Psalms 59
Psalm 593 carries one of the most dramatic settings in the Psalter, named right in its title: it belongs to the night when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him. The story is told in 1 Samuel 19: Saul's jealousy of David had curdled into murderous obsession, and he posted men around David's house to seize him and kill him in the morning. David's wife Michal lowered him out of a window to escape into the night. So this is a prayer written with assassins at the door. And yet listen to how it begins - not with a scream, but with a steady, fourfold plea laid before God: Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. Hunted men do not always pray like this. David does, because he has somewhere to take the fear.
He names his danger honestly, and he insists on his innocence in it: For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD.3 This is no guilty man fleeing the consequences of his own wrongdoing; the assault on him is unprovoked. And the picture he paints of his enemies is unforgettable. They are like a pack of scavenging dogs that haunt a city after dark: They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. They snarl and prowl, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips, and they live as though no one above them sees or hears: for who, say they, doth hear? They are dangerous - but the image also shrinks them. They are dogs circling in the dark, not lions; loud, but finally leashed by a power they have not reckoned with.
Because over against the snarling pack stands a God who is utterly unthreatened. The psalm pivots on one astonishing line: But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. While the enemies prowl, God sits serene - not anxious, not scrambling, but sovereign over the whole raging scene. And so David finds his anchor in a word he repeats like a refrain: God is his defence, his high tower. Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence. And tenderest of all, he discovers that God's mercy runs out ahead of him to meet him: The God of my mercy shall prevent me. So the prayer that opened in the dark ends in a song at dawn: But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning… Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 59:1-7 · To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David; when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill himThey Make a Noise Like a Dog
1Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. 2Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. 3For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD. 4They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold. 5Thou therefore, O LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. Selah. 6They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. 7Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear?
The prayer opens at a sprint, with the same verb fired off again and again: Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. Four pleas in two verses - deliver, defend, deliver, save - piling up like a man knocking hard on a door because the danger behind him is real. This is what honest prayer under threat sounds like: not polished, but urgent, repeating itself because the heart is repeating itself. And notice the address tucked into the middle of it - O my God. Not merely God in the abstract, but my God, the One David belongs to and can claim. That little possessive is the whole secret of the psalm. The men outside have weapons and numbers; David has a relationship. He is not crying into the dark to no one in particular; he is calling on a God who is his, by covenant and by long experience, and who can be counted on to hear. The repetition is the sound of fear; the word my is the sound of faith. Both are in the prayer at once, and that is exactly how it should be.3
Twice in these verses David insists that he has done nothing to deserve this: not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD (v. 3), and They run and prepare themselves without my fault (v. 4). This matters, and it is worth pausing over, because it tells us what kind of suffering the psalm is praying through. There is a suffering that comes as the harvest of our own wrongdoing, and the right response to that is repentance. But there is also a suffering that falls on the innocent - the wound that lands without my fault, the hostility we did nothing to provoke. David's is the second kind. Saul's assassins are not at his door because David wronged the king; they are there because the king's jealousy has turned murderous. And so David can do something a guilty man cannot: he can appeal to God's justice with a clear conscience. Awake to help me, and behold - look, he says, see how it really is. When the trouble we face is genuinely undeserved, we are free to lay it before God not as those pleading for mercy on a debt, but as those asking a righteous Judge simply to see the truth and to act. David is not pretending to be sinless before God in general; he is telling the truth about this particular wrong - that it is wholly unprovoked - and asking God to take notice.
The picture David draws of his enemies is one of the most vivid in the Psalter: They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. In the ancient city, dogs were not house pets but half-wild scavengers that roamed the streets after dark, snarling and snapping over scraps, prowling the walls in restless packs. That is the image David hangs on the men hunting him. They return at evening - they come out when the light fails, as menace so often does; they make a noise like a dog - all growl and bark, threatening and ugly; they go round about the city - circling, restless, looking for a way in. And the picture does two things at once. It takes the danger seriously: a pack of wild dogs in the dark is a frightening thing, and David does not pretend otherwise. But it also cuts the enemies down to size. They are not lions or armies; they are dogs - loud, hungry, dangerous, but finally just beasts circling outside a wall, with no power over the One who holds the city. The verse that follows sharpens the contempt: they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear? Their words are weapons, and they speak as though heaven were deaf - who doth hear? But the whole psalm is the answer to that sneer. Someone does hear. And He is not impressed by the barking of dogs.
Psalm 59:8-13But Thou Shalt Laugh at Them
8But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. 9Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence. 10The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies. 11Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield. 12For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips let them even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak. 13Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah.
Everything turns on the first two words of verse 8: But thou. The enemies belch and snarl and ask who doth hear? - but thou, O LORD. Against the whole prowling pack David sets one fact, and it is not an army or an escape plan; it is God Himself. And what he says God does is startling: But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. This is not the laughter of cruelty, and it is not human mockery - David is not gloating. It is the laughter of a King who was never for one instant in danger of losing. To the assassins, the night is full of menace and the outcome hangs in the balance; to God, the entire plot is so far beneath His power that it is met not with worry but with the calm of total supremacy. The same note sounds at the head of the Psalter, where the nations rage and the rulers conspire against the LORD and His anointed, and heaven's reply is exactly this: He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision (Ps. 2:4). It is one of the most steadying truths in all of Scripture. The evil that looms so large from the ground is small from the throne. God is not pacing. God is not anxious. The schemes that fill our nights with dread do not so much as ruffle the One who sits above them.
