Psalm 56

Introduction

“Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and our continuing series Tehillim Talks, our studies in the Psalms. And in this episode, we’ll be looking into Psalm 56. Now, this Psalm has a rather lengthy attribution, and we’ll camp out there for a little bit longer than we normally would, because it sets the tone for the Psalm, and there’s information here, which helps us to understand this Psalm a little better.

And this is what the attribution says, To the choir master, according to The Mute Dove of Distant Places, A Michtam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath. Now, let’s start with this last part, when the Philistines seized him in Gath. If you recall, back in Psalm 34, the attribution of that Psalm was also about when he was in Gath.

He was hiding among the Philistines, and he disguised his sanity so they would not recognize that he was King David. And this Psalm is also written to commemorate that same event. So why do we need two Psalms, Psalm 34, Psalm 56, to discuss the same event?

I’m not quite sure, but I know one commentator had an interesting take on this, and he said that Psalm 34 was written to give us David’s prayer when he found himself in this very, very difficult circumstance, a prayer that can be a model for us when we also find ourselves in impossible circumstances. But this Psalm, Psalm 56, instead of giving us a prayer, tells us what David’s mindset was that allowed him to get through this, to survive it and to come out of it. And so maybe that’s the case.

I don’t know. I would like to hear your thoughts. But the attribution says to the choir master, according to the mute dove of distant places. Now that is Robert Alter’s translation of the words. Only three words if I remember correctly in Hebrew. And this has been a puzzle for translators ever since, I think, David wrote this Psalm.

Another common translation is the Silent Distant Dove. So what is this? What is this Silent Distant Dove? Or the Mute Dove of Distant Places? Well, apparently, it is a melody that David composed for this Psalm. And if you picture a dove, which meets for life, we have doves flying around our home all the time and drinking from our little drinking pool back here in the back for birds, and they’re always in pairs, always in pairs.

Here’s a bird that’s all by itself, a dove that’s all alone. And he’s in distant places. And this kind of describes David’s situation. He wanted to be home in Jerusalem. He wanted to be close to the temple. He wanted to be involved in the life of Israel, but instead, he’s out in the wilderness.

He’s fleeing from King Saul who’s trying to take his life. He is surrounded with some other men, but sometimes they too would scatter so that they would not be caught as a group. And in this case, David’s by himself among his enemies, the Philistines.

And he uses the ploy of acting insane so they would not recognize him. And what I find interesting, and you can read the background of this Psalm in 1 Samuel 21 verses 10 to 15, and there are talks about how David went to Gath, and there he disguised his sanity. But it says, The servants of Achish, the king of Gath, said to him, Is not this David the king of the land?

In other words, the Philistines, David’s enemies, recognized him as the king of Israel before Solomon and the people of Israel recognized David as the king of Israel. I find that fascinating. And another thing that’s interesting about this Psalm is that it is a Michtam.

Now, what in the world is a Michtam? Well, no one knows for sure. But Psalm 16 was also a Michtam of David. And Psalms 51 through, I believe it’s 56, I’m sorry, 56 through 60 are all labeled as a Michtam. So we have six Psalms in all in the Book of Psalms, all written by David, each one called a Michtam. The rabbis have puzzled about this and they have various ideas.

But one of the things that’s pretty certain is the word Michtam comes from the word Chetem, which is a type of very fine gold. The common word for gold is Zahav, but very fine gold is Chetem. And when you see references to the gold of Ophir, it’s usually the Chetem of Ophir.

So we might think of this psalm as a golden psalm or a golden truth, or maybe it’s one of David’s favorite psalms. Maybe out of all the psalms he composed in the Book of Psalms, these six, Psalm 16, then Psalms 56 through 60, were his favorites. You decide.

We don’t really know, but there’s something unique about a Michtam. And I look forward to asking David himself, what does this melody sound like? This mute dove of distant places. And what did you mean by Michtam? In the meantime, we can study on it and think about it and read what the rabbis say about it. And it could be that all of them have a little bit of the truth, and we have to put it all together to get a full picture of what this might be.

So anyways, with that, let’s get right into our Psalm.

Verses 1–4

“Be gracious to me, O God, for man, and the word for man here is Enosh. We’ll see the word for man again later in the Psalm, around verse 11. But there, instead of Enosh, he uses the word Adam or Adam. Now Enosh, if you recall, whenever you see this word used for man, it’s referring to man and all of his frailty, his brokenness, his weakness, and his human passions. But Adam is referring to a son of Adam. This is something a little more dignified.

