Deeper Commentary
Psa 63:1
A Psalm by David, when he was in the desert of Judah-
This surely refers to David's experience at the hands of Saul, and yet
it was appropriated by him to the situation he endured in exile from
Absalom.
God, You are my God; I will earnestly seek You-
David was fleeing from Saul, but he perceives this as a fleeing towards
God, a seeking for Him. We too mush see the push factors of life as in
fact pull factors towards God. This theme continues in :8
"My soul has stuck close behind You", as if David is chasing after God or
is following right behind Him. The Hebrew can also mean "I will
early seek You", i.e. in the morning. Later in the Psalm, David speaks of
how he praises God "in the night watches" too. This around the clock
awareness of God is different to the idea of appearing before God only
three times / year at the feasts, which is alluded to in the commentary on
:2.
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs for You, in a dry and weary
land, where there is no water-
This longing for God was in terms of longing to be able to worship Him
again in the sanctuary, from which he was exiled during the persecution
from Saul (:2). And yet he was to come to realize that there in the desert
he was as much in God's presence, even beneath the cherubim wings of the
ark, as he was in the sanctuary. The same word is used of
how David felt "weary" when fleeing Absalom: "The king and all the people
who were with him arrived weary" (2 Sam. 16:14). For David, and for us,
one wilderness experience prepares you for the next. In his case, fleeing
Saul was repeated when he had to flee his own son Absalom.
Psa 63:2
So I have seen You in the sanctuary, watching Your power and Your
glory-
As David had watched the glory of God and sensed His power over the
ark in the sanctuary, "so" He sees God's presence in the desert.
The two clauses need inverting. He watched God's power and glory
in the desert just "so" as he had once seen it in the sanctuary where the
ark was. "Power and glory" are associated with the ark (1 Sam. 4:21,22
"The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God is taken"; Ps.
78:60,61 "He forsook the tent of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among
men; and delivered His strength / power into captivity, His glory into the
adversary’s hand"); but David now experiences the essence of them when far
away from the physical ark. Although not a Levite, the implication is that
David had somehow gotten close to the ark in the Most Holy place and had
seen 'power and glory' over it in physical manifestation. Now he sees that
quite apart from the physical ark. Ultimately, this is why God removed the
ark and the sanctuary- so that His people would forge personal
relationship with Him in exile. The sanctuary was conceived of as being
where the ark was, "Yahweh’s sanctuary where the ark of God was" (1 Sam.
3:3). But "let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them" (Ex.
25:8) is a reflection of Ex. 15:17, which states that actually Yahweh was
making a sanctuary for Israel in the entire land promised to Abraham: "You
shall bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of your inheritance,
the place, Yahweh, which You have made for yourself to dwell in; the
sanctuary, Lord, which Your hands have established". Ps. 78:54 confirms
this: "He brought them to the border of His sanctuary". And God's
sanctuary was in fact therefore in the hearts of His people: "Judah became
His sanctuary, Israel His kingdom" (Ps. 114:2). David is now coming to
realize this- that the sanctuary is not just where the ark was, but
anywhere in God's land. So now in Ps. 63:3 we see a spiritual development
from Ps. 42:2,3 [note the same themes of thirsting for and seeking for
God]: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and
appear before God?", or, "come before Your face / presence". This was
surely looking back to how David had obediently 'appeared before God' as
all Hebrew males were to do three times / year at the feasts. David says
he now has "seen" God in the desert, or come into His presence there [just
as Moses did]. There David was longing to get to the sanctuary and be in
God's presence, just as some who are excluded from church initially long
to be back there. But he now progresses to see that he was watching God's
power and glory in the desert, "so", just as, he had earlier seen it in
the sanctuary. David's thirst and longing of :1 are not now for the
sanctuary, but in one word, for "God", for personal connection with Him.
And this in turn is a development of his thought in Ps. 68:35 "O God You
are awesome from Your sanctuary", LXX "In Thy sanctuary". He now sees
God's awesomeness as not being spatially limited to the sanctuary. Hence
his later comment in :7 that he feels that he lives all the time on the
mercy seat with the cherubic wings overshadowing him and the blood of
atonement sprinkled upon him.
