any of his attendants had espied him! Tholuck.

1. Perhaps there is nothing more remarkable in the Psalms than this ever-recurring expression of a tender personal affection on the part of the sacred poets to God. There is no parallel to this in the whole range of heathen literature. P.

Be merciful, be merciful. The repetition notes both the extremity of the danger and the ardency of the supplicant. Mercy! Mercy! Nothing but mercy, and that exerting itself in any extraordinary way, can now save him from ruin. He pleads his reliance upon God as an argument to move mercy. “My soul trusteth in Thee.” He pleads former experiences of his help in past distresses as an argument encouraging hope under the present strait (v. 2). Flavel.

In the past he has sheltered his soul in God, but no past act of faith can avail for present distresses. It must be perpetually renewed. The past deliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the true use of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve that we will still rely on the help we have so often proved. “I have trusted in Thee” should ever be followed by, “And in the shadow of Thy wings will I trust.” A. M.

The shadow of God’s wings is the protection of His sweet and gentle love; and the shade of His wings is the refreshing solace associated with this protection. To this shade the poet now as ever betakes himself, until the danger from the abyss that threatens him be overpast. Not that he would then no longer require the Divine protection; but now he feels specially in need of it, that he may be able to endure the sorrows hovering over him undauntedly. D.

The hiding places of men are discovered by affliction. As one has aptly said, “Our refuges are like the nests of birds; in summer they are hidden among the green leaves, but in winter they are seen among the naked branches.” Troubles drive each one to his refuge, and each has his little retreat, his shrine and his idol, which he seeks at such times. And the child of God has his refuge and goes into it. Above the raging of the water floods, when all around is consternation, he hears the voice, as of a trumpet, saying from the bulwarks: “Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut the doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (Isa. 26: 20). And emerging from the waves, he responds: “In the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.” J. W. A.

Suffering first, satisfaction afterward. The fruit of power and peace, gathered out of trial, comes not all at once, but gradually. Ripening under a clouded sky, it ripens slowly. You are not to be discouraged by that. Almost all God’s spiritual harvests come to maturity in the same silent way. That secret and gracious work of the Spirit, whatever it is, which brings tranquillity out of inward tumult, clear sightedness out of sorrow, and sympathy for others out of your own heartache, goes on not by swift transformations of the inner man, or sudden reactions, but little by little. The promise is a promise made to trust, not to be fulfilled at once, but “in due season.” F. D. H.

2. I will cry.** Faith is never dumb. We pray because we believe. We exercise by faith the spirit of adoption whereby we cry. He says not I do cry, or I have cried, but I will cry, and this resolution may stand with all of us until we pass through the gates of pearl; for while we are here below we shall still have need to cry. S.

There are higher things than knowledge in the world; there are living energies; and in the moral world certainly it is not knowledge but aspiration that is the moving power, and the wing of aspiration is prayer. How far with regard to any special matter, not irrevocably fixed in the Divine concatenation of possibilities, our petition may prevail, we never can tell; but this we do know, that the most natural and the most effectual means of keeping our own noblest nature in harmony with the source of all vital nobleness is to hold high emotional communion with that source, and to plant ourselves humbly in that attitude of devout receptiveness which is the one becoming attitude in the created toward the Creator. J. S. Blackie.

The Psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. He takes refuge by prayer in God, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances is the ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design and complete His servant’s lot. “I will call to God Most High; to God, who perfects (His purpose) for me.” And then assured hope gleams upon his soul, and though the storm clouds hang low and black as ever, they are touched with light. “He will send from heaven and save me.” A. M.

God, that performeth all things for me. Heb., that performeth (or perfecteth, or finisheth, as this word is rendered, Psalm 138: 8—i.e., will certainly perform or finish), for, or toward, or concerning me. God’s favors already received are a pledge that He will complete His work of love “upon me.” The beginning is the earnest of the completion. His word is a guarantee for the performance of “all things” that I need. Fausset.—"He performeth" or perfecteth all that He hath promised; engageth Himself to perform what He hath begun to do, or what is yet to be performed. Pool.—To a happy issue the Lord hath brought all his doubtful and difficult matters before; and this gives him encouragement that He will still be gracious, and perfect that which concerneth him now, as he speaks (Psalm

138 : 8), “The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.” Flavel.

David, even when he fled from Saul, looks upon God as having performed all things for him. The word is, he hath perfected all things; and it is observable that David uses the same expression of praising God here when he was in the cave, hiding himself to save his life, as he did when he triumphed over his enemies (Psalms 6 : 108). Burroughs.—He has cogent reason for praying, for he sees God performing. The believer waits and God works. The Lord has undertaken for us, and He will go through with His covenant engagements. Our translators have very properly inserted the words “all things,” for there is a blank in the Hebrew, as if it were a carte blanche, and you might write therein that the Lord would finish anything and everything which He has begun. Whatsoever the Lord takes in hand He will accomplish; hence past mercies are guarantees for the future, and admirable reasons for continuing to cry unto Him. S.

