63 63:1 A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 63:2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 63:3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 63:4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 63:5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 63:6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 63:7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 63:8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
9 63:9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 63:10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 63:11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
Section Overview
This psalm opens as if it were a lament, seeking God in a time of trouble. And yet the overall flow of the song is one of confident expectation. Hence it is best to see the psalm as enabling each of God’s people to develop confidence during times of trouble. In particular, this psalm inculcates in the worshiper confidence that he or she will indeed be able to return to the sanctuary to worship God. Biblically, the highest privilege a mortal can enjoy is to be a welcome member of the worshiping congregation; and the psalm, in instilling confidence, also enables its singers to treasure this worship as the gift that it is. The several references to “my soul” (vv. 1, 5, 8; cf. “my life,” v. 9) point to the intensely personal devotion to God infusing the whole song.
The title links the psalm to David’s days as a refugee, but it is not immediately clear whether the reference is to fleeing from Saul (1 Sam. 23:14–15; 24:1) or from Absalom (2 Sam. 15:23, 28). The latter may seem more likely, since the author calls himself a king (Ps. 63:11; cf. also 2 Sam. 16:14 for the term “weary” found in Ps. 63:1). On the other hand, the land through which David fled in the Absalom narrative is not normally counted as part of the wilderness of Judah, and David could have thought of himself as a king even when he was fleeing Saul, since Samuel had already anointed him.
The psalm begins by reflecting on the past blessings of the sanctuary (vv. 1–2) and then moves to confidence for future participation in worship (vv. 3–4). The third section is perhaps the most prominent, beginning and ending with a reference to “my soul” (vv. 5, 8); the expressions are richly personal and expressive. Finally, the psalm sings of assurance in the face of enemies: they will fail, but the king and all the faithful will exult (vv. 9–11). The psalm has not mentioned these enemies previously, except in an indirect way—“the shadow of your wings” (v. 7) implies some threat from which God’s sanctuary is the protection. The title, however, referring to David’s stay in the wilderness, certainly prepares us for the enemies’ threat.
Response
As suggested above, the main function of this psalm is to foster confidence among the faithful as they face crisis. In particular, it focuses their attention on the privilege of worshiping in the sanctuary and on the safety for the worshipers that it provides (or at least should provide). The sense of desolation, of abandonment by God, that the members may easily feel in their distresses finds its answer in the sanctuary. They also find reassurance that, ultimately, their faithfulness will be vindicated publicly.
The idea that the faithful “behold” God’s “glory” in the sanctuary appears elsewhere in the Bible, as we noted at Psalm 27:4. This “seeing” involves the imagination, as people picture the scenes of sacred history, recount the mighty deeds of God in the liturgy, and recall their own experiences of God’s love. In the discussion of Psalm 27, the wise remark of C. S. Lewis came to the front: “The fatal way of putting this would be to say ‘they only mean they have seen the festival.’” Lewis goes on to suggest that to the ancient worshiper the physical aspects of the liturgy and the spiritual sight of God were an undifferentiated, unified experience. By singing these words the worshipers reinforce their believing imagination.
In addition, this psalm, like others geared toward experiences of longing (e.g., Psalms 42–43), taps into the feeling of yearning that all people experience and reiterates that, in his covenantal arrangements, God has affirmed the rightness of that yearning and assured his faithful of his intention of satisfying it.
Christians, both Gentile and Jewish, are fully welcome in God’s presence for worship; there is no dividing wall to separate them from one another. Their worship makes them a “dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:14–22). They too need the assurance of their final vindication to support their faithfulness as they face pressures from persecution.Psalm 63
Psalm 64
I. (63:1–2) Remembering Past Worship. The opening words of the song passionately express longing for God: “earnestly I seek,” “my soul thirsts,” and “my flesh faints.” The arid conditions of the wilderness of Judah—the eastern portion of the land of Judah, heading down to the Dead Sea—provides the image of a “dry and weary land where there is no water.” The craving for God is likened to the deep thirst and weariness someone in this wilderness would feel.
The song expresses the feelings of missing God. In particular, the psalmist misses his experience of God in public worship: “the sanctuary” is the place of corporate worship, and God’s “glory” is his special presence with his people, given and enjoyed in the sanctuary (cf. comment on 26:4–8). People are said to see (or “look upon” or “behold”) this glory (e.g., Ex. 16:7; 33:18; Num. 14:10; Deut. 5:24). The psalm’s title asks the singers to envision David’s experience of being a fugitive—and the song focuses less on danger and discomfort and more on the way in which this flight has deprived him of regular attendance in the sanctuary. That is, in the scale of values, participation in worship is at the top.
