Psalm 56 To the Chief Musician. Set to “The Silent Dove in Distant Lands.” A Michtam of David When the Philistines Captured Him in Gath.

¹Be merciful to me, O God, for man would swallow me up;

Fighting all day he oppresses me.

²My enemies would hound me all day,

For there are many who fight against me, O Most High.

³Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You.

⁴In God (I will praise His word),

In God I have put my trust;

I will not fear.

What can flesh do to me?

⁵All day they twist my words;

All their thoughts are against me for evil.

⁶They gather together,

They hide, they mark my steps,

When they lie in wait for my life.

⁷Shall they escape by iniquity?

In anger cast down the peoples, O God!

⁸You number my wanderings;

Put my tears into Your bottle;

Are they not in Your book?

⁹When I cry out to You,

Then my enemies will turn back;

This I know, because God is for me.

¹⁰In God (I will praise His word),

In the Lord (I will praise His word),

¹¹In God I have put my trust;

I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

¹²Vows made to You are binding upon me, O God;

I will render praises to You,

¹³For You have delivered my soul from death.

Have You not kept my feet from falling,

That I may walk before God

In the light of the living?

Preamble

The Scriptural backdrop for this Psalm is found in 1 Sam. 21:10-15; 27:1-28:2; 29:1-11, when David fled from Saul to the Philistines.

Commentary

¹Be merciful to me, O God, for man would swallow me up;

Fighting all day he oppresses me.

²My enemies would hound me all day,

For there are many who fight against me, O Most High.

David’s prayer here is born out of a real fear, for not only was Saul continually searching for him and seeking to kill him, but now the Philistines to whom he fled to escape Saul, were questioning his loyalty. And so, no matter where David turned, no matter how virtuously he conducted himself, all he could find were foes, men who would gladly swallow him up; men whom he didn’t even know (or had ever done any wrong to) yet now were fighting against him and oppressing him; whether these were men with Saul or with the Philistines. David then was being hounded day and night by them, never being allowed to find rest, never being able to stay in one place and get established, never able to simply drop one’s guard for a while, for as soon as he did opposition would rise up against him. David then is not exaggerating when he says to the Lord that there are many who fight against me.

Vs. 3-4 ³Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You.

⁴In God (I will praise His word),

In God I have put my trust;

I will not fear.

What can flesh do to me?

Nonetheless David’s response to them, to the fear they were trying to bring down on him, is to turn to God. To trust in the One who has chosen him and anointed him, forever. Therefore, In God I will praise His Word, for it is by His Word that we live and move and have our being, that we have been given His salvation! In God then I will keep my trust, I will not fear, for what can flesh do to me? Nothing more than what has been appointed to me by Him, and even if they should take my life (like the legends of Heb. 11), they can do nothing to ever take me away from Him (consider Isaiah 51:7-8; Jer. 1:7; Ezek. 2:6-7; Matt.10:27-33; Luke 12:4-5; Rom. 8:26-38).

Vs. 5-6 ⁵All day they twist my words;

All their thoughts are against me for evil.

⁶They gather together,

They hide, they mark my steps,

When they lie in wait for my life.

David now decries all the slander and the horrible stockers that he has been made to endure. Twisting his words and making his person out to be some sort of dangerous monster, for in their eyes David was  a "threat." Not that he had threatened Saul or anyone else, no Saul and his followers saw David as a threat to their families tenure and reign, therefore by whatever means they could employ they were continually seeking to undermine and destroy him. For that is what wicked and unjust men do they take a righteous person, a decent honest person’s words, and distort and twist them so as to turn others against them. Therefore no matter how blamelessly David conducted himself, all their thoughts against him were only for evil, of either their plotting his ruin by some evil means, or of David himself being evil, of his plotting… you fill in the blank, against them, none which David was doing, or had ever planned to do. Nonetheless if they could imagine it about him, it became real to them, and to those they spoke so vehemently against him too. Thus they united themselves together against him, sending some to hide and watch him, to mark his steps, to report on his coming in and going out, while others would lie in wait to take his life (in regards to these things consider Acts 23:12-35 and the Apostle Paul).

