My wife and I are reading through the Psalms in our evening reading and occasionally a nugget of the Psalms jumps out of the page. Don’t you love it when, after years of reading the “Old Book” passages become alive, reinforcing old teachings or simply warming your heart.
This is the book of Psalms, and it is rich.
I pray I can communicate a portion of the blessing we receive from this wonderful book.
This chapter is full of recognizable verses, verses that beg to be considered, dwelled upon, meditated over and to give thanks for!
Before we get into the text, lets consider the background to this psalm.
Psalm 34
1 Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.
This psalm opens, giving a bit of historical background to the writing of the psalm. David changed his behavior, and it was out of fear that he put on this front. David’s behavior, and his situation is fleshed out a in a bit more detail in 1 Samuel 21 By the way, Achish and Abimelech are the same king! Abimelech is like a title for the king of Gath
1 Samuel 21:10 – 15
And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath.
And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”
And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.
So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me?
Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?”
This is the behavior of a man after God’s own heart?
Come come now friends, before we judge the future king of Israel, let us consider our own lives. We are all made of the same stuff – weakness and dust, fears and flesh. David humiliates himself after a terrible decision to run to the enemy of God’s people. A terrible decision causing circumstances that strikes fear in David’s heart, ending up with his acting a fool in front of an enemy king.
Definitely not a high point for David!
And yet he writes this awesome psalm of praise to the Lord, not looking upon his own humiliation but upon God’s deliverance in the midst of his own foolish mistakes!
Our next post will consider the first 11 verses. Hope you can join me as we journey through this fantastic psalm.
Thanks again for coming to visit. I hope you found something of interest in this post and would appreciate a comment, to begin a discussion.
Considering the Bible 