Psalms of David

Imagine there is a heaven, it’s easy if you try. That is the message of Psalm 63:2.

“I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory,” writes David. The term looked upon, sometimes translated as envisioned is, according to an online Rabbi, the word meaning a vision but the other words in the sentence mean it means, in context, imagined. When in trouble David imagined seeing God. The reason this lament is so positive in its outlook is the power of David’s imagination.

|
-o0o-
|

Psalms in Book 2 are like Book 1 in that they are mostly lament and distress although they now include a communal voice in addition to the singular voice of the first book.

The books of Psalms are roughly themed like this:

Book 1: Psalms 1 – 41: God is beside us.
Book 2: Psalms 42 – 72: God goes before us
Book 3: Psalms 73 – 89: God is all around us.
Book 4: Psalms 90 – 106: God is above us.
Book 5: Psalms 107 – 150: God is among us.

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

63 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
    my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
    as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
² So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
    beholding your power and glory.

³ Because your steadfast love is better than life,
    my lips will praise you.
⁴ So I will bless you as long as I live;
    in your name I will lift up my hands.

⁵ My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
    and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
⁶ when I remember you upon my bed,
    and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

⁷ for you have been my help,
    and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
⁸ My soul clings to you;
    your right hand upholds me.

⁹ But those who seek to destroy my life
    shall go down into the depths of the earth;
¹⁰ they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
    they shall be a portion for jackals.
¹¹ But the king shall rejoice in God;
    all who swear by him shall exult,
    for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Psalm 63 ESVUK

I became a Christian in the mid-1970s. The first Christian magazine I bought was about the then recent Lausanne Covenant, an international conference of Evangelicals. The meeting called Evangelicals to both evangelism and social action. Nearly 50 years later there is still that split between those who believe that God calls us to serve the needs of those in the world and those who think God is primarily about saving the soul. Can you have it both ways? Psalm 63 says yes, you can, and you should.

Things that are practical and things that are spiritual are not in opposition. Verse 1 says, “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,” Both the soul and the flesh, the spiritual and the physical have a longing for God.

The structure of the Psalm is three stanzas each of two verses in the Bible which takes up verses 3 to 8, which are bookended with two sections about David’s situation, the first, verses 1b to 2 in the present and a prophesy of the future at the end, verses 9 to 10. These are then wrapped in praise, verses 1a and 11.

David is in a pickle, which is not unusual in this section of the Psalms, which are laments. He is in the wilderness, hiding from King Saul who wants him dead, far from his family, home and a steady supply of food. He is also far from a place of worship and sees his spiritual hunger and thirst for God as the same thing as his need for food and drink. David’s song is one of the imagination. Unable to get to a place of worship he imagines God in his sanctuary, whether this is the Tabernacle or in heaven is not clear, and writes a song of praise to the God who is in control.

God will supply both food for the body—fat and rich food—and food for the soul, giving him joyful lips; both in verse 5. In verse 7, the last of the three stanzas, the tense changes from David’s present circumstance to a prophetic tense, seeing the resolution of the problem as if it has already happened.

Back to the predicament. David, from the perspective of seeing God in control, now sees what will happen to his persecutors, they who live by the sword shall die by the sword by the justice of God and David sees himself as the king he has been anointed to be: David is not asking for any type of vengeance here, just prophesying how Saul will die.

There is a possibility that Psalm 61 is behind the quote of Jesus at his arrest when a disciple drew a sword and cut off the High Priest’s servant’s ear, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52).

How does this apply to us? After all it is a specific prophesy about the death of saul and David becoming king in his place. The opening, “O God you are my god,” should, I think, have a small ‘g’ on the second ‘god.’ El, the Hebrew word is the generic name for a god, all the nations had their gods, usually many of them. When David says Elohim you are my el he is stating his dedication to God. For us, when we are in a bad place we can state our dedication to God and imagine God in his heaven, God who cares for you.

God takes and uses what we give him. Have you ever considered giving God your imagination? God sometimes speaks to people using images, give him some of yours. You may discover a new prayer language.

---

< Psalm 62 | Psalm 63 | Psalm 64 >
< Previous | Psalms of David | Next >