Deeper Commentary
Psa 144:1
By David-
The LXX title says that it concerns the fight with Goliath of 1 Sam.
17.
Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to
battle-
David gives full credit to Yahweh for the victory. The mention of
hands and fingers is appropriate to his use of a sling to kill Goliath,
but he attributes his skill to Divine training. He had likely learned to
sling stones with accuracy from a child. He attributes that training to
Yahweh, showing that God is active in preparing human life from early
childhood experiences. "To battle" is the same word used by
Goliath when he challenges the Israelites "Give me a man, that we may
fight / do battle together" (1 Sam. 17:10). "To war" is literally 'to come
near' and is the word used of Goliath 'drawing near' to encounter David (1
Sam. 17:48).
Psa 144:2
my source of grace-
David recognizes that the victory was through Divine grace, not his
bravery or skill as a slinger. ESV "my steadfast love", possibly
said by David who had had so many love affairs with women, but felt that
God was the only continual, stable love of his life.
My fortress, my high tower, my deliverer-
These are all defensive terms. And yet David is presented as the bold
aggressor who proactively seeks out the duel with Goliath. He did so
refusing all human armour; because he saw Yahweh as his defence. David sees that Yahweh will be a "high tower" or place of refuge at the
day of future judgment (Ps. 9:8,9, quoted about this in Acts 17:31). But
David feels God has been like this to him in this life (2 Sam. 22:3; Ps.
18:2; 46:7; 48:3; 59:9,16,17; 62:2; 94:22; 144:2). He therefore sees a
seamless experience in his relationship with God in this life, and at the
future day of judgment. God saves us right now and is a refuge for us in
countless life situations; and this is the guarantee that He will be
likewise at the last day.
My shield and He in whom I take refuge-
Again a reference to his refusal to take Saul's shield and defensive
armour with him into battle.
Who subdues my people under me-
David's victory over Goliath was what brought the people under him.
But instead of basking in any personal glory about that, David thanks God
for having given that to him.
Psa 144:3
Yahweh, what is man, that You care for him? Or the son of man,
that You think of him?-
LXX "What is man, that You are made known to him?". Verse 4
will go on to lament that "man is like a breath". These ideas all recur in
Is. 2:22: "Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for of
what account [s.w. "that You think / account"] is he?. Man is not to take
great account of the power of his fellow man, because he is just a breath;
but God does take great account of man. This repeats Ps. 8:4, and as commented there, that Psalm is clearly,
as here, David's thoughts as he marvelled at
how he had been used to achieve the victory over Goliath. But as explained
on Ps. 8:3, he becomes a symbol of the Lord Jesus, the ultimate "son of man".
David is here alluding to the earlier words of Job. Probably the only
extant scripture at David's time was the book of Job and the Pentateuch,
which explains why he so often alludes to the book of Job. Job
came to deeply marvel at the fact that despite God's highness, He tests us
and meditates upon us every moment of our lives: "What is man, that thou
shouldest magnify him?... that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and
try him every moment?" (Job 7:17,18). These words became the basis of the
thoughts of the Lord Jesus as prophesied here. Like
Job, the Lord learnt from the depth of His own inner struggles about the
moral greatness of the Father. So even God's own Son, peerless and
spotless lamb of God that He was even in mortal nature, recognized that
such was God's moral splendour that He was surprised that during His
mortality, God was so intensely interested in Him.
As God was "mindful of" (Ps. 8:4) or 'cared for' David and thereby all men in Israel through the victory granted over Goliath, so David urged that in response, they should be "mindful" of God (s.w. 1 Chron. 16:12,15). But "mindful" implies 'to remember', and is a term used for answer to prayer (Jud. 16:28; 1 Sam. 1:11 and often). David is acknowledging that he had prayed for victory, and been granted it- but felt unworthy to have received such an answer.
Psa 144:4
Man is like a breath, his days are like a shadow that passes away-
"Breath" is the word for "vanity". So this may not be a general
reflection upon all humanity, but upon the unrighteous, upon whom the
judgment of :5,6 is to come. The word is used in P
Psa 144:5
Part Your heavens, Yahweh, and come down; touch the mountains, and
they will smoke-
These could still be the words David prayed as he faced
Goliath. But he uses them later, when he is in crisis and recalls God's
deliverance of him from Goliath, asking for that to be repeated. He asks
for the final coming of Yahweh to occur there and then. This is how it
will be for God's people of the last days, under persecution, begging for
His intervention through the second coming.
