Psalm 27
14 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 3×2Psalms 31×2Isaiah 40×2Hebrews 13×1Psalms 118×1Exodus 15×1
Summary
Chapter summary
'Jehovah is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?' One thing he asks: to dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of his life, to behold his beauty and inquire in his temple. In trouble he will be hidden in the pavilion, set upon a rock. 'When my father and my mother forsake me, then Jehovah will take me up.' The close is counsel forged in waiting: 'I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of Jehovah in the land of the living. Wait for Jehovah: be strong, and let thy heart take courage.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 27The history
"Though an host should encamp against me" describes siege in its first stage. An army arrived, pitched its camp in view of the walls, and settled in to starve or storm the place. Assyrian reliefs show these camps in detail — oval enclosures of tents behind a rampart. The waiting was the weapon.
The house the psalm longs for was a tent. In David's day the ark stood under curtains on Zion; Solomon's temple was still a generation away. So "in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me" carries a second meaning any Israelite would catch: a tent was where a guest was taken in, and a host who received you owed you protection with his own life.
"He shall set me up upon a rock" is the country talking again. In terrain of ridges and ravines, height was safety — a man on a crag could see, could be defended by a few, and could not be rushed.
"When my father and my mother forsake me" is the worst-case sentence in a clan society. Your family was your legal standing, your insurance, and your defense; a man with no household behind him had no one to answer for him at the gate. That is the loss the psalm names before saying the Lord will take him up.
What it meant to them
The single thing the singer asks for, with an army camped outside, is not victory — it is to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life and to behold his beauty.
And it ends without a resolution. "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart" was sung by people still waiting, and it said so twice.
Sources cited
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David on Psalm 27
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 27. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.