Today’s Passage: Psalm 62
There are people here who are trying to throw a man down, blessing him with their mouths while they curse him on the inside. But the psalm does not answer them with a counterattack of its own. It answers with rest, and with rest in God alone. Power belongs to Him, and loving devotion belongs to Him. From its first line to its last, the psalm keeps a single hold and never lets go of it: the soul grown quiet before the God who saves.
As you read, hold this: In God alone my soul finds rest.
Context Of David, for Jeduthun
The heading reads, “For the choirmaster. According to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David,” and that superscription is part of the text itself, not a later note tacked on above it. The attackers here are a group of people, not a single foe, and the man sees himself as a leaning wall and a tottering fence, something that one more shove could bring down. Whether or not these words come from the days when Absalom turned against his own father, the picture is the same: a coordinated push against a man who looks, for the moment, easy to finish.
Psalm 62:1-2 (BSB)
¹ For the choirmaster. According to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David. In God alone my soul finds rest; my salvation comes from Him. ² He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress; I will never be shaken.
Notice how much is settled before a single enemy is named. That word alone comes twice in these two verses, and gathered around it stand dumiyyah, pronounced doo-mee-YAH. Strong's H1747, silence, stillness. The root beneath this word carries the sense of silence, of a hush. When the BSB renders it “finds rest,” it names what that hush produces in a person. This is not the silence of someone who has simply run out of words to say. It is the stillness of someone who has already found where his help comes from and has stopped looking anywhere else. And the verse does not say the soul finds rest in general, wherever it happens to land. It says the soul finds rest in God alone. , rock, salvation, and fortress. The psalm stakes its whole claim on God first, before it so much as mentions who is coming against it.
Psalm 62:3-4 (BSB)
³ How long will you threaten a man? Will all of you throw him down like a leaning wall or a tottering fence? ⁴ They fully intend to cast him down from his lofty perch; they delight in lies; with their mouths they bless, but inwardly they curse. Selah
Now he turns and speaks to them straight on: How long will you? He can describe the danger in exact and ugly detail, a wall already leaning, a fence already tottering, needing only one more push to bring it down. There is blessing on their lips and a curse underneath, so this is not open combat but a smile that hides the work of the hands. And here is the thing worth holding onto: the rest of verses 1 and 2 was not spoken in ignorance of any of this. The man who said alone and rest was a man who could see the fence lean.
Psalm 62:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ Rest in God alone, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him. ⁶ He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress; I will not be shaken.
Study notes Said again, to his own soul
Verses 5 and 6 return to verses 1 and 2, almost word for word, but now the words come as a command he gives to himself: Rest in God alone, O my soul. What was salvation in verse 1 becomes hope in verse 5, and never shaken softens into not shaken. This near-repetition is how the psalm keeps its claim from going hollow. Right in the middle of the danger of verses 3 and 4, the man turns and preaches his own opening lines back to himself.
Psalm 62:7-8 (BSB)
⁷ My salvation and my honor rest on God, my strong rock; my refuge is in God. ⁸ Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. Selah
Here the private confession turns outward toward everyone else. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. This is not a polished prayer but a poured one, unfiltered, the whole heart tipped out in God’s presence. The move from my soul to O people is itself a kind of claim, for what one soul learned in its own danger was never meant to stay private. It becomes instruction for everyone else who is facing danger of their own.
Psalm 62:9-10 (BSB)
⁹ Lowborn men are but a vapor; the exalted are but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor. ¹⁰ Place no trust in extortion or false hope in stolen goods. If your riches increase, do not set your heart upon them.
Now the psalm turns to where trust should not go. Lowborn men are but a vapor, it says, and the exalted are but a lie; weighed on the scale, they rise as though they were nothing at all, because status at either end does not carry the weight that people give it. Then it names the other false refuge: extortion, stolen goods, even honest riches held too tightly in the hand. Do not set your heart upon them. The people who delight in lies back in verse 4 already showed what that kind of trust looks like, and verses 9 and 10 simply name the same failure again with the disguise stripped off.
Psalm 62:11-12 (BSB)
¹¹ God has spoken once; I have heard this twice: that power belongs to God, ¹² and loving devotion to You, O Lord. For You will repay each man according to his deeds.
Once, and then twice. This is a Hebrew pattern, the kind Proverbs loves to use, where a number is named and then followed by that number plus one. It does not mean two separate revelations came down. The second number marks a truth that has been taken all the way in and settled. What he heard is really one sentence carried across two lines. Power belongs to God, and loving devotion, the rich Hebrew word hesed, belongs to God as well. Power without love would leave us someone only to fear and never to rest in, and love without power would be a kindness that cannot save. The rest of verse 1 leans on both of these at once.
And so the last line leaves the attackers of verses 3 and 4 in God’s own hands. You will repay each man according to his deeds. The people who delight in lies have not been forgotten or excused; the psalmist simply does not take it upon himself to repay them. He rests instead in the One to whom both power and loving devotion belong, and therefore both justice and mercy belong to Him as well.
In God alone my soul finds rest.