Today’s Passage: Psalm 56
David runs from Saul and lands in the hands of Israel’s other enemy, for the Philistines seize him in Gath, and there is no clean way out. When I am afraid, I put my trust in You. He does not wait until he is safely out to decide what he believes; he prays it while the danger is still all around him.
As you read, hold this: When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.
Context Seized in Gath — 1 Samuel 21:10–15
The heading tells us this is a prayer from the time “when the Philistines seized him in Gath.” David had fled from Saul and run to Achish, the king of Gath, which was a Philistine city, and there Achish’s servants recognized him and quoted the old song back to him: Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. So now he stood in front of a Philistine king as the very man famous for killing Philistines, and he was very much afraid. His way out was not diplomacy. He feigned madness until Achish waved him off. Psalm 56 does not narrate any of that theater; it gives us the prayer underneath it.
Psalm 56:1-2 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. To the tune of “A Dove on Distant Oaks.” A Miktam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath.
¹ Be merciful to me, O God, for men are hounding me; all day they press their attack. ² My enemies pursue me all day long, for many proudly assail me.
All day, and he says it twice in just two verses. This is not a single close call but constant pressure, with never a moment to catch his breath.
Psalm 56:3-4 (BSB)
³ When I am afraid, I put my trust in You. ⁴ In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
He does not claim that he is never afraid. He says when, and then he names what he does with the fear when it comes. Verse 4 turns that trust into a question, the first of two he will ask: what can mere basar, pronounced bah-SAR. Strong's H1320, flesh, body, mortal creaturely being. The BSB renders both refrains, the one in verse 4 and the one in verse 11, as “What can man do to me?” But the Hebrew does not repeat the same word. Here the word is flesh, a human being reduced to raw physical stuff, and whatever these men can do to him, they are still only flesh set against the word of God he has just named. When verse 11 asks the question again it reaches for a different word, “man,” so that the second refrain is an escalation and not simply a copy of the first. do to him?
Psalm 56:5-7 (BSB)
⁵ All day long they twist my words; all their thoughts are on my demise. ⁶ They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps while they wait to take my life. ⁷ In spite of such sin, will they escape? In Your anger, O God, cast down the nations.
This is not abstract hostility. These are people watching him, waiting, twisting whatever he says. And in verse 7 he hands the nations over to God’s anger; he asks God to deal with them, but he does not take the matter into his own hands.
Psalm 56:8 (BSB)
⁸ You have taken account of my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle—are they not in Your book?
Study notes Tears in a bottle
Hebrew: נֹאד (nod). This was a leather skin used to carry liquid so that not a drop would be lost to the ground. God has already been keeping count of David’s wanderings, and now David asks Him to do the very same thing with what is far harder to track: his private tears, the grief that no one else in Gath was watching. The public danger gets recorded in this psalm, and so do one man’s tears, kept where they will not simply evaporate.
Psalm 56:9-11 (BSB)
⁹ Then my enemies will retreat on the day I cry for help. By this I will know that God is on my side. ¹⁰ In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise, ¹¹ in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
The refrain comes back, this time stretched across three lines, with God named twice more before the question is asked. The confidence has grown, even though the danger itself has not changed yet.
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10 (BSB)
This is the same thing David is banking on there in enemy territory: a God who does not merely sympathize from a distance.
Psalm 56:12-13 (BSB)
¹² Your vows are upon me, O God; I will render thank offerings to You. ¹³ For You have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.
Here is a vow made in the middle of the crisis, and it is not payment for a rescue already complete. It is the response of a man who has decided that God is trustworthy enough to build a promise upon.
When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.