Psalm 59

Introduction & Background

“Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and our continuing series Tehillim Talks, our studies in the Psalms. And before we look into Psalm 59, I just want to share a few remarks. Today is the 3rd of January, 2025, and exactly two months since I recorded Psalm 58.

It’s been a very busy two months. I got to spend three weeks in beautiful New Zealand, speaking at a number of places and sharing the word and meeting some wonderful people. And if you would like to read more about that trip, I encourage you to go to our website, tortodayministries.org.

And you can read in the article section a description of the trip, written by my host, Joshua Berry. And he and his wife, Mersha, and their beautiful family gave me a guided tour of the North Island of New Zealand, and took me around to the various venues where I spoke and got to share God’s word. And also, I did three interviews while I was there, one with Joshua and two with two other gentlemen.

And two of these have been posted on our website, and the third should be posted very shortly. So, I encourage you to watch those, and eventually, I hope, I will get a video put together of my travels, and I’ll put that up there for you to enjoy. But anyways, after three weeks there, coming home, conquering the jet lag, there’s an 18-hour time difference between Ohio, where I live, and New Zealand.

And that really took it out of me. And then there was the holidays, and family, and friends, and New Year’s. But today, I’m back in the saddle, and ready to get on with Psalm 59.

But again, I encourage you to go to the website, and check out the new things that have been added there as a result of my trip to beautiful New Zealand.”

Appropriation & Historical Context

“Okay, Psalm 59. The approbation for this psalm reads as follows.

To the Choir Master, according to Do Not Destroy. Now, this is the third time we’ve seen this Do Not Destroy altashkate, which is maybe a melody or a theme for the Psalms. We’re not quite sure.

But Psalms 57, 58 and 59 all begin with this approbation. And this is the last of that series of three. Now, we will see this one more time later on, I think it’s Psalm 75.

And then that will finish us up with the altashkate Psalms. But it says that this is a miktam of David, a teaching psalm of David, when Saul sent men to watch his house in order to kill him. This was early in David’s life when he had slain, after he’d slain Goliath, he got to marry King Saul’s daughter, Michal.

And Saul became very, very jealous of his son-in-law, David. And so he wanted to bring him to the palace so he could kill him. And Michal, Saul’s daughter, realized what her father was plotting.

And so she said, well, David is sick, he can’t come. So then Saul sent men to say, well, just bring his bed with him in it, bring him to the palace, and I’ll kill him there. And this story is recorded in 1 Samuel 19.

And in verse 11, it says Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, told him, if you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed. So she helped David escape out the window.

She put a dummy in the bed, so that when the soldiers saw it, they would think that was David, but it was just a mannequin of some sort.”

Different Tone from Other Psalms

“But there’s something interesting about this psalm. If you’ve been following closely these psalms where David is constantly moaning about the things people are trying to do to him, this one has a little bit different tone.

David is describing what his enemies are attempting to do, how they’re persecuting him, pursuing him, trying to kill him. But that tone of moaning seems to be missing. It’s almost as if in this psalm, David is saying, yeah, they’re trying to kill me, what’s new?

Yeah, Saul is after me. Yeah, everything is pretty rotten, and circumstances are pretty horrible, but you know what? What’s new?

Now, maybe I’m just reading that into the psalm, but as we go through, see if that’s not the feeling you pick up as well as we look into the details of this psalm.”

Prayer for Protection – Sagav

“This psalm begins with a prayer, it also closes with a prayer, and it says in the first verse, deliver me from my enemies, oh my God, from those who rise up against me, protect me. Deliver me from those who work evil, and from bloodthirsty men, save me.

Now that word protect right there is a little bit of an unusual word. We’ve seen this word before, but the word is sagav.There you can see it.

And it means to raise up out of reach. So it’s like something you don’t want the children to break, so you pick it up and you put it on a high shelf, so the kids can’t get to it. We have a new puppy, he loves to chew up remote controls.

We’re on our third one with our television. So we’ve learned to put it up to sagav that remote so he can’t chew on it. And it makes sense that David would use this verb because he says, deliver me from my enemies, oh my God, from those who rise up against me.

So they’re rising up to put me in a higher place, someplace out of reach of them. The picture here reminds me of Noah’s Ark. As the waters began to increase and rise up higher and higher, what did the ark do?

It just floated right above them. So no matter how much trouble there was around, God just kept Noah, kept David, keeps us above water level. He keeps putting us out of reach.”