Vs. 7 “Shall they escape by iniquity?

In anger cast down the peoples, O God!”

Having made his case David now asks our God to judge them righteously and thoroughly, for shall they escape by iniquity? Shall they prevail simply because they out number him, or shall they prevail by their lies and their sinister schemes by which they have sought to ruin and destroy him? For our God is the God of all Justice and all Truth, and He will never look favorably upon anyone who distorts that. And though David is making a personal appeal I believe he is appealing for all who suffer such reproach, persecution, and abuse, from the nation of Israel itself, to all of the Lord Jesus Christ’s people whom He has bought and redeemed with His precious Life and Blood. No then that on His Day the Lord Himself will cast down the peoples in His wrath, all who have rejected Him and sought to make war against Him He will destroy forever (Isaiah 66:16; Rev. 19:11-21).

Vs. 8 “You number my wanderings;

Put my tears into Your bottle;

Are they not in Your book?”

David now consoles himself with the knowledge that the Lord indeed has numbered all his wanderings,  the many years he has spent fleeing from them, living hand to mouth, like all of God's people who have likewise had to endure this worlds wrath and persecution because of their loyalty to Him. Therefore David asks that He would put his many tears which they brought to his eyes in His bottle; that He would store them up and keep them in remembrance for when He repays both them and him. Indeed, David now sees all his troubles that they have caused him as being recorded in God’s book. And so, though they may have forgotten, or excused all the evil and wrongs that they have done to him, God has not forgotten, and at the end He will open His Book and declare all of their deeds when He judges them (consider Daniel 7:9-10; Rev. 20:11-15).

Vs. 9 “When I cry out to You,

Then my enemies will turn back;

This I know, because God is for me.”

David then not only grows in his confidence of God’s finial judgment for him, but of it here and now. That God Himself will turn back his enemies when he cries out to Him, because he knows that God is for him, for us all who believe in Him through His Son the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:31-39).

Vs. 10-11 ¹⁰In God (I will praise His word),

In the Lord (I will praise His word),

¹¹In God I have put my trust;

I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

David now reasserts his confident assurance and trust In our God, In our Lord, which he has first done in four. And once again he uses two different Bible designations of our God, In God (Elohim, i.e., God Almighty, the One true God who appeared to Abraham, through which all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ have become partakers of His Promise of justification by faith, and thus becoming His children by faith), I will praise His Word. Then, In the Lord (YHWH, the covenant keeping God who revealed Himself to Moses, who made a covenant with the nation Israel to which David belonged, which he was then the head of), I will praise His Word. For though we are not now under the Old Covenant, a covenant which Israel broke, therefore God has now disregarded it (Heb. 8:9-13), we who believe in Christ are now all apart of His New and Everlasting Covenant which now justifies and unites both Jews and Gentiles in the Lord Jesus Christ who has fulfilled it all, for us all! Thus, David by stating as much as the nations head is placing all of his faith in the God of the Bible who is the God of all Jews and Gentiles who believe In Christ. Therefore, David knowing God was for him, for us all who believe in Him, can be confident “I will not be afraid, for what can man do to me?” Kill the body and then after that they can do no more, for our souls, our real persons are secured forever with Him In Christ (Matt. 10:30-33; Luke 12:4-6; John 10:27-30).

Vs. 12-13 ¹²Vows made to You are binding upon me, O God;

I will render praises to You,

¹³For You have delivered my soul from death.

Have You not kept my feet from falling,

That I may walk before God

In the light of the living?

In trusting in all of God’s faithfulness, David now recalls that he has vows binding upon him, vows that he has made to Him he will now keep (Deut. 23:21-23; Ecc. 5:4-6). For our God has delivered his soul (our souls from death) from everlasting separation from Him. Indeed, not only has God preserved his soul (our souls), but He has kept our feet from falling that we may walk before God in the light of the living, in the light of everyone who lives and has eternal life by faith In Christ inside of them. We then are the most blessed and privileged people of all!

Scripture Quotations

New King James (1982): Thomas Nelson.