3. “God will send forth from heaven His mercy and His truth” is bold personification, as if mercy and truth were the very messengers of His power, the mighty agents, angels of deliverance to His imperilled servants. C.

4. My soul (is) in the midst of lions; I will lie down (among) burning ones, sons of man, (whose) teeth (are) spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. By his soul he means himself, or rather his endangered life. Lions, as often elsewhere, mean ferocious enemies. The form of the verb which follows is the one denoting fixed determination—“Though surrounded by lions, I will fearlessly lie down,” etc. Among or upon them. Burning may possibly refer to lions and mean raging; but the indefinite application is more natural. Sons of man is added to show that what precedes is to be figuratively understood; but in the very next clause the writer relapses into language still more highly metaphorical. In likening their teeth to swords he presents the double image of a wild beast and a warrior. The mention of the tongue has reference, no doubt, to the slander and abuse which entered so largely into the Sauline persecutions. A.

It is the spirit that moves the tongue; and what horrors the sword of the tongue achieves! We read of the froward tongue, the lying tongue, the false tongue, the flattering tongue, the crafty tongue, the tongue “as a devouring fire,” “the perverse tongue that falls into mischief.” And again, the wise man tells us there is “the power of life and death in the tongue.”

The spirit must be right! The tongue is the index of the heart. How many homes have been cursed, how many dear friends divided through the tongue! Anon.

5. Be Thou exalted—i.e., manifest Thy glory and Thy majesty in the exercise of Thy universal dominion both in heaven and in earth. For this manifestation David prays; that this will be he rests assured, and this is his comfort when enemies assail. P.

7-9. If the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence, this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace among lions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber; he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the sleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while before day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all his wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to His praise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitary not only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the consciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story of his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his Psalms, belong to the world, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his own land into the whole earth. A. M.

The song is the language of love. When you sing your faith it is a power in you. The more you can sing it the more love it has, and the more love it has the more of character it represents. The ancient creeds were liturgies, they were to be sung. The modern Christian life is to be an anthem incarnate, an oratorio of the soul, a living hymn. Blossom and fruit of Christian character follow the bud of the living song of a Christian experience. It is not strange that Bunyan puts songs into the mouths of his pilgrims as they are borne across the last river to the golden beach. You are to set your life to music, you are to sing your Christianity. If your life is an epic, its parts are still to be set to music. If your life is a simple lyric, it is still to be set to music. Your Christian life begins by obedience to certain precise, clear, iron statutes: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. Your life thus beginning goes on chanting the beatitudes and melody of increasing sweetness and harmony of greater power, till at last it ends in the new song of praise and glory to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever. The statutes have become songs. C. F. Thwing.

7. Fixed (is) my heart, O God, fixed (is) my heart; I will sing and play.** The repetition adds solemnity and force to the declaration. Fixed—i.e., firmly resolved and proof against all fear. A.—If it be refined from creature-love and self-love, spirituality and love of God will fix the heart, and then shall it be fit to praise, which an unstable, uncomposed heart can never be any more than an instrument can be harmonious and fit to play on that hath loose pins, still slipping and letting down the strings, pins that never fasten. And thus are the most; they cannot fix to Divine thoughts, to consider God, to behold and admire His excellency and goodness, and His free love. Oh, that happy word of David, worthy to be repeated, when shall we say it? O God, my heart is fixed; well might he add, I will sing and give praise. Leighton.

Let us clearly understand that all special occasions in the life of church or of individual—church services, stated preaching, social meetings, closet communing, sacraments—are aimed directly at our ordinary life; are designed to help us live that better. We are led up to these Pisgals and Hermans of spiritual vision to the end that we may carry the power of these visions into life’s common routine, to sanctify and to elevate that. These things are intended to foster in us that constantly prepared, fixed heart of which David here sings; the heart that shall be prepared for praise, and for trust, and for worship not only while sitting in heavenly places, but also among lions, among them that are set on fire; when the net has been prepared for the steps, and the soul is bowed down amid the fret and worry of life, and on the dead level of daily duty and care. Christ, with all His power and sweetness and refreshing, is willing to come down into our common life; to teach us how to make our “common task” “bring us daily nearer God.” When He shall thus abide with us and we with Him all our life, whether commonplace or sublime, will get its character from that abiding; business, domestic life, pleasure—all will fall into the key of His spirit, and he who thus walks with Him will know, in the ready response of every detail of his life to Christ’s touch, what the Psalmist meant when he said, “My heart is prepared.” V.