Enemies Like Strong Ones – But God Stronger

“Deliver me from those who work evil. This is just a Hebrew way of saying troublemakers. Deliver me from troublemakers.

And from men of bloods is how it’s worded literally in Hebrew, Anshei D’amim, men of bloods. But I think bloodthirsty men is a good way to translate that. By the way, that word sagav, you’ll find also over in Psalm 91, 14.

Because he has loved me, therefore I will deliver him, God is saying. I will sagav him. I will set him securely on high because he has known my name.

I like that because God’s name, because he knows my name, he knows my character. To know God’s name means to know God. Because he knows me, because he’s become one with me, I will seat him in a higher place.

I will put him in a place where his enemies simply can’t reach him. It’s a wonderful promise, a beautiful picture.

And then it goes on in verse 3, for behold, they lie in wait for my life, strong ones. Now, I put strong ones in green because this comes from the Hebrew word uz, or az. Ayan-zayan is how it’s spelled. And this is the uzim.

These are the strong ones. And we find this word strong, some form of it, four times in the Psalm. So I’ve marked them in green.

And so he says, I’m surrounded by strong ones, but David’s not worried because the last two times we see this word, it’s God who is the strong one. He’s the one who has strength. Strong ones stir up strife against me.”

No Fault – David’s Humility

*“…For no transgression, that is the word pesha, if you followed along as we’ve looked at the various Hebrew words that are used for sin. This is the word pesha. This is a willful sin.

For no transgression, willful or sin, khatat, that’s the common word for error, of mine, Adonai. For no fault, that’s the word Avon, something that I’ve crossed the line unwittingly. I’ve broken a law without realizing it.I didn’t intend to. 

But he says, for no transgression or sin of mine, Adonai, for no fault of mine, they run and make ready. Now, this is important.

This verse reveals to me that David had genuine humility. Enough humility, he could look at his life and say, I really examined it. There’s no willful sin here that I’ve done that deserves this kind of attack.

There’s no error that I’ve committed and no avon. I haven’t crossed any lines and broken any laws. Because if David had, and as we see in other Psalms, when he does mess up, he is very open in expressing that, confessing it and repenting of it.

But he has examined his life and said, I’m really not at fault in this one. And it takes humility to do that. A person who is filled with pride can say, I have no fault.

But another person who is very humble can also look at their lives honestly and say, there’s not a fault here, at least not this time.”*

Enemies Called Nations – Acting Like Outsiders

“But for everyone else, the people in the middle, we tend to say, well, I must have done something wrong. I just must have messed up.

And we just assume that if there are accusations being made, that therefore we are at fault. But David is humble enough here to recognize that, in this case, didn’t do anything wrong.

It says, awake, come to meet me and see. You, Adonai, God of hosts, are God of Israel. Rouse yourself to punish all the nations. Spare none of those wicked traitors.

Now, twice we see the word nations here, goyim. But why does David use the word goyim? We have it here and we have it in the verse coming up.

Because these are not Gentiles who are coming against them. These are not the nations rising up to destroy David. These are Jewish brothers and sisters.

These are members of his own people. But God calls things as they are, as they are spiritually, not necessarily as they are physically. And so David is saying here, inspired by God’s spirit, that these men, even though they are Jewish, even though we claim to worship the same God, follow the same Torah, serve the same king, and have the same standard of righteousness, they’re behaving like those who don’t know God, who don’t know the Torah, who are not members of the Covenant, and not related to me as a child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And so David is referring to them as the nations. They’re behaving like outsiders.”

Traitors as Garments – Wolves and Dogs

“Just this morning, I was reading Ephesians 4, and Paul writes to the Ephesians who are all Gentiles, and he says, don’t be like the Gentiles.

He’s reminding them that they’ve been grafted in, as he describes in Ephesians 2, and therefore they’re part of the covenant of Israel. They are part of the people of God. They are grafted in, and they’re adopted into God’s family.

So don’t act like Gentiles. Don’t be dominated by your culture. So anyways, I didn’t mean to go on a riff on that, but I think it’s worth noting that it’s not the Gentiles here who are the problem.

It’s Jewish brothers and sisters who are behaving like the nations. Spare none of those wicked traitors. This word for traitors is very interesting.

The word here is, can be pronounced either Beged, which means a garment, or it could be translated Bogade, which means a traitor. The spelling stays the same. Now, sometimes when we find the word Bogade, traitor, it is spelled with an additional Vav, sometimes without.

