Psalm 52
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Summary
Chapter summary
'A Psalm of David; when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul' of the priests' slaughter. 'Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man?': a tongue like a sharp razor, loving evil more than good. God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, root thee up out of the land of the living, while the righteous look on in awe: 'this is the man that made not God his strength.' The contrast closes it: 'But as for me, I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God: I trust in the lovingkindness of God for ever and ever.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 52The history
The title ties the song to a specific atrocity. Nob was a settlement of priests a short walk north of Jerusalem, where the tabernacle stood after Shiloh fell. David, running from Saul with no supplies, was given the old showbread and Goliath's sword by the priest Ahimelech, who had no idea he was helping a fugitive.
Doeg the Edomite held a real royal office: chief of Saul's herdsmen. A king's flocks were state wealth, and the man who ran them was a senior official, not a farmhand. He happened to be at Nob that day, detained before the LORD — probably finishing a vow or a purification — and he reported what he saw.
When Saul ordered the priests killed, his own Israelite guards refused to lift a hand against them. The Edomite did it: eighty-five men wearing the linen ephod, and then the town itself, women, children, and livestock — the treatment reserved for a place under total destruction. A foreigner carried out on Israel's priests what Saul had refused to carry out on Israel's enemies.
Against that the psalm sets an olive tree. Olives are almost impossible to kill; a stump sends up new shoots, and groves in that country are worked for centuries. Trees also grew inside sanctuary courts. To say you are a green olive tree in the house of God is to claim the slowest, most stubborn kind of life there is.
What it meant to them
Informers did well under Saul. This song told a nation full of frightened people that the boasting tongue is a sharpened razor and that its owner gets uprooted out of the land of the living, while the hunted man is still standing in God's courtyard.
It also refuses to pretend the violence was small. The congregation sang the details, which meant the priests of Nob were not quietly forgotten.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 52. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
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.