So here, early in the Psalm, he uses the word Enosh, but later he’ll use the word Adam. Oh God, for Enosh pants after me. All day long an attacker oppresses me. My enemies pant after me. Same word again. All day long. For many attack me from above. In other words, I’m down here at the bottom and there are people above me, people in places of position, who are trying to squash me like a bug. Some of the rabbis say that this from above is referring to spiritual enemies as well, the principalities, the powers of the air. And that is also a possibility.

But he says, for many attack me from above. When I am afraid, I trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust. I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?

Now, what does he mean about trusting in God’s word? Is he referring to the Torah? Yes, of course, he’s referring to that. But more specifically, I think he’s referring to prophecies that were spoken over him. When he was a youth and the prophet Samuel came and prophesied over him of what would be. And David is holding on to this word, knowing it comes directly from the prophet of God, that he would be the king of Israel and he would rule. So he has to hold on to the promises God has made.

Has God made personal promises to you? We have to be very careful. On the one hand, we want to imagine promises that he didn’t make. On the other hand, we don’t want to ignore and forget promises that he has. And this is something that you must distinguish on your own. This is something you must very carefully navigate. And make sure that if you’re holding on to a personal promise from God, make sure it is a personal promise from God, and not something that was a haphazard word of knowledge from someone who maybe meant well, but who wasn’t really hearing God’s word.

But make sure it’s something that’s true. And when you know that you know that you know that it’s true, then hold on to it for dear life. Now, this word for pant is an interesting word. It’s the word sh’af, and you can see it here. Shin, alif, peh. And it has two meanings. It means to pant, like a dog panting for water, or a hungry animal panting for prey. But it also means to trample, to trample down. And we can get the picture here of an animal that is panting for, maybe after a rabbit. He wants to kill it and chew this thing up. And maybe there’s a pack of animals going after the kill. And when they do, they trample its blood.

And it’s kind of a gory, violent picture. But this is the word for pant that is used here. Now, back in Psalm 42, David wrote, As the deer pants after water, so my soul pants for you, O Lord. That’s a different word. That’s the word orog. And it sounds like a deer pant, orog, orog. It’s a, onomatopoeia, I think, is the word where you make a word sound like the thing it’s describing. But that’s not the word used here. This is a more violent word, a more bloodthirsty word. And it’s a word that simply means that it’s something starving and wants to kill, destroy and eat.

But what is David’s response? I shall not be afraid. But look what it says, when I am afraid, I trust in you, in God, whose word I praise, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid. When you have a sense of fear, when fear comes over you, you always have a choice. You always have a choice. You can give in to that fear and let it conquer you, or you can say no. You flip the switch off. It doesn’t mean your blood pressure goes down right away and your heart slows a little bit. But it does mean I am going to operate using my will and do the right thing, regardless of the temptation to cave into fear.”

Verses 5–8

“All day long, they injure my words. That’s an interesting phrase. You know, when you have enemies, when you have people who hate you, it makes no difference what you say or what you do. They will misconstrue it as something wicked, something evil, and they’ll use it as something to feed their own hatred of you. It has happened to me. I’m sure you can also identify with this, but people who have decided that they don’t like you and that they don’t want anything to do with you, they will always injure your words.

There are times when it’s appropriate to go to an enemy or someone who has something against us and to make it right with them and to explain. But when that fails, all the words in the world will not make it better. In fact, the more words you give them, the more they will use those words to attack. They’ll sling them right back in your face. So all day long, David says, they injure my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil. All of their thoughts, no matter what I do, no matter what I say, they’ll twist my motives. They’ll twist my words. They’ll claim to have insight into some, some inner meaning of what I’m saying and twist it to make it something devious that they perceive me doing or saying.

They prowl, they lurk, they watch at my heels. So you can see that picture of them hunting. This word for prowl is from the word gur, which means a lion cub. And if you’ve ever been with lion cubs much, they pretend they’re big time hunters, and they’ll get down and crouch and pounce. And this is what he’s saying they’re doing. They’re prowling, they’re looking for a chance to pounce, looking for some sign of weakness.

I’ve been to South Africa several times, and each time I go, it seems like I get to spend some time with lions and lion cubs. And it’s always a fascinating experience. But there is one memory I have of walking along a chain-link fence. And I’m on one side, of course, and there are these lions that are a couple years old. They’re full grown. And they’re right on the other side of the fence. I’m not more than that far away from them. As I walk along, they walk along and look at me, and they seem kind of friendly, and they, you know, they’re just walking along.

