He Trains My Hands for War
26 With the merciful you will show yourself merciful. With the perfect man you will show yourself perfect. 27 With the pure you will show yourself pure. With the crooked you will show yourself shrewd. 28 You will save the afflicted people, but your eyes are on the arrogant, that you may bring them down. 29 For you are my lamp, Yahweh. Yahweh will light up my darkness. 30 For by you, I run against a troop. By my God, I leap over a wall. 31 As for God, his way is perfect. Yahweh’s word is tested. He is a shield to all those who take refuge in him. 32 For who is God, besides Yahweh? Who is a rock, besides our God? 33 God is my strong fortress. He makes my way perfect. 34 He makes his feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me on my high places. 35 He teaches my hands to war, so that my arms bend a bow of bronze. 36 You have also given me the shield of your salvation. Your gentleness has made me great. 37 You have enlarged my steps under me. My feet have not slipped. 38 I have pursued my enemies and destroyed them. I didn’t turn again until they were consumed. 39 I have consumed them, and struck them through, so that they can’t arise. Yes, they have fallen under my feet. 40 For you have armed me with strength for the battle. You have subdued under me those who rose up against me. 41 You have also made my enemies turn their backs to me, that I might cut off those who hate me. 42 They looked, but there was no one to save; even to Yahweh, but he didn’t answer them. 43 Then I beat them as small as the dust of the earth. I crushed them as the mire of the streets, and spread them abroad. 44 You also have delivered me from the strivings of my people. You have kept me to be the head of the nations. A people whom I have not known will serve me. 45 The foreigners will submit themselves to me. As soon as they hear of me, they will obey me. 46 The foreigners will fade away, and will come trembling out of their close places. 47 Yahweh lives! Blessed be my rock! Exalted be God, the rock of my salvation, 48 even the God who executes vengeance for me, who brings down peoples under me, 49 who brings me away from my enemies. Yes, you lift me up above those who rise up against me. You deliver me from the violent man. 50 Therefore I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, among the nations, and will sing praises to your name. 51 He gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and to his offspring, forever more.”
God answers people in the key they bring him, arms a soldier for battles he cannot win, and makes a man great by gentleness.
26 With the merciful you will show yourself merciful. With the perfect man you will show yourself perfect. 27 With the pure you will show yourself pure. With the crooked you will show yourself shrewd.
The song's middle section states a principle rather than a story: God meets people in kind. It is not that God changes character, but that the same holiness is experienced as mercy by the merciful and as an unsolvable shrewdness by the crooked — the sun that softens wax hardens clay. The summary line follows at once: you will save the afflicted people, but your eyes are on the arrogant, that you may bring them down 2 Samuel 22:28, which is Hannah's theology in a king's mouth 1 Samuel 2:7–8, sung by a man who has now been on both ends of it.
For by you, I run against a troop. By my God, I leap over a wall.
The imagery turns from being rescued to being enabled — and the two are not in tension. God does the delivering and then equips the delivered for work that is still theirs to do: he teaches my hands to war, so that my arms bend a bow of bronze 2 Samuel 22:35, feet made sure like a deer's on high ground, steps enlarged so the ankles do not turn 2 Samuel 22:34 2 Samuel 22:37. The picture is of a soldier's whole body trained by someone else.
You have also given me the shield of your salvation. Your gentleness has made me great.
This is the most surprising line in the poem, and possibly in the book. Amid bronze bows and crushed enemies, the king says what actually made him: not his sling, not his generals, not the covenant's guarantees — God's gentleness, his stooping to a shepherd boy. Greatness credited to another's condescension is the opposite of everything Absalom stood at the gate saying about himself.
The battle stanzas that follow are hard and unembarrassed 2 Samuel 22:38–43 — enemies consumed, beaten as small as dust — the language of a warrior culture, and the honest voice of a man whose forty years were mostly war.
Yahweh lives! Blessed be my rock! Exalted be God, the rock of my salvation,
The close turns outward twice. First to the nations — I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, among the nations, and will sing praises to your name 2 Samuel 22:50, a verse Paul later quotes as evidence that the nations were always meant to be included in this praise Romans 15:9. Then to the future: he gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and to his offspring, forever more 2 Samuel 22:51.
The last word of the reign's psalm is the covenant of chapter seven, said in the third person about his anointed — the singer stepping back to look at the promise rather than at himself, and finding that it runs past his lifetime.
settled What this mark means