It seems at this point that David is praying for a dramatic deliverance from apparently certain death, and he has reminded himself in :1-4 of the victory and salvation granted him over Goliath as an inspiration. He has done this previously in this section of the Psalms; see on Ps. 140:7. He asks for a theophany to save him, no less that what happened at Sinai (s.w. Ex. 19:18-20), when again God had as it were made the mountains smoke by His touch. We marvel at David's spiritual ambition, unafraid to ask for a similar theophany to save him. And he reflects at the end of his life that this prayer was in fact answered (Ps. 18:9). The relevance to the exiles is that Yahweh was prepared to "bow" (s.w. "stretch out") the heavens and "come down" to restore the exiles; but they chose not to make use of that huge potential (s.w. Is. 40:22; 42:5; 64:1).
Psa 144:6
Throw out lightning and scatter them-
"Lightning" is s.w. "glittering sword ", referring to Goliath's huge sword. "Arrows" is s.w. "staff" in the description other Goliath's spear (1 Sam. 17:7). David is asking God to match all Goliath's secular, technical advantages over him. His declaration was that "all those here may know that Yahweh doesn’t save with sword and spear" (1 Sam. 17:47). This psalm is perhaps David's prayer before he went into battle against Goliath.
This continues the request for a saving theophany of the magnitude of what was seen at Sinai; see on :5. At the end of his life, David was thankful that this prayer had in fact been answered (Ps. 18:14). David rejoices that Divine "arrows" were sent to destroy his enemies (Ps. 7:13; 18:14; 45:5; 64:7; 144:6), in fulfilment of God's promise to do so to the sinful within Israel (Dt. 32:23,42). But David was to later realize that those same arrows had been fired by God into him in judgment for his sin (Ps. 38:2). This realization was perhaps to help David understand that his rejoicing in Divine arrows of judgment being fired at his enemies had not been mature; for he himself had to realize that he was worthy of the same.
Send out Your arrows and
defeat them-
Again the prayer was answered and David thanks God for this at the
end of his life (s.w. Ps. 18:14). We cannot locate any particular
historical incident of fulfilment; perhaps it was too personal and
wonderful to be recorded. Just as a Christian man or woman might feel it
inappropriate to record God's most dramatic salvation of them when they
write their autobiography. The shooting or sending forth of arrows is only
elsewhere used of God doing so against an apostate Judah (s.w. Ez. 5:16).
The phrase is also repeatedly used of how Jonathan shot arrows to signal
to David that his father Saul was going to try to kill him (1 Sam.
20:20-22). Perhaps the enemies in view are therefore Saul and his men.
Psa 144:7
Stretch out Your hand from above, rescue me and deliver me out
of great waters, out of the hands of foreigners-
The phrase 'send / put forth the hand' is used of David doing
so to take a pebble from his shepherd's bag (1 Sam. 17:49). "Foreigners"
could be an intensive plural for the great foreigner in view, Goliath.
The "foreigners" may be literal Gentiles, represented as often by "waters". But I suggested on :6 that it is perhaps Saul and his men (such as Doeg, the Gentile Edomite) who may be initially in view. This would continue a major Biblical theme; that the apostate amongst God's people are as Gentiles. See on :8.
As noted on :5,6, Ps. 144 has many points of contact with Ps. 18, here to Ps. 18:16 "He sent from on high. He took me, He drew me out of many waters". At the end of his life, David felt his prayer of Ps. 144:7 had indeed been answered. "Waters" are usually symbolic of armies or nations. David felt he had been surrounded and faced with certain death, but had been as it were airlifted to safety by God. The language here says that God has done this, but it is parallel with David's prayer for this to happen in Ps. 144:7. The triumphant song of Ps. 18 is therefore praise for the prayer of Ps. 144 being answered.
Psa 144:8
whose mouths speak deceit, whose right hand is a right hand of
falsehood-
Goliath's huge right hand, holding his sword, is seen by
David as false and not as powerful as it seemed. The language of deceit is more appropriate to the apostate within
Israel than to Gentiles. See on :7. The mouths who spoke deceit and
falsehood are often those of Saul and his men (see s.w. Ps. 7:14; 27:12;
31:18; 35:19; 119:69,78, 86,118 etc.) .
Psa 144:9
I will sing a new song to You, God, on a ten-stringed lyre I
will sing praises to You-
This is the song of Ps. 18; see on :5-7. Even in the Old Testament, the idea of living in a spirit of newness of
life is to be found. David six times invites us to sing with him “a new
song” (Ps. 33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1 cp. Is. 42:10). Invariably
these songs are associated with the experience of God’s redemption (cp.
Rev. 5:9). Obviously those ‘new songs’ were intended to be repeatedly
sung. Our regular experience of forgiveness and redemption should urge us
onwards in the spirit of ‘newness of life’. Like Paul we die daily with
the Lord, and the power of His resurrection life likewise daily breaks out
in us.
