Psalms 57

The psalm opens the way a drowning man calls for help - not once, but twice in a single breath: Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me. The repetition is not careless; it is the sound of real urgency, the cry doubled because the need is so great. And notice what David appeals to. He does not say “be merciful, for I deserve it” or “for my cause is just” - though hunted unjustly, he could have. He says, for my soul trusteth in thee. His whole plea rests on the fact that he has thrown himself upon God; his confidence is in God's mercy, not in his own merit. Then comes the image that gives the psalm its heart: in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. A man hiding in a cave from a king's army reaches past the rock walls around him to a deeper shelter - the wings of God. And mark the small, hope-filled word until. He does not pretend the trouble is gone; he calls it what it is, calamities. But he believes they will pass, and that the shadow of God's wings is a place safe enough to wait out the storm.³

David is sure that heaven itself will move on his behalf: He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. His enemy is pictured as a beast about to swallow him whole - but David expects rescue to come down from above, from a higher place than any earthly threat can reach. And then the verse closes with a beautiful pairing: God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. These two travel together all through Scripture - mercy (His covenant love, His steadfast kindness) and truth (His faithfulness, His reliability to do what He has said). David does not merely hope for rescue in the abstract; he expects God to send forth the very qualities that make Him trustworthy. It is as if mercy and truth were two messengers dispatched from heaven to find a hunted man in a cave and bring him home. When you cannot see a way out, this is what faith reaches for - not a change in the circumstances first, but the steady character of God sent forth into them: His love that will not quit, and His faithfulness that cannot fail.

David now turns to describe what surrounds him, and he holds nothing back: My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. The picture is harrowing. He is not merely near danger; he must lie down - rest, sleep, be at his most defenseless - in the middle of a pride of lions. His enemies are set on fire, burning with hostility; and their weapons are their words. Their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword. It is a striking detail that the danger David dwells on is not chiefly swords of steel but the violence of speech - the slander, the threats, the cutting words of men inflamed against him. Anyone who has lain awake replaying what others have said about them knows how real these wounds are. Yet see what David does not do. He does not answer the lions in their own language. He names the danger honestly to God - and then, in the very next breath, he stops looking at the lions altogether and looks up.

After the great refrain of verse 5, David returns briefly to his enemies' schemes - and records a striking reversal: They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. His foes have laid traps. They have spread a net to catch his feet and dug a concealed pit for him to tumble into - the patient, deliberate work of men plotting another's ruin. And under the weight of it, David admits, my soul is bowed down; the pressure is real, and he feels it. But then comes the turn that runs all through Scripture: the pit they dug for him becomes the grave they fall into themselves. Into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. This is the deep moral logic of God's world - that malice has a way of recoiling on the one who launches it, that he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it (Eccl. 10:8). David does not have to spring the trap on his enemies; he simply trusts the God who governs such things to let evil collapse under its own weight. The Selah that follows invites a pause - to sit with the wonder that the schemes which once loomed so large have quietly undone their own makers.³

Now the whole psalm blossoms into song, and it begins with a declaration repeated for emphasis, the way the plea was doubled at the start: My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise. At the opening David cried be merciful twice; now he says my heart is fixed twice - and the matching repetitions frame the journey of the psalm, from doubled plea to doubled resolve. A fixed heart is not a heart that feels no fear; it is a heart that has been settled, anchored, made steady, so that the fear cannot tear it loose from God. And out of that settledness comes music: I will sing and give praise. Then David rouses his whole being for worship: Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. He calls his “glory” - his soul, his innermost self - to wake up, summons his instruments to join, and resolves to greet the dawn with praise. Picture it: a man in a cave, danger still outside, rising before sunrise to play and sing. This is the triumph of the psalm. The fixed heart does not wait for the lions to leave before it worships; it worships in the dark, and so meets the morning already singing.

Why can the hunted heart be so steady and so full of song? David gives the reason in a single soaring verse: For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Here again are the two great companions from verse 3 - mercy and truth - but now measured against the sky. God's steadfast love reaches unto the heavens; His faithfulness towers unto the clouds. The picture is of qualities too vast to be exhausted, too high to be overtopped by any trouble below. However tall the lions loom, God's mercy is taller; whatever depths the pit descends to, His truth rises higher than the clouds. This is the ground of the fixed heart. David does not say his heart is steady because he is brave or because his situation is improving; he says it because thy mercy is great unto the heavens. The settledness rests entirely on the size of God's love and the height of His faithfulness. And it is fitting that this verse stands just before the final refrain, for a heart that has measured God's mercy against the heavens cannot help but cry the next words: Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. The One whose mercy reaches the heavens deserves to be exalted above them.