Psalm 59

Psalms 59:1-3

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David, when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him, the third psalm carrying the Altaschith title alongside 57 and 58 and the only one of the three tied to a named event, 1 Samuel 19:11, the night Michal let David down through a window while Saul's men watched below. Deliver me and defend me open the psalm with the language of a man under siege in his own home, and verse 3 states his innocence plainly, not for my transgression, nor for my sin, the same plea Psalm 7 makes against Cush the Benjamite. The mighty are gathered against me names an organized watch rather than a chance mob, which matches the narrative the title points to.

Psalms 59:4-5

Without my fault repeats the innocence of verse 3, and awake asks God to act as one roused from sleep, the same word the disciples use of Christ in the storm at Mark 4:38. Verse 5 widens the plea past David's own enemies to all the heathen, Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, be not merciful to any wicked transgressors, an appeal to God's covenant name and to his rule over the nations rather than to David's own cause alone. Selah closes the verse without explanation, one of seventy one places in this book where the word is left an honest unknown, read variously as a musical pause, a lifted voice, or an invitation to weigh what was just said.

Psalms 59:6-8

They return at evening pictures Saul's men as dogs prowling the city after dark, an image the psalm repeats almost word for word at verse 14. Their arrogance is stated in their own words, they belch out with their mouth, swords are in their lips, for who, say they, doth hear, the mouth itself made a weapon as in Psalm 57:4. Verse 8 answers their confidence with God's own, thou shalt laugh at them, the same picture Psalm 2:4 gives of the kings who set themselves against the Lord's anointed.

Psalms 59:9-10

The psalm turns here on the word defence, God is my defence, the same word that will close the psalm twice more at verses 16 and 17, so that the whole second half answers the enemies' swords with one repeated confession. The God of my mercy shall prevent me uses prevent in its older sense of going before, God meeting the need before it is asked, and God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies is the same hope for vindication the imprecatory psalms voice throughout this book. Barnes reads the shortness of these two verses as the hinge of the whole psalm, the point where dread turns to confidence before the prayer continues.

Psalms 59:11-13

Slay them not asks for something more particular than their end, that Israel go on seeing what happened to them, scatter them by thy power and bring them down asking for a visible, lasting judgment rather than a quick removal, the same purpose the mark on Cain serves at Genesis 4:15. For the sin of their mouth and cursing and lying which they speak keeps the charge focused on what verse 7 already named, their words rather than any other wrong. Consume them in wrath, said twice, and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth carries the prayer from Israel's own deliverance to a claim about God's rule over every nation, and the gracious handling this book gives every imprecatory psalm applies here, judgment prayed toward the wicked as a class and never turned on any living person.

Psalms 59:14-15

The dog picture returns almost exactly as verse 6 gave it, they make a noise like a dog and go round about the city, the repetition itself part of the psalm's structure marking the second half's return to the enemies before the closing praise. Verse 15 leaves them reduced to scavenging, wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied, a picture of restless want that stands opposite the contentment the psalm is about to claim for itself. The dogs of Jerusalem's streets were scavengers rather than kept animals, which the commentators note as the picture's original force, hunger without the belonging of a household.

Psalms 59:16-17

The psalm closes at morning what began at evening, verse 6's dogs prowling by night answered here by singing aloud of thy mercy in the morning, the same turn from complaint to praise that closes many of these psalms of personal distress. My defence and refuge repeats the word that has carried the whole second half, and verse 17 gathers it a third time, unto thee, O my strength, will I sing, closing on the same note of confession rather than on the enemies at all. Spurgeon reads the double naming of God as strength and mercy in the last verse as the psalm's own summary of what deliverance from Saul's men had taught David to call him.