But isn’t it interesting that the word for a traitor is one, is a word that it’s connected the word for garment. In other words, they dress in our team’s uniform, but their heart is not with our team. It’s like a sheep or a wolf dressed in the clothing of sheep.

Look, I’ve got the sheep uniform on. I’m one of you, but his heart is that of a wolf. So the word for traitor is connected to the word for garment. Beged or Bogade makes all the difference in the world.

Then in verse six, each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city.”

Dogs Howling – Word Nava

“Now, it’s interesting, he talks about dogs, and I just mentioned wolves.

What is the difference between a dog and a wolf in scripture? After all, they are both part of the canine family, but what is the difference? Well, this is an observation I’ve made.

I invite you to check this out, to see if you see the same thing. But it seems that when dogs are mentioned in scripture, they’re usually negative, but not always, sometimes positive. But dogs seem to refer to physical attack, physical damage, like a dog eating your remote control.

But a wolf, that’s spiritual damage. That’s something that’s much more wicked, something deeper, something that’s more damaging. And it’s just an observation.

And I’m going to continue pursuing this, and I invite you to look into this more yourself. But they come back howling like dogs, prowling about the city. There they are.

And the word here is nava. This word bellowing or spewing is the word nava, nun, bait, ayin, spewing with their mouths, with swords in their lips. For who, they think, will hear us.

Now, the word nava, spelled with an ayin, is pronounced exactly the same as the word nava, spelled with an aleph. But the word nava, spelled with an aleph, means to pour forth or to prophesy. A prophet in Hebrew is called a navi.

And the section of the Tanakh, that is the section of the prophet, is called navaim, coming from this word. And maybe at the end of Shabbat, you sing the song, Eliyahu ha-navi, Elijah the prophet. So that comes the word nava, spelled with an aleph.

But here, for bellowing or spewing, it’s the word spelled with an ayin. It’s a little bit different word. Now, nava, when it’s spelled with an ayin, can mean to bellow or to spew, to vomit.

But it can also be used in a positive way. Let me give you a couple of examples here. Here it is used in a negative way, Psalm 94, 4.

They nava, they pour out their arrogant words. All the evildoers boast. But in Psalm 119 verse 171 says, my lips will nava, my lips will pour forth praise for you teach me your statutes.

So we need to look at the context and how this word is used to see whether it’s in a negative or in a positive way.”

Dogs and Vomit – But God Laughs

“And just this morning, as I was looking at this verse and thinking about it, I was reminded of 2nd Peter 2 22. It says, what the true Proverbs says has happened to them, quote, the dog returns to its own vomit.

And maybe Peter was thinking about this verse from Psalm 59 when he wrote that. Because in 2nd Peter 2, he’s talking about people who are boasting against God. And here we see these dogs howling, they’re spewing with their mouths and they have swords in their lips.

And they say, who? Will hear us. Who’s paying attention to us?

There is no God. Or if there is, he’s not watching us. He doesn’t see what we’re doing. He doesn’t hear what we’re saying.

But you Adonai laugh at them. In other words, to us, they might look like bloodthirsty dogs who are ready to pull us to pieces.

But in God’s point of view, it’s almost like they’re little newborn puppies. And what damage can they do? You hold all the nations in derision.”

Scatter – Not Destroy

“There again, he uses the word goyim, the nations. Because these men are not acting like sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They’re not acting like students of Torah.

They’re acting like the nations. And the nations are often referred to as the dogs. Now this verse here, I should have a red line down this side, verse 9, because of his strength, there’s that word strength again, I will stand watch for you, you O Lord.

But some translations have this because of his strength, the strength of the enemy, I will stand watch for you, referring to the people. It’s hard to understand whose strength is being referred to and who is doing the watching and who’s being watched over. For God is my fortress, God of my loving kindness.

Now I have my loving kindness here, but that is how it’s read. But in the Hebrew, it’s actually Elohi Chazdo, God of his loving kindness, which doesn’t seem to make sense. Now, the last words of the Psalm is Elohi Chazdi, God of my loving kindness.

And the translators are trying to decide here, should this be translated as his loving kindness or my loving kindness? And maybe it’s a little bit of both. Maybe because of his loving kindness that he’s shown toward us.

I have loving kindness that I can show forth towards him and towards others. You be the judge. But God of his loving kindness, literally Elohi Chazdo, God of his loving kindness, he will meet me.

God will show me my watchful enemies. And then we come to the second prayer. Do not kill them, lest my people forget.

