Psalm 09

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:01utc

In the Hebrew Bible the ninth and the tenth psalm are one poem, and each line begins with one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in its right sequence. Both the Septuagint and the Vulgate treat the two as one psalm.

The subtitle in the NIV reads: "For the director of music. To the tune of 'The Death of the son.' A psalm of David."

The Adam Clarke's Commentary comes to the conclusion that there have been so many interpretations as to the meaning of this subscript that nothing can be deducted from it with final certainty. We copy: "The inscription to this Psalm in the HEBREW text is, To the chief Musician upon Muth-labben, A Psalm of David. The CHALDEE has, 'A Song of David, to be sung concerning the Death of the Strong Man, (or champion, degabra, who went out between the Camps;' that is, Goliath, on account of whose defeat this Psalm has been supposed by many to have been composed. The date in the margin is several years posterior to the death of Goliath.

The VULGATE: 'A Psalm of David, for the end, concerning the secrets of the Son.'

The SYRIAC: 'A Psalm of David concerning Christ's receiving the throne and the kingdom, and defeating his enemies.'

The ARABIC: 'Concerning the mysteries of the Son, as to the glory of Christ, his resurrection, and kingdom, and the destruction of all the disobedient.'

Houbigant causes the Hebrew title to agree with the Vulgate, Septuagint, and AEthiopic, by uniting `al-muwth, 'concerning the death,' into the word `alamowth, which signifies secrets or hidden things. 'To the chief musician, or conqueror; secrets concerning the Son: A Psalm of David.'

About a hundred MSS. and printed editions unite the words as above. Some translate `alamowth 'concerning the youth or infancy; the infancy of the Son.' Several of the fathers have on this ground interpreted it, 'concerning the incarnation of our Lord.' Indeed, the title and the Psalm have been so variously understood, that it would be as painful as it would be useless to follow the different commentators, both ancient and modern, through all their conjectures."

The phrase "To the tune of 'The Death of the Son," may, of course, have been an existing melody to which David set his poem and we should not necessarily conclude that it was written at the occasion of the death of one of David's own sons. If, as Adam Clarke indicates, the psalm predated the death of Goliath, (but I do not see how this could be done with certainty), David would not even have been married when he wrote it. There is also nothing in the psalm itself that suggest a personal loss. It is difficult to determine what the subject of the psalm is. The title would make one think that it might be a dirge, as in Psalm 7, there is, however, some similarity between both poems, (both speak about a court case in which David is justified), but the differences are greater than the similarities. There are even apparent contradictory points in this psalm, where David gives his personal testimony as if it pertains to an international conflict.

The psalm opens with a praise, or rather with a determination to praise God. David uses the future tense. It sounds as if David has decided that praise is important in facing an oncoming enemy. "My enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before you"; in vs. 3 seems to be the result of the praise given in the previous verses, not the reason for the praise. The lesson we find here is that praise is not always a matter of spontaneous and relaxed fellowship with God. There are moments when one has to force himself to utter words of praise to God because circumstances push us into the opposite direction. Paul and Silas are the classic examples of this in their imprisonment in Philippi. "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them."^¹ The two Dutch ladies, Corrie and Betsie ten Boom, did the same while in a German concentration camp.² This attitude presupposes a recognition of the enemy. Praise can be a form of resistance, when we realize that Satan has overstepped his boundaries and we decide to oppose him.

If we look at David's use of praise in this light, the psalm acquires new significance. David is determined to praise YHWH with his whole heart. This is an act of the will. We can set ourselves to praise and mobilize our will, our mind and our emotions to this end. Just as loving can be an act of the will, ("Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength"³ is a command!), so can praise be. If we wait till we are in the mood for praise, we will have very little of it. Man should have enough control over himself not to become the prey of his own moods. If we are governed by our emotions alone, we have lost the initiative in our life, and that can become the beginning of depression. We deceive ourselves if we think that we cannot govern our emotions. We will come to the conclusion that praise is reasonable if we see through the deception of the enemy. The reality belongs to Christ, and praise confirms our relationship to this reality.

The practice of this psychological attitude toward our circumstances consists in the rehearsal of God's wonders. We will never be able to do this in an exhaustive fashion, but to recite what God has done in our own life can be a source of inspiration and will contribute greatly to bring praise spontaneously and willingly.

We should be aware, however, that there are dangers in being egocentric about this. One's personal experiences can be highly subjective. It is safe to keep on coming back to the objective facts of salvation and also to observe God's miracles in the lives of others.

Once David has placed himself on the foundation of praise, he starts the crescendo. Joy is a byproduct of our sense of reality, and rejoicing will follow in its footsteps. Rejoicing brings us a step further than joy. The Hebrew for rejoice is `alats, which literally means "to jump for joy." The person who rejoices surrenders himself to his joy. There is nothing wrong with this kind of surrender as long as we do it knowingly and we are certain that we are joyful for the right reasons.

