Biblion Bible Commentary
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He Delighted in Me
Psalms 18:1-24
1 For the Chief Musician. By David the servant of Yahweh, who spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said, I love you, Yahweh, my strength. · WEB
God comes down through an earthquake and a thunderstorm to pull one man out of deep water.
By David the servant of Yahweh... in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul Psalms 18:1.
The longest psalm of the first book, and it appears almost word for word in the historical record as David's song near the end of his life 2 Samuel 22. It is a career being summed up.
I love you, Yahweh, my strength. The opening verb is a rare one, an intimate word not usually directed at God, and it stands before the pile of titles that follows: my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower Psalms 18:2. Eight images, seven of them defensive, and they are the vocabulary of a man who spent years in caves and strongholds. He is not reaching for metaphors. He is describing the terrain he survived in and saying who was actually doing it.
The cords of death surrounded me... The snares of death came on me Psalms 18:4–5. Hunting language, and the hunter is death itself.
In my distress I called on Yahweh... He heard my voice out of his temple Psalms 18:6.
What follows is one of the most extravagant passages in the Psalter. The earth shakes, smoke goes out of God's nostrils, he bows the heavens and comes down, he rides on a cherub and flies, darkness is under his feet, hailstones and coals of fire fall, and the foundations of the world are laid bare Psalms 18:7–15. It is the language of Sinai, and it is being used about the rescue of a single fugitive.
Nothing in David's history records an earthquake at the relevant moment. The psalm is not reporting weather; it is reporting scale. What actually happened was that a man escaped, and the poetry insists that the escape involved the same God who came down on the mountain, and cost him no less.
He sent from on high. He took me. He drew me out of many waters Psalms 18:16.
After fifteen verses of cosmic upheaval, three short clauses, and they are the point of all of it. The verb for drawing out of water is the verb behind the name Moses Exodus 2:10.
He brought me out also into a large place. He delivered me, because he delighted in me Psalms 18:19.
The reason given is not that David deserved it or that God had plans for him. He delighted in him. It is the only explanation the psalm offers, and everything in the first half has been arranged to make it land.
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