But David's faith in all this went up and down. In 1 Sam. 27 he decides to leave Israel and live with the Philistines, self fulfilling his complaint that Saul was driving him out of Yahweh's presence. He ought to have perceived as he did here, that Yahweh's presence was everywhere. And other Psalms reflect his sense that the sanctuary was only in a specific geographical place: "Yahweh, who shall dwell in Your sanctuary? Who shall live on Your holy hill?" (Ps. 15:1); his request that Yahweh "end you help from the sanctuary, grant you support from Zion" (Ps. 20:2) suggests that even when king, having captured Zion Hill, David assumes that the sanctuary is specifically there. Indeed, his establishment of Zion as the place for the sanctuary was not by Divine command but a result of David's personal fondness for that hill, and God went along with that as He did with putting His shekinah glory in the physical temple. At the end of his life, he became obsessed with building a temple, despite God saying He didn't want this. He had slipped towards the pole of religion, away from the pole of personal spirituality and experience of God's presence which he experiences here in Ps. 63. Indeed this Psalm appears to be the pinnacle of his personal experience of God's presence, and he somewhat goes downhill in this aspect as his own life stabilizes. For it was when he had rest from his enemies, and was no longer on the run, that he had the idea of likewise domesticating God into a specific building in a specific place.
David was here at his peak of personal closeness to God. He saw God in the desert "as" he had experienced Him at the sanctuary. When on the run from Absalom, again into the desert, he simply laments that he so wishes he could get back to the sanctuary. He reminisces how wonderful it was to be at the tabernacle: "I remember and pour out my soul within me, how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day" (Ps. 42:4), whereas here in Ps. 63 he considers his wilderness experience as good as, and indeed far superior to, his appearances at the tabernacle. Here in Ps. 63 he is living intimately in God's presence. But in the Psalms which appear to be rooted in his later exile from Absalom, his prayer and hope is to be able to return to the tabernacle- rather than rejoicing in his present experience of God's presence. This "send out Your light and Your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy hill, to Your great tent. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy. I will praise You on the harp, God, my God" (Ps. 43:3,4).
And as we see with Gideon, Samson and so many, man may reach a spiritual peak at some point in life, but somewhat droop from that into spiritual mediocrity in later life and death. But that doesn't mean they will not be saved.
Psa 63:3
Because Your grace is better than life, my lips shall praise You-
The idea is that ‘more than my own life do
I value God’s love / grace, His hesed
, covenant love, for me’. Even
if he were to die, having known God's grace was enough, and David would
ever praise God for that. Secular man sees the experience
and preservation of human life is seen as the ultimate priority. But for
the believer like David, there is something better than life, and that is
life lived in God's covenant love.
Psa 63:4
So I will bless You while I live, I will lift up my hands in Your
name-
As explained on :3, David feels that the wonder of praising God at
this moment was enough for him, whether or not he was to die at the time.
David earlier had thought that such lifting up of the hands in
praise was done only in the sanctuary: "Lift up your hands in the
sanctuary. Praise Yahweh!... Praise Yah! Praise God in His sanctuary!"
(Ps. 134:2; 150:1). But as discussed on :2, he was now perceiving that
sanctuary as everywhere, as this praise with uplifted hands could be given
at night on his bed (:6), wherever that may be. In Ps. 141:2 he realizes
that the lifting up of hands anywhere is equivalent to the evening
sacrifice offered at the sanctuary: "Let my prayer be set before you as
incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice". And this
thought continues into :5: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and
fatness" (AV). We could translate this is "My soul shall satisfy [i.e.
satisfy God] as with marrow and fatness". The offering of the marrow and
fat was replaced by praising God with joyful lips (:5) and uplifted hands,
even in the desert (:4). This for God is the very best. Marrow and fat
mean the very best (Gen. 45:18; Ps. 36:9; Is. 25:6) and under the law they
represented the very best parts of a sacrifice (Lev. 3:16). Man's love for
God, even exiled man, in all his smallness, fallenness and moral weakness,
can satisfy God and be seen by Him as they very best He could desire. That
is an amazing thought. "As with marrow and fatness", "so as in the
sanctuary", all reflects David's passing from the religious to the
spiritual.
