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.

Psalm 59

1 To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam of David, when Saul sent men to watch his house in order to kill him.

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me;
2 deliver me from those who work evil, and save me from bloodthirsty men.

The psalms of David’s heart are sometimes not associated with a specific time in his life. Not so with this psalm. This is specifically the time when the assassination plot was initiated against the shepherd boy by the King of Israel. Let us consider the passage that describes the condition David is in when He pens this psalm.

1 Samuel 19:11-12 

11 Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, told him, “If you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” 12 So Michal let David down through the window, and he fled away and escaped.

David is on the run! This is unbelievable in David’s mind, totally unexpected, for as he speaks with Saul’s son Jonathon after this, he reveals his confusion.

1 Samuel 20:1

Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah and came and said before Jonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?”

Psalm 59 is David’s heart after this shocking development in his life. From becoming a national hero, and the future king of Israel, David plummets to a fugitive, on the run from his own people, expecting a spear through the heart or a sword falling on his neck. He is a dead man.

Except for one hope! His God.

Twice he looks to God, to his God for deliverance, once for defending and finally for salvation. Each of these verbs are telling!

Deliver

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God… (v1)

deliver me from those who work evil (v2)

David’s request for deliverance from his enemies (those who work evil) may be understood as David requesting God to snatch him away from the situation, or to take him away from the danger. His request has the sense of being without any self assistance, as one who is without any resource to perform the escape. David is helpless in this request, and he looks to God for his deliverance.

Protect

Protect me from those who rise up against me (v1)

To “protect” in this verse is a surprising concept for a 21st century believer, for it speaks of the one being protected as being set on high, to be in accessible, to be too high for capture.

Notice Davis is asking to be lifted up (protected) against those who are rising up against him. They are seeking to find advantage in their position over David, and yet David seeks God to being him to a higher point, a position of being unreachable, beyond their grasp

Save

save me from bloodthirsty men. (v2)

David cuts to the chase in this verse, for he speaks of those men who are against him as bloodthirsty. His enemies are rising up against him and working evil, are doing so from a blood lust, a desire to kill.

David clearly understands the situation. He is looking to God, his God for deliverance, to cheat these bloodthirsty men from any success. And we know that God, his God came to his rescue. David eventually became king. Eventually! You see, David may have been as young as 19 on the night Saul’s men came to get him. Eleven years later, he ascended to the throne. Over a decade of protection through numerous close calls, near misses and terror inducing events.

God’s protection and deliverance in David’s life was in the midst of many trials.

It may be good to remember this as we enter into trials and struggles in our own walk with the Master.

God protects and we trust. And we are called to continue to trust, in the midst of the trials, the close calls and the terror inducing events, for God is good, and He is good all the time!

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