Don’t just kill them, just don’t wipe them out, because then people will forget and go on like nothing happened. He says instead scatter them, scatter them.

Now this word for scatter is kind of interesting. The first place you find this word scatter is back in Genesis, chapter 4, verse 12. God is talking to Cain after he’s murdered his brother Abel. And God says to Cain, When you cultivate the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall be a nua, a vagrant.

And that’s the word that’s used here, nua, to scatter, to become a vagrant. What did Cain do? He rose up against his brother and murdered him, and his punishment is that he would be a vagabond and a vagrant in the land.

This must have been in David’s mind when he wrote this. When he says, do not kill them, now they’re rising up to kill me. Says, but God, don’t kill them. Do with them what you did with Cain. Scatter them by your power and bring them down our shield in Lord.”

Finish – Not Destroy

“The sin of their mouth is the word of their lips. Let them be trapped in their pride for the cursing and lies that they utter. Finish them in wrath. Finish them till they are no more.

Now, most translations have destroy them in wrath. Destroy them till they are no more, that they may know that God rules and Jacob to the ends of the earth.

Well, the word here for destroy is the word kalah, kalah, which really means to finish, bring to a completion. The first time we find this word is also in Genesis.

It’s in chapter 2 and it’s used twice, verses 1 and 2. It says, Thus the heavens and the earth were kalah, they were finished, and all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day, God kalah, he finished his work that he had done.

I think if we’re going to translate finish there, we should also translate it finish here. Or else you have to go back and say, God destroyed the earth right after he made it. He didn’t, he finished it, he brought it to completion.

And we know that God’s primary way of destroying his enemies is to make them his friends and bring them to completion. That’s what he did with me and probably with many of you.

And probably most of us at some time rather found ourselves as God’s enemy. But instead of destroying us, he destroyed the enmity we had toward him. And he’s bringing us to the finish and to completion.

So finish them in wrath, finish them till they are no more, to where the dogs are no longer dogs, but they’re sheep and part of your pasture.”

Singing Instead of Moaning

“Verses 14 through 17. Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. They wander about for food and growl, they do not get their fill.

But I will sing. I love this comparison here, this contrast. They go about howling. What am I going to do? I’m gonna sing.

And I will sing of your strength. There’s that word oz again. One of these words oz or ooze is where we get the name for the Hebrew, the Israeli machine gun, the uzi, which means my strength. So it says, I will sing of your uzi, of your strength.

I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of distress. Oh, my strength.

And there we have the word ooze a fourth time in the psalm. I will sing praises of you. For you, O God, are my fortress. The God who shows me steadfast love, or better, the God of my loving kindness, Elohi Chazdeh.

Interesting psalm, but did you catch or do you agree with me that this psalm seems to have more of an upbeat feeling to it, even though there are men sent by the king trying to kill David, and they’re running around the city looking for him, to kill him, these troublemakers who are bloodthirsty men.

And yet David seems to have this awareness of just how safe he is and how protected he is since God is his fortress.

And I think part of this comes from the fact that David realizes beyond any shot of a doubt, he has not sinned, he has not trespassed, he has not become guilty of breaking God’s law or doing anything against another person, he has not violated any of God’s commandments. And as we read, the righteous are bold as lions.

So David could humbly and honestly and truthfully look at his life, say, I didn’t do anything wrong this time. I don’t deserve what’s happening. And as a result of that, he was bold as a lion, and he was fearless, because there’s no mention of fear.

And instead of whining and moaning in this song, we find him singing.

So while the dogs are howling, David is singing. While Saul’s men are seeking David to killing, David instead is seeking God’s face and rejoicing.

Let’s let this be our theme song as well, because we will always have people who will unfairly attack us and whose lips are filled with swords. They come to attack us and belittle us and to lie about us. But what’s our response to be?

What did the masters say? That when people speak evil against us, when people persecute us for righteousness sake, what are we to do? Rejoice, be exceedingly glad, because this is how they treated the prophets, including David.

So I hope this psalm has been an encouragement to you. And I promise it won’t be two months before we do Psalm 60. So it’s been a pleasure to study these, and I hope you’ll go back and review the 58 psalms before this.

And as we press on, we’re almost to the midway point. 75 is halfway through the Psalms. And I’m determined to get there as quickly as possible, but as completely and without cutting in the corners. I’m just so enjoying these Psalms, and I hope you are too, and your heart is being encouraged by them.

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