David's prayer against his enemies in verses 11-13 is bracing, and it is worth reading closely, because it is more careful than it first appears. He begins, surprisingly, by asking God not to make a quick end of them: Slay them not, lest my people forget. A sudden destruction, David reasons, would be too soon forgotten; better that the downfall of the wicked be drawn out and visible, a standing lesson the people will remember. So he asks instead, scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield. Notice three things that keep this from being mere vengefulness. First, every verb is addressed to God: scatter them, bring them down, consume them - David is not reaching for his own sword but handing the whole matter to God, the shield of His people. Second, the charge against them is named and just - the sin of their mouth… the words of their lips… cursing and lying which they speak; what David asks God to judge is real, spoken evil, not a private grudge. And third, and most important, look at the goal he states: that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. The point of the prayer is not David's satisfaction but God's public vindication - that the whole earth might learn that God truly reigns, that wickedness does not in fact have the last word, that there is a King over Jacob whose rule reaches unto the ends of the earth. This is what the cry for justice looks like when it is brought to God rather than seized by our own hands: the wrong named honestly, the sword laid down, and the matter left with the Judge of all the earth to settle in His own way, for His own glory.3
Psalm 59:14-17I Will Sing of Thy Mercy in the Morning
14And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. 15Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied. 16But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. 17Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.
The snarling-dog image returns one last time, almost word for word from verse 6: And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied. The repetition is deliberate, and it is the key to the whole psalm's structure. The enemies are right where they were - still prowling, still circling the walls at evening, still hungry. But something has changed, and it is everything: the next word is But. The dogs have not gone away; David has simply been lifted above them. Look closely at the picture in verse 15 and you can almost feel the contrast it sets up. The dogs wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied - they are restless, never full, scavenging through the night and growling with discontent when they come up empty. That is the life of those who have no high tower: forever hunting, never satisfied, gnawing on an emptiness that more scavenging never fills. And it stands in the sharpest possible relief against what comes next. The dogs roam hungry in the dark; David sings in the morning. The restless prowl of the unsatisfied, set beside the settled song of the man whose God is his defence - the psalm could not draw the two ways of living more plainly.
After all the snarling, one small word changes the music: But I will sing. But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. Set this against everything that has come before - the assassins, the prowling pack, the swords in their lips - and feel the turn. The enemies make a noise like a dog; David makes a different kind of noise - he sings. And he does not sing quietly: I will sing aloud. Notice the two things he sings of: God's power and God's mercy. He needs both, and so do we. Power without mercy would be only might to fear; mercy without power would be only kindness too weak to save. But the God of David is both strong enough to deliver and tender enough to want to - and that is a God worth singing aloud about. And mark when the song comes: in the morning. The whole psalm has moved through a long night - the assassins came at evening, the dogs prowled in the dark - and now light is breaking, and with the light comes the song. The believer learns to sing not because the night was not real, but because morning always comes to those whose defence is God; and the song that rises at dawn looks back on the dark and calls God what He has proved to be: my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 59 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for misgav (vv. 9, 16, 17, the “defence,” the high tower or inaccessible stronghold) and for chesed (vv. 10, 17, the steadfast “mercy” or lovingkindness David makes God's own name).
- Psalm 59 ↔ Psalm 2 · Colossians 3 · 1 John 4Intertextual BibleTraces the verbal threads tying Psalm 59's untroubled God who shalt laugh at them (v. 8) to the laughing sovereignty of Psalm 2:4, its high-tower defence (vv. 9, 16, 17) to the life hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3), and its mercy that shall prevent me (v. 10) to the love that loved us first (1 John 4:19).
- Psalm 59 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 59 - the superscription tying the psalm to the night Saul's men watched David's house, the recurring word for God as a high “defence,” the snarling-dog imagery of the prowling enemy, and the sense of the God of my mercy shall prevent me.
Where this echoes in Scripture
They Make a Noise Like a Dog
- 1 Samuel 19:11Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning.The very night behind the superscription - Saul’s assassins watching David’s house.
- Psalm 121:7The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.The soul (nephesh) the enemies lie in wait for (v. 3) - the very life the LORD Himself keeps.
- Psalm 22:16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me.The same snarling-dog image of verse 6 - the wicked circling like a pack around the afflicted.
- Psalm 10:11He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.The sneer of verse 7 - <em>who doth hear?</em> - the wicked living as though heaven were blind.
But Thou Shalt Laugh at Them
- Psalm 2:4He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.The laughing sovereignty of verse 8 - heaven’s untroubled calm over the raging of the nations.
- Proverbs 18:10The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.The high tower (misgav) of verse 9 - God Himself as the stronghold the righteous run into.
- 1 John 4:19We love him, because he first loved us.The mercy that <em>shall prevent</em> - go before - David in verse 10, the God whose love comes first.
- Colossians 3:3For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.The high-tower refuge of the psalm - the believer’s life hidden in the unreachable safety of God.
I Will Sing of Thy Mercy in the Morning
- Psalm 30:5Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.The morning song of verse 16 - the night of trouble giving way to the joy of deliverance.
- Mark 16:2And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.The morning the psalm finally reaches - the resurrection dawn that broke the long night of the world.
- Exodus 34:6The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.The chesed (mercy) of verses 10 and 17 - the steadfast lovingkindness at the heart of God’s own name.
- Lamentations 3:22-23It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed... they are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.The mercy sung at daybreak (v. 16) - lovingkindness renewed with every morning.