II. (63:3–4) Confidence for Future Worship. The past tense recollection of Psalm 63:2 becomes a future expectation: “My lips will praise you,” “I will bless you,” and “I will lift up my hands.” These activities of praising, blessing, and lifting up hands (28:2; 134:2) take place in the sanctuary.
The word “praise” has the nuance of commending or expressing the excellence of someone; to “bless” is to speak well of someone. Lifting up hands is a sign of directing one’s prayers and praise toward God, helping the worshiper to focus his thoughts on God. The ground of this expectation comes in 63:3: “because your steadfast love is better than life”—that steadfast love that is pledged in God’s covenant with his people and reiterated in the exercises of the liturgy.
III. (63:5–8) My Soul Clings to You. Delight in God is not limited to the sanctuary. The memory of God’s presence and promises, mediated in public worship, and of God’s help in times past produces joy and praise—even “in the watches of the night,” when people normally sleep, they are to deal with sleeplessness by meditating on God.
Verse 5 uses imagery centered on the mouth: the mouth that tastes “fat and rich food” (especially worthy of memory when one’s diet is predominately fruits and grains) and the mouth and lips that utter joyful songs of praise. Verse 6 moves from this to the sleepless night; most singers would immediately recognize an anxiety-induced insomnia and would see the remembering and meditating as the recommended way to cope.
The remembering and meditating focus on God’s activities of “help” in the past and on the “shadow of [God’s] wings,” perhaps a general image for protection, such as that provided by a mother bird (cf. 17:8; 36:7) but associated particularly with the safety of the sanctuary (cf. 61:4).
The singer says that his “soul” (63:8, echoing v. 5) “clings to” God; this word indicates a determined holding fast in loyalty (Deut. 4:4; 10:20; 11:22; 30:20). By declaring that “my soul” does this the singer addresses his doubts and hesitations with resolve but also with confidence, for “your right hand upholds me”—as the remembering and meditating have brought freshly to mind.
IV. (63:9–11) Those Who Seek My Life Will Fail, but I Will Rejoice. Now the song explains the source of the troubles: “those who seek to destroy my life.” The title suggests experiences of David in which this was literally fulfilled (cf. Section Overview and Outline). The theme here is that such people will fail and be publicly exposed. They will “go down into the depths of the earth”; perhaps this is simply a physical location (Isa. 44:23), in which case it would refer simply to their graves, but possibly the term implies that beyond the grave lies the region of the condemned (Ezek. 31:14). The first is probably most in view, since “They shall be given over to the power of the sword” and “They shall be a portion for jackals” (i.e., as unburied carrion for scavengers to eat) focus on physical demise. However, a song can invite its singers to ponder further, beyond merely physical disasters; indeed, since the images of the grave and of being carrion are literally incompatible, it seems likely that the public humiliation is viewed as emblematic of the divine verdict on such people.
In contrast, “the king shall rejoice in God” (Ps. 63:11) and “all who swear by him shall exult.” The antecedent of “him” is unclear at first blush; the clause could mean either “swear by the king” or “swear by God.” The second is more likely (cf. Deut. 6:13; 10:20, where swearing by the Lord’s name displays loyalty to God). That is, the king (who is assumed to be faithful) is joined by those in Israel who are loyal to him, who are also then genuinely loyal to the Lord. The “liars,” the rebels against God’s choice of David, will be exposed.
Psalm 63:11 presents us with the chief difficulty in interpretation. Perhaps this is a song that nourishes loyalty to David and his dynasty. Opposition to that is opposition to God—although no king in David’s line is above critique, as the prophets make clear. By this reading, the heirs of David are to be nurtured in true piety, in true yearning and love for the exercises of the sanctuary. By extension, the people should imitate such piety.
Another way of reading verse 11 is to suppose that David here is serving primarily as the ideal of covenant membership. Thus, the ordinary believer should observe the analogy: some members within God’s own chosen people may be hostile to God’s purposes and to those who are faithful to those purposes (for which faithfulness David is the exemplar). They will fail. Thus the ordinary person takes confidence: neither David (the king) nor those who adhere to him will fall prey to these enemies.
It is difficult to decide between these two possibilities, as both are represented in the Psalter. Perhaps the context of the surrounding psalms, which focus on the ordinary person’s confidence and love for the sanctuary, points in the direction of the second reading strategy. In the Second Temple era, when the Davidic dynasty was removed, the second strategy was probably the only option for the faithful.