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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Psalms · About this commentary

My Heart Is Steadfast, God

Psalms 108:1-13

1 A Song. A Psalm by David. My heart is steadfast, God. I will sing and I will make music with my soul. · WEB

Two halves of two older psalms joined into a new one, and the seam is where the mood changes.

My heart is steadfast, God. I will sing and I will make music with my soul Psalms 108:1.

This psalm is made of two others. The first five verses are the closing half of the fifty-seventh; the last eight are the closing half of the sixtieth, and both are reproduced almost word for word.

That a hymnbook did this is worth stating plainly. Somebody took the confident ending of a psalm written in a cave and joined it to the desperate ending of a psalm written after a military disaster, and the join is the point.

Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn Psalms 108:2.

The line from the cave, and it arrives here without the cave. Detached from its occasion, it becomes usable by anyone.

I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, among the nations Psalms 108:3.

That your beloved may be delivered, save with your right hand, and answer us Psalms 108:6.

Here the second psalm begins, and the pronouns shift from singular to plural. A private song of confidence has become a national appeal, and the change happens between two verses.

God has spoken from his sanctuary: "In triumph, I will divide Shechem... Moab is my wash pot. I will toss my sandal on Edom" Psalms 108:7–9.

The oracle of the sixtieth psalm, with the hostile neighbors demoted to household objects.

Haven't you rejected us, God? You don't go out, God, with our armies Psalms 108:11.

And the complaint too, unchanged. The compiler did not sand off the difficulty — the psalm that opens with a steadfast heart and a woken dawn still contains, eleven verses later, a flat accusation that God is absent from the battlefield.

Give us help against the enemy, for the help of man is vain. Through God, we will do valiantly Psalms 108:12–13.

The ending is the same as the sixtieth psalm's, and it is neither passive nor triumphalist. Human help is worthless; the army will still fight; and the treading down is credited elsewhere. A collection willing to build a new psalm out of two old ones was willing to keep both moods in it.

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