John Calvin Commentary Psalms 59

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God! He insists on the strength and violence of his enemies, in order to excite his mind to greater fervor in the duty of prayer. He describes them as rising up against him, an expression in which he alludes not simply to the audacity or fierceness of their assaults, but to the eminent superiority of power they possessed; and yet he asks that he may be lifted up on high, as it were, above the reach of this overwhelming inundation.

His language teaches us that we should believe in God's ability to deliver us even in emergencies, when our enemies have an overwhelming advantage. In the verse that follows, while he expresses the extremity to which he was reduced, he also refers to the injustice and cruelty of his persecutors.

Immediately afterwards, he connects the two grounds of his complaint: on the one hand, his complete helplessness in the face of danger, and, on the other, the undeserved nature of the assaults he suffered. I have already repeatedly observed that our confidence in our prayers to the throne of grace will be proportional to our awareness of our integrity, because we will surely feel greater freedom in pleading a cause that, in such a case, is the cause of God Himself.

He is the vindicator of justice, the patron of the righteous cause everywhere