But one time, I squatted down to tie my shoe and immediately that lion got down like he wanted to pounce on me. And the person who works there at the preserve explained that when they see you sit or lie down, they think you’re weak or injured. Then they see you as food instead of a threat. I found that really fascinating because it applies here. These enemies of David are looking for any sign that he’s weakened, any sign that he’s injured, because they want to wait till he is as vulnerable as possible. They can pounce and devour him and destroy him.

So they prowl, they lurk, they watch at my heels as they wait for my soul, for my nephesh. They want to destroy my soul. Now, we can have enemies these days and they may not want to kill you physically. Well, maybe they do. But we usually don’t have to worry about them killing us physically. But they are all about destroying our souls. They’re all about destroying our character, our reputation, destroying our history of good works, destroying our record of serving God. They want to destroy all of that.

And when you think about it, murder, murder would be kinder. Because when you murder someone, you only destroy their body. But when you gossip about someone, when you kill their soul, you’re doing something much, much worse. Much, much worse.

Verses seven and eight, for their crime will they escape? And then David says, in anger bring down the peoples, O God. Now this phrase bring down the peoples is a phrase we also found in the previous Psalm, in Psalm 55. And that gives us context for what David is asking for here. In Psalm 55 verse 23, David writes this, But you, O God, will bring them down. Where? Into the pit of destruction. Men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days, but I will trust you.

So when he says to bring them down, he’s saying, Father, do to them what they seek to do to me. One of the principles in scripture is that when someone commits a crime or is caught attempting to commit a crime, then it is done to them as they sought to do to the innocent victim. And so that’s what David’s doing here. They want to destroy my soul, so God bring them down into the pit of destruction. Do to them, Father, what they’re attempting to do to me.

You have kept count of my wanderings. That word wanderings is the word nod or nud. And it’s found two times in the Torah, two or three, but all in the context of Esau who was made to wander the earth. And he wandered in the land of nod, which comes from this word wandering. And David has already used it once or twice in Psalms already. But he’s saying, you Lord have kept count of my wanderings. You’ve seen the times I’ve had to move from the place I want to be. I’ve been driven to a place I did not want to go. And that’s heartbreaking to David. We all long to be home. And David is this lonely dove who’s in far away places. He wants to go home. He wants to be with his people.

And then these next two phrases are beautiful. They’re wonderful. And they go together. Put my tears in your bottle. Or flask. It’s like a small bottle. Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Now what’s the difference between a book and a bottle? And what’s the difference between something that you write and then the tears that you weep? Well, let’s start with the second one. I can write down an account of something that’s happened to someone without being emotionally involved whatsoever. I just observe what’s happened and I write it down. It’s like recording the weather. And God does that. He keeps a record of our lives, of our wanderings, of our goings and our comings and all of our deeds and our words. He writes them down.

But he does more than that. He puts our tears in a bottle. He collects them because each one is precious to him. Each one, as one rabbi says, is like a diamond to him that he collects. He does not allow a single one of them to be lost. That means that not only is he keeping an accurate record, he is emotionally invested in us. And he hurts when we hurt. And he holds us close. And he feels our pain as intensely as we do. And so that’s a beautiful thing. You know, if someone’s just keeping track of what’s happened, but there’s no emotional investment, well, it’s kind of empty. On the other hand, if someone’s very emotionally invested, but they don’t keep a record, they don’t keep track. And they just forget if everything has happened to us in the past. Well, I appreciate you weeping when I weep, but I wish you wouldn’t forget all the things I’ve been through. But God does both. Our tears he puts in his bottle. And our wanderings and our deeds and our words, he writes a record in his book. What a God we have. What an amazing God.”

Verses 9–13

“Then verses nine through 11, then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. Now, hasn’t David been calling? He’s not saying that I haven’t called yet, but I will call on you, Lord. And when I do, then you’re going to turn my enemies back. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s basically saying, I call on you every day, but there’s a day coming when I call on you and you’re going to take action. In the meantime, I keep calling on you.

So then my enemies will turn back in the day I call on you. It’s going to happen. This I know, this I know that God is for me. I just had a conversation a few days ago with a dear friend and we were discussing God’s love. And how very difficult it is to acknowledge and truly embrace just how much God loves us, just how much he loves us. And we both agreed, it takes a pretty healthy portion of humility to finally let our defenses down and say, God really does love me as much as he says. I don’t know why, but he does. He just does.

