Psalm 55
23 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Jeremiah 9×22 Samuel 15×2Psalms 59×2Isaiah 59×2Psalms 5×2Matthew 26×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Betrayal's psalm. 'Give ear to my prayer, O God… my heart is sore pained within me.' 'Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I fly away, and be at rest.' The wound is not an enemy's: 'it was thou, a man mine equal, my companion, and my familiar friend; we took sweet counsel together, walked in the house of God with the throng.' His words were smoother than butter, war in his heart. The counsel drawn from it all: 'Cast thy burden upon Jehovah, and he will sustain thee' (1 Peter 5:7). 'But I will trust in thee.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 55The history
The city in this psalm has watchmen going round its walls day and night, which was the normal arrangement — a walled town posted men on the wall and in the gate towers in rotating watches. What the song describes is that system turned inside out: violence and strife are doing the patrolling, and trouble sits in the middle of the streets.
The wound is a friend. In the ancient Near East eating at a man's table and travelling with him created obligations close to a covenant; the two of them had taken counsel together and walked to the house of God in the festival crowd. Breaking that was not a falling-out, it was treachery.
The traditional reading connects this to Ahithophel, David's own counsellor, who went over to Absalom during the revolt and whose advice was said to be like asking a question of God himself. The psalm names nobody, so this stays a reading rather than a fact, but it fits the shape of the grief.
The wish for a dove's wings is not a poetic flight of fancy. Rock doves nest in the cliff clefts of the Judean wilderness, and the wilderness was where a hunted man actually went. He is naming the escape route he knows.
What it meant to them
For people sitting in the congregation next to someone who had wronged them, this song gave grief from inside the community a place in public worship instead of leaving it to fester privately.
And it ends by refusing revenge. The burden gets handed up: cast what is assigned to you on the LORD, and he will hold you up. The betrayer's case goes to the Judge, not to the injured man.
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 55. 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.