When David says: "I will sing praise to your name, O Most High," he is making the poetry of the hymnal which we know now as the Book of Psalms . He composed a poem to be sung with the accompaniment of the flute or the harp, a poem which addressed God. Poetry and music find their "raison d'être" in praise and worship. The apostle Paul advises us to "sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."⁴ It is quite legitimate to use existing forms to praise God. The suggestion that we should always be original in our expression of gratitude comes from the Evil One, who is never original himself, least of all in this domain.

The subject of David's praise is the Name of God, which is His character. Praise will flow naturally when we concentrate on who God is and on the infinity and eternity of His attributes. It is the essence of His holiness and the radiance of His glory which will awaken the ecstasy in the heart of each man who seeks Him. How it is possible that a finite creature, such as man is, has the ability to grasp so much of the eternal and holy God that he comes to praise and exultation is a mystery that is hard to fathom.

We have to remember, again in the context of this psalm, that David's enemies are not, in the first place, human beings but demons. The word that is translated "to perish" is the Hebrew word 'abad, which has the connotation of "to wander away" or "to lose oneself." Men who were out to get David's life would not have had enough spiritual insight to draw back like that in the presence of God. There is, however, no doubt about it that the demons involved human agents in their attacks upon David's life. The Bible also teaches clearly that Satan tries to accuse us before God. The prophet Zechariah says: "Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him."⁵ And in the book of Revelation John hears an angel say: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down."⁶

David sees himself in the dock, but he also knows that God is his lawyer and defender. He cannot have known the truth about the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus calls the Paraclete: that is, the advocate or legal advisor. But God must have revealed to him the principle of justification, because David hears from God's own mouth that he was pronounced "not guilty." This is, no doubt, one of the events that is classified as "all your wonders" in vs. 1, which brings him to praise God.

Then David projects this personal experience on the level of the international. That seems the logical thing to do for one who is a political figure, the king of Israel. What Satan does to the individual, he also does to the nations. Israel is not mentioned by name, but vs. 5 indicates that there had been international pressure put upon the nation of Israel. We read: "You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their name for ever and ever." In this way, David identifies himself with the nation of which he is a part. He knew that God had chosen him, not only as an individual, but collectively as part of the people. This vision is apparent in the story in which he kills Goliath. He says there: "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?"⁷

It is impossible for us, who live in a secular society, to see things in this perspective. But David realizes that, just as the enemy, who accused him personally before God and who stumbled and had to fall back, so do the nations who attack Israel. They run into the wall of God's justification of Israel. David's prophecy will be fulfilled in the end time, as we read in Revelation about the battle of Armageddon.⁸

We are not told what the political circumstances were which made David write about the defeat of Israel's foes. It could be one of the military action to cleanse the land of some pockets of Canaanites, or one of many campaigns against the Philistines. For us, the Holy Spirit draws here a line from the experience David had personally and Israel had as a whole, to the last battle this planet will know and then back again to the life of each individual believer in our day. Because the comfort this psalm gives to us, today, is that world history proves, over and over again, that God sits on the throne of the universe. We may say with the same confidence that father Abraham had: "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"⁹ What God does to the nations of this world should be a comfort and assurance to every persecuted individual. In the face of all the injustice that rules the world, we may appeal to the Supreme Court. True, one needs to see the world situation in the right perspective and discern the great lines of world history in order to understand this. Often we are too close to contemporary conditions and we come to the wrong conclusion believing that God does not judge the world righteously. We can only come to the right conclusion if we have our eyes upon the future and judge the past and the present in that light. Evil is a temporary phenomenon, but God's righteousness is eternal. Here David evokes the image that later will be painted in fuller detail by the apostle John in Revelation, where he says: "Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them."¹⁰ That is earth and sky in its fallen condition. For the believers Jesus says: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."¹¹

The picture of God sitting on the throne demonstrates at the same time the contract between sin and righteousness, as the temporal character of evil and the eternal quality of justice. This does not always lessen the need of the present, but it changes our perspective. It gives us the assurance that we are perfectly safe in times of need. God is our refuge and our stronghold. In order to have this confidence, we have to know His Name. Listen to David's confidence: "Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you." We have to know who God is and what it means that He is who He is. What A. W. Tozer calls The Knowledge of the Holy, is the basis of our confidence in God: this, with the historical fact that God has never forsaken those who seek Him. Often, though, the opposite seems to be the case. The Jews taunted Jesus when He was dying on the cross and insinuated that His faith in God had been in vain. "He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ''I am the Son of God.' " But His resurrection set the mocker straight. During World War II I knew an old lady, Miss Hofman, who shared an apartment with Miss Baars. During an air raid Miss Baars was afraid, so Miss Hofman prayed with her. But after prayer Miss Hofman was of the opinion that, since they had committed themselves to the Lord there was no longer any reason not to go back to bed and sleep through the night. Poor Miss Baars kept on sitting on her chair till the "all clear" signal was given.