Psa 144:10
You are He who gives salvation to kings, who rescues David His
servant from the deadly sword-
Again the allusion is to the victory over the deadly sword of
Goliath. David is praying for a dramatic deliverance from apparently
certain death, and he has reminded himself in :1-4 of the victory and
salvation granted him over Goliath as an inspiration. He has done this
previously in this section of the Psalms; see on Ps. 140:7. We note how
David on one hand recognizes that he is indeed a king, but more than that,
Yahweh's servant. In the thinking of his time, kings didn't need
salvation. They were themselves seen as saviours, self sufficient. But
David broke this paradigm of thinking, considering himself to be the
humble king.
Psa 144:11
Rescue me, and deliver me out of the hands of foreigners, whose
mouths speak deceit, whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood-
This repeats :7,8, where I suggested that the people in view are not
necessarily Gentiles but Saul, acting as a Gentile, and whose entourage
included Gentiles like Doeg the Edomite. "Redeem / deliver me from the hand..." is again a quotation from
Jacob's words when he found his relative Esau [not a complete Gentile,
although acting like one] barring his path back home
(Gen. 32:11,30). And the word is used of David's desire for deliverance
from Saul (1 Sam. 26:24); and yet this was a redemption unappreciated by
him as it ought to have been (2 Sam. 12:7). Finally David recognized that
this prayer was answered (2 Sam. 22:18,49). As David had earlier prayed
for redemption / deliverance from Saul and his enemies (Ps. 31:15; 59:1;
144:7), he would later pray for redemption / deliverance from his sins
(Ps. 39:8; 79:9).
Psa 144:12
Then our sons will be like well-nurtured plants, our daughters like
corner stones carved to adorn a palace-
If indeed Saul and his followers are in view in :11 (see note there),
then this will be David's anticipation of what the kingdom of God in
Israel would be like when he became king and Saul was deposed, as had been
promised by Samuel. This vision of that Davidic kingdom didn't fully come
about, partly because of David's own imperfections; but it looks ahead to
how things will be in the ultimate Davidic kingdom of the Lord Jesus.
Solomon and David's other sons were hardly like "well nurtured plants".
The potential was that David's sons would be "planted" eternally (s.w. 2
Sam. 7:10), but this only came finally true in the kingdom of the Lord
Jesus. God's people were indeed "planted" in the land (Ps. 80:8) but were
uprooted; and the prophecies only come true in the person of the Lord
Jesus who is as the plant which grew in the dry land (Ps. 80:15).
LXX reads this very differently. The descriptions of blessedness in :12-14 are applied to the foreigners of :11: "their right hand is a right hand of iniquity; whose children are as plants, strengthened in their youth...". The difference is pointed up in :15 "Men bless the people to whom this lot belongs, but blessed is the people whose God is the Lord" (LXX). David would be lamenting in detail how blessed are the Gentile enemies in this life; but a blessing far better than that is to have Yahweh as your God, as Israel did. In this case, David has been led to a paradigm beyond that of the old covenant, where obedience was rewarded with blessing and disobedience with cursing. He envisages a situation where the wicked Gentiles have all the blessings, but only for this life. And a blessing far greater than material blessing is relationship with the one true God of Israel.
Psa 144:13
Our barns will be full, filled with all kinds of provision; our
sheep will bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields-
As noted on :12, this is a picture of the kingdom which David hoped
to establish after the death of Saul. It is expressed in terms of the
blessings for obedience to the covenant; and throughout Ps. 119 David had
vowed to be personally obedient to the laws of God which formed the old
covenant. But he was overconfident of both his own obedience and that of
Israel. And so as explained on :12, these things are reapplied to the
final reestablishment of the Davidic kingdom by the Lord Jesus.
Psa 144:14
Our oxen will pull heavy loads, there will be no breaking in and no
going away, and no crying in our streets-
The reference is to the breaking in of the Philistines upon Israel
and their going away in flight from them, and the crying in the streets
after the Philistines had sacked the Israelite villages. This would now be
no more, thanks to David's victory. But this vision of the Davidic kingdom
didn't last and didn't even fully come about. See on :11,12.
Psa 144:15
Happy are the people who are in such a situation. Happy are the
people whose God is Yahweh-
This kingdom of God on earth under David's rulership was indeed the ideal
projection of how God's Kingdom in Israel could be. But the people didn't
retain Yahweh is their God in a meaningful sense, and so its realization
was precluded; it will only come fully true in the Kingdom of the Lord
Jesus, which will be a restoration and extension of the Davidic kingdom,
with Him reigning eternally on David's throne. This is indeed "the Hope of
Israel".
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