Psalm 3

Psalms 3:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son, the psalm's own account of its occasion, sourced by the commentators to 2 Samuel 15. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me opens on multiplication, the conspiracy against David growing exactly as 2 Samuel 15:12-13 describes it swelling continually. The taunt of verse 2, there is no help for him in God, closes on Selah, a word appearing seventy-one times in the Psalter and three more in Habakkuk 3 with no certain meaning, read by different hands as a musical rest, a lifted voice, or a call to pause and weigh what was just said.

Psalms 3:3-4

Against the taunt of verse 2 David answers with three titles for the Lord in one breath: a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of mine head, the last image reversing the shame of a fugitive king with his head bowed. I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill states answered prayer as an accomplished fact in the middle of ongoing danger, the holy hill being Zion, from which David was fleeing when he wrote it. The second Selah falls on that claim of being heard, and those who read the word as a pause take it to mark a moment meant to be weighed rather than rushed past.

Psalms 3:5-6

I laid me down and slept, I awaked is the psalm's most quoted line, an ordinary night's sleep turned into evidence of the Lord's care from a man whose own son was hunting his life. The verb sustained carries the weight, sleep granted and preserved through a night when a fugitive king had every reason to lie awake. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people answers the arithmetic of verse 1, where the trouble had multiplied, with a number large enough to cover any army Absalom could raise.

Psalms 3:7-8

Arise, O Lord returns to the imperative prayer after the confidence of the previous verses, the two postures of the psalm, trust stated and help still asked for, held together without contradiction. Smitten upon the cheek bone and broken the teeth are the language of a blow that silences an enemy's mouth, the same enemies who had said there is no help for him in God now pictured unable to speak at all. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord closes the psalm on the very truth its opening trouble had questioned, and the third Selah falls on thy blessing is upon thy people, widening the last word from David alone to the whole nation he still ruled while fleeing it.