8. Awake, my glory.** The faculty of speech is one of the best gifts of God’s mercy to man. It is an essential element of his well-being. It gives scope and energy to the affections, and enables them to call forth kindred affections from others. It renders the increase of knowledge possible, and advances the cause of truth by enabling each individual to pour his discoveries into the common stock, and to share in those of others in return. It sharpens the faculties by the play of intellects one on the other, and enriches all minds by the mutual interchange of ideas. It unlocks the gates of sympathy, of compassion, affection, and charity, and thus gives liberty to the purest happiness of our nature. It was, therefore, that the heathen, both poets and philosophers, would define man by the gift of speech as his distinguishing quality, and that the tongue, in Scripture, is called the glory of man. “Awake up, my glory.” Bishop J. Jackson.

As the tongue is the glory of a man, so the glory of the tongue is to glorify God. Praise is the glory of all other uses to which the tongue is employed; and the tongue is, in the body, that “temple of the Holy Ghost,” what the silver trumpet was in the Temple of Solomon—to sound the high praises of God and express the raised affections of our souls. Meditation cannot have a better help than in singing. The slow movement of the time gives room for the mind to compass the full sense of the matter, and while the tongue is making the pause, the heart may make the elevation. In short, it is adapted and suited to all circumstances, as appears from the Psalms composed upon all occasions and subjects, doctrinal, prophetic, hortatory, and historical; of praise and prayer, of grief and joy, in the penitential and complaining, in the triumphal and rejoicing; as if singing of Psalms could stand for everything we enjoy in the house of God. B. Grosvenor.

8. I will wake the morning dawn.** The figure is at once bold and beautiful. My song shall itself awake the morning. P.—Strictly translated, this clause contains a bold but beautiful poetical conception, that of awakening the dawn instead of being awakened by it—in other words, preventing or anticipating it by early praises. We thus obtain the same sense, in a far more striking form, than is expressed by the inexact and prosaic version, I will awake early. A.

9. As with thanksgiving we are to make our requests known unto God, so thanksgiving is to be the prevailing and the ultimate note of our life. At last all our thoughts and petitions will end in praise. Saphir.—Praise is our best preparation for usefulness, and usefulness in its reflex influence is the secret of all true happiness. We fail to bring the fruit of righteousness to perfection because there is not enough of the sunshine of praise to God and love for others in our souls to ripen it. H. J. V.

The people—the nations. The Hebrew Church was neither called nor qualified to be a missionary society, but it never ceased to desire and hope for the conversion of the nations. This is seen in those passages in which the Psalmists betray a consciousness that they shall one day have all the world for auditors. How boldly does David exclaim, “I will sing unto Thee among the nations!”! In the same spirit a later Psalmist summons the Church to lift up her voice, so that all the nations may hear her recital of the Lord’s mighty acts: “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the people.” The full import of this class of texts is often hidden from the English reader by the circumstance that our translators have hardly ever used the word people in its plural form. Twice in the Revelation they venture to write peoples; everywhere else the singular form has to do duty for both numbers; so that in not a few passages the sense is greatly obscured to those who have no access either to the original or to other versions. In the Psalms in particular the mention of the Gentiles is more frequent than the English reader is made aware of. It is to be observed, moreover, that in addition to this strain of indirect prediction the conversion of the world is articulately celebrated in many glorious Psalms. Indeed, so numerous are these, and so generally distributed over the centuries between David and Ezra, that it would seem that at no time during the long history of inspired Psalmody did the Spirit cease to indite new songs in which the children of Zion might give utterance to their world-embracing hopes. W. Binnie.

10,11. It is in his heart to let all the people of the wide world know how faithful and true is his God, and how rich in mercy to all who call upon Him. To say “mercy and truth are great even to the heavens, reaching unto the clouds,” labors to set forth the exceeding greatness and excellent glory of these moral qualities. How simple the conception, yet how sublime! Thus, in the highest strain of poetic beauty, and with imagery magnificently grand, does the Psalmist give the testimony of his grateful heart to the mercy and the power shown him of God in his deliverance from his enemies, and in his final triumph in reaching the throne of Israel. C.

10. God’s mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners after great lengths of time, and then gives great favors and great privileges, and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God. As John Bunyan well saith, “It must be great mercy, or no mercy; for little mercy will never serve my turn.” S.

11. In the refrain verse, which differs only in one letter from v. 6, the Psalm reverts back to prayer. Greater words of prayer than these never came from human lips. Heaven and earth have as they imply a mutually interwoven history, and the blessed, glorious end of this is in the sunrise of the Divine glory over both. Delitzsch.