Biblion Bible Commentary
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You Number My Wanderings
Psalms 56:1-13
1 For the Chief Musician. To the tune of “Silent Dove in Distant Lands.” A poem by David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath. Be merciful to me, God, for man wants to swallow me up. All day long, he attacks and oppresses me. · WEB
Written in the hands of the enemy, and its central claim is that God keeps a record of tears.
When the Philistines seized him in Gath Psalms 56:1.
The same occasion as the thirty-fourth psalm — the day David was recognized in an enemy city and escaped by feigning insanity. This one appears to have been written while he was still in custody.
Be merciful to me, God, for man wants to swallow me up Psalms 56:1.
The verb recurs three times in the opening verses. It is the word for an animal engulfing prey whole, and it describes being consumed rather than merely attacked.
When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you Psalms 56:3.
Seven words, and they settle a question the collection keeps raising. The fear is not denied, argued away, or repented of. It is stated as a given — when, not if — and the trust is placed inside it rather than instead of it. Two verses later the psalm says I will not be afraid Psalms 56:4, and both are true in the same poem.
In God, I praise his word. In God, I put my trust. I will not be afraid. What can flesh do to me? Psalms 56:4.
The question is not bravado. Flesh can do a great deal, and the man asking is a prisoner. What the word means here is what it means throughout Scripture: the merely human, whatever its resources, considered against God — and the psalm's answer is that the category has limits.
All day long they twist my words Psalms 56:5. The specific complaint is misquotation, which in a foreign court would be lethal.
You count my wanderings. You put my tears into your container. Aren't they in your book? Psalms 56:8.
The most tender verse in the second book of the Psalter, and it makes three claims in one line. His wanderings are counted — the aimless flight from town to town is being tracked, not merely permitted. His tears are collected in a bottle, an image of something too valuable to spill. And both are entered in a book.
The question at the end is not doubt. It is a man saying, out loud, that surely none of this is being lost — and the psalm offers no evidence for it beyond the fact that he believes it.
I know this: that God is for me Psalms 56:9.
Four words that Paul expands into a chapter Romans 8:31. The knowledge is asserted in a cell.
For you have delivered my soul from death, and prevented my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living Psalms 56:13.
The psalm ends with the deliverance in the past tense and its purpose stated as walking — not resting, and not being safe, but continuing to move about in the daylight, in God's sight.
settled What this mark means