Psa 63:5
My soul shall be satisfied as with the richest food-
See on :4. The same word used of how Israel in the desert were "satisfied" with
the food of God's provision (Ex. 16:8,12). David clearly saw them at that
time as a precedent for himself whilst in the desert (:1). Being
"satisfied" with food was the continual promise for obedience to the
covenant (Dt. 8:10,12; 11:15; 31:20). But he speaks in the future, "shall
be satisfied", perhaps ultimately with his eye upon the Kingdom of God
coming upon earth; although clearly he expected some form of this in his
own immediate experience in this life.
My mouth
shall praise You with joyful lips-
David's joy was not in the experience of deliverance, but in his
perception of God's grace (:3).
Psa 63:6
when I remember You on my bed, and think about You in the night
watches-
This "bed" would have been somewhere in the desert whilst on the run
from Saul (:1). David speaks of how he "meditates day and night" on God's law (Ps.
1:2), and also of how he meditates upon "God" at night (Ps. 63:6) and in
the day (Ps. 71:24). "The word was God", and still is, in the sense that
our devotions to God are to be according to His word; for in practice,
what we see of God is largely through His hand and statements in history
which we find in His word.
Psa 63:7
For You have been my help-
In the Hezekiah context, this would have applied to how Ahaz had
given money to the king of Assyria, but "he helped him not" (2 Chron.
28:21 s.w.). God was thereby revealed as the sole "hope of Israel".
I will rejoice in the shadow of Your wings-
This could mean that David was full of faith that he would return to
the sanctuary; or that he felt that even in exile from the sanctuary, he
was as it were right there beneath the cherubic wings over the ark, with
God's glory above him and the blood of atonement beneath him. This was an
encouragement to the exiles. Ps. 36:8 appears to take this even
further when David comments that even the Gentile peoples could share this
experience, outside the land of Israel: "All people may take refuge in the
shadow of your wings". But sadly David strayed from this sense in wanting
to build a physical place where the ark with its cherubic wings could
dwell, and the presence of these wings, seen only once / year by the High
Priest, is stressed in the temple records (1 Kings 6:24; 2 Chron. 3:11).
Psa 63:8
My soul stays close to You, Your right hand upholds me-
Heb. 'cleaves' as husband and wife cleave to each other. The
push factor of Saul's chasing him led to him following hard after God.
Saul was "seeking" David (:9 "they seek after my soul"), but this led to
David "earnestly seeking" God (:1). This
intimacy with God was found by David in the desert, outside of the
sanctuary. David responded to their seeking of him by seeking God more. He uses the language of the hunt and chase to describe how he was drawing closer to God: "My soul followeth hard after thee" (Ps. 63:8; Ps. 63 is a wilderness psalm, see title). "Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul... let all those that seek thee rejoice" (Ps. 40:14,16). In this sense, David felt he wasn't fleeing from his enemies as much as fleeing to God :
"Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies (from whom he was running): I flee unto thee to hide me" (Ps. 143:9). This fleeing to God didn't mean that David and Jesus didn't respond or retaliate verbally; both of them, especially the Lord Jesus, did. They both pleaded their innocence, and accused their enemies of being unfair and hypocritical. Yet this must have been done from a genuine motive of love; as David loved Saul, as the thought of Saul's death must have torn at his heart, so the Lord Jesus loved Israel, weeping over Jerusalem, wishing to himself like a child for the impossible: that they would know him as their Saviour. Both David and Jesus had a real sense of direction, they could see that their mental, emotional and physical sufferings were leading them towards an altogether higher relationship with the Father. They took those sufferings as an almost welcome push towards the Father. They had a sure sense of spiritual direction in all their afflictions; this accounts for the human loneliness which they both felt. David felt that no one else understood (Ps. 14:2, a wilderness psalm) or was really seeking towards God as he was doing (Ps. 27:4,8). The Hebrew for "understand" here is that translated "wise" concerning David in 1 Sam. 18.