There’s something in us that wants to resist his love, because we’re gonna hold up, oh, I don’t deserve it. Oh, I’m worse than other people in all of this. But we should just quit, just give it a rest, and just embrace the fact that he really does love you as much as he says. I’ll never forget the words of Brennan Manning in his book Ragamuffin Gospel. And is either in the book or the movie. Don’t quote me on the book. It might have been in the movie Ragamuffin Gospel, where he appears and he talks. And he says, when we stand before God on Judgment Day, the first question he’s going to ask us is, why didn’t you believe that I loved you? It’s almost like God is screaming at us, I love you. And we just put our fingers in our ears and our neck like we don’t hear it. But he really does.

And David somehow could lay hold of that. And I hope that you can too. I know it’s hard to do, but God really does love us. We don’t deserve it. We could never earn it. But then it wouldn’t be love if we could. So, this I know. Do you know it? I’m laying hold of this. I’m determined to know and believe and never let go of the fact that God is for me. Doesn’t mean life will always be easy. Because God is for me. The experiences and the pains he takes me through are always for my good.

So this I know that God is for me. If you don’t hear anything else in the Psalm, hold on to that one single phrase from verse nine. This I know, that God is for me. In God, I will praise his word. In adonai, I will praise his word. Now the word his does not appear in the Hebrew. And so the rabbis don’t quite know why. Because it’s almost impossible to read this or understand it without putting the possessive pronoun in here. So I’m just gonna put it in and you can think about it.

But in Elohim, that’s the word used for God here. In Elohim, I will praise his word. In adonai, Yad He Vave, adonai Elohim is used. So there’s this mixture. adonai is the name that is the name of mercy, the name of loving kindness. And he knew that in creating Adam and Eve, there would have to be justice. Elohim is used there. But also there have to be great mercy and great tolerance because he knew Adam and Eve would mess up. He knew that all of us would as well.

So in Elohim, I will praise his word. I praise his word because it’s precise, it’s clear, it’s perfect. It means what it says. But in adonai, I will praise his word because he knows as hard as I try to keep his word perfectly, I’m going to mess up. And his word also expresses mercy and loving kindness to me and tells me of his love and his forgiveness. So I read the word of Elohim, and I also read the same time the word of adonai. So I take hold of his word with my left hand and my right hand at the same time.

The left is the physical, that’s the Elohim, that’s the black and white, that’s the complete justice and judgment. But with my right hand, the spiritual, where there’s the mercy, there’s the loving kindness, there’s the forgiveness, and there’s the faithfulness of God to us, his creation. In God I trust, I shall not be afraid. What can Adam, what can Adam do to me? So at first it was Enish, as he describes these animals kind of panting after him to destroy him. But now he says, what can Adam do to me? What can man and all of his strength and his abilities with his wealth, with his possessions, with his position in the world, what can he do to me? Nothing, nothing unless God allows it.

And then the Psalm closes in this way. I will perform my vows to you, O God. Now, to perform his vows to God, he has to go to the temple. And he can’t go to the temple as long as Saul’s trying to kill him. But David knows the day is coming when he can freely go to, well, not the temple, but the tabernacle, which existed at that time. Because that’s where you went to pay your vows and to bring your Thanksgiving offerings, which he mentions next. I will render Thanksgiving offerings to you.

For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. So this Psalm, one of David’s golden Psalms, if I’m understanding Michtam correctly, is about how David felt like a lonely dove in the faraway places, but a lonely dove who realizes he will come home. He will get to revisit the altar at the Tabernacle. He will be able to come to God’s house and to provide thanksgiving offerings, thanking God for his deliverance. So this is the state of mind that David had during this incredibly difficult time of his life.

And I’m so glad he recorded this for us, because all of us will go through very difficult times, but this gives us a pattern to follow and how to keep our faith strong, to not be afraid, to know that God is for us. And in our wanderings and the pain and the grief we go through, he’s writing it all down. He’s collecting our tears in a bottle, and he’s going to bring us home. What a wonderful psalm.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to seeing what Psalms 57, 8, 9, and then 60, these other Michtams of David, what they hold for us. I try not to look ahead too much as I study these, because I want to be surprised as well when I come to them. So we’re getting into the section of these five Michtam Psalms, and I’m just trusting they’re going to be golden ones for all of us.

So until next time in Psalm 57, I wish you shalom and may God bless.”