Psalm 34

Psalms 34:1-3

I will bless the Lord at all times: The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed, confirmed against the literal rendering, naming the same episode 1 Sam 21 tells under the Philistine king's own name, Achish, king of Gath, Abimelech likely a dynastic title for Philistine kings there as Pharaoh was for Egypt's. The psalm is also an acrostic in the Hebrew, each verse beginning with the next letter of the alphabet, invisible in this English text but named by the bench as the deliberate craft it was written with. At all times sets the resolve against the very moment the title names, a man who had just feigned madness to escape with his life choosing praise as the constant rather than the exception.

Psalms 34:4-7

I sought the Lord, and he heard me moves the psalm from resolve to testimony, the fears of the title's episode answered rather than denied. This poor man in verse 6 is widely read as David's own description of himself in the cave that followed the Gath episode, a king reduced to hiding and want. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him gives the deliverance a guard, the same figure who defends Elisha's servant at Dothan and leads Israel through the wilderness, named here as a standing promise rather than one appearance.

Psalms 34:8-10

O taste and see that the Lord is good moves from report to invitation, goodness offered as something to be experienced rather than merely told, and 1 Pet 2:3 quotes the phrase directly, if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, applying David's invitation to the church's own growth. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him returns to the Psalter's first word, the same blessedness named at 1:1 and 32:1 now offered on the far side of testimony. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger sets the fiercest, best-armed hunter of the animal world against the seeker of the Lord, who does not want, the contrast carrying the point without argument.

Psalms 34:11-14

The psalm turns from praise to instruction at come, ye children, hearken unto me, the same turn from confession to teaching that closed psalm 32, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord names the subject plainly. Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile answers the title's own episode, David's feigned madness before Achish a use of the mouth he does not commend as a pattern. Depart from evil, and do good, seek peace, and pursue it is quoted nearly word for word at 1 Pet 3:10-11, Peter's own use of this psalm continuing past the taste and see of verse 8.

Psalms 34:15-18

Eyes, ears and face divide the Lord's attention between the righteous and the wicked, watching one and set against the other, the same pairing that runs through the eye of the Lord upon them that fear him at psalm 33. The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth answers the poor man's cry of verse 6, the pattern now stated as a rule rather than a single memory. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart carries the psalm's gentlest line, nearness measured by brokenness rather than merit, which Spurgeon reads as the psalm's own answer to anyone who thinks his ruin disqualifies him from that nearness.

Psalms 34:19-22

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: Many are the afflictions of the righteous refuses to promise an easy life even after eighteen verses of deliverance, holding affliction and rescue together rather than trading one for the other. He keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken uses the Passover lamb's own rule, a bone of it shall not be broken at Exod 12:46 and Num 9:12, and the bench sets this verse beside John 19:36, where the Gospel quotes that law at the cross and unbroken legs fulfill it; John cites the Passover rule by name, and the connection to this psalm's identical wording is the bench's own reading, offered as their link rather than the Gospel's stated one. The psalm closes where it began, the Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants answering I will bless the Lord at all times, deliverance now the settled ground under the praise that opened the psalm.