Psa 63:9
But those who seek my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower
parts of the earth-
Saul sought to take David's life. So many of the Psalms
contain imprecations against those who were seeking David's soul- not just
his physical life, but seeking to destroy his very being (e.g. Ps. 35:4;
40:14; 54:1; 63:9; 70:2; 71:13). These imprecations expose the evil of
Saul, and asks God to condemn him. Some of those Psalms appear to have
been written by David in the Saul days, and then rewritten at the time of
Absalom's rebellion- another man who sought David's soul, and yet whom
David loved.
Psa 63:10
They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be
jackal food-
Heb. "poured out upon the hands / handles of the sword", a
reference to Saul's suicide by leaning upon his own sword.
When this happened to Saul and he was slain by his own sword, David
wept deeply and genuinely. But what had happened was the fulfilment of his
own prayer. Perhaps the desperate attempt to rescue Saul's body from the
walls of Beth Shan was an attempt to stop the latter part of the verse
coming true. David surely learned the lesson we all have to- that we must
be careful what we ask for in prayer lest we receive it.
“It is the jackal rather than the fox which preys on dead bodies, and which assembles in troops on the battle-fields, to feast on the slain” (Tristram). And yet David was at great pains to give Saul's bones an honourable resting place and rewards those who rescued his body. We see as so often that David's bitter words in the Psalms often don't match his actions in reality, which are far more gracious. And that is so true to observed reality in human life.
Psa 63:11
But the king shall rejoice in God-
This is tacit reflection of David's faith in Samuel's prophetic word
that David was indeed to be king. Perhaps David speaks of himself in the
third person because he is not yet the king. The king is David, as
in Ps. 61:6. We have an insight here into David's self talk and self
perception. Even when on the run from Saul, he clung on [at least at this
point he did] to the self perception that 'one day I will be in the
Kingdom, indeed that means that I am as good as in it right now'. This has
exact relevance to us all now. And yet as noted on 1 Sam. 27:1 and
seen throughout Ps. 119, his faith in the prophetic "word" that he would
be king did indeed go up and down.
As noted earlier, this Psalm also has relevance to David's flight from Absalom, again into the wilderness. Absalom and his supporters claimed David was not "the king", but had been replaced by God with Absalom because of David's sin with Bathsheba. But David repeats to himself that he is in fact still "the king". He refused to see himself according to how others perceived him, but rather saw himself as God saw him. It's so hard to do this- because we are counted as righteous by God when we aren't, but we are to see ourselves as He sees us.
Everyone who swears by Him
will praise Him, for the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped-
This may reference Saul swearing by Yahweh but lying and not
keeping what he promised. David rarely seems able to express his own
relationship with God without a swipe at his enemies, and in this verse we
have a classic example. David lied many times in his life but he seems
unaware of this at this point. And perhaps this is why Paul takes these
words and applies them to every man. He reasons that the whole reason for the Law of Moses was “so that every mouth may be
stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). Paul
is quoting here from Ps. 63:11: “the mouth of those who speak lies shall
be stopped”. He’s reasoning that because we’re all sinners, we’re all
liars- for untruth is the essence of sin. We are not being true to
ourselves, to God, to His word, to our brethren… we profess covenant
relationship with God, to be His people, and yet we fail to keep the terms
of that covenant. And the Law of Moses convicted all God’s people of this,
and in this way led them to the need for Christ. Yet Is. 52:15 prophesied
that the crucified Jesus would result in men shutting their mouths. The
righteousness and perfection displayed there in one Man, the very human
Lord Jesus, has the same effect upon us as the Law of Moses- we shut our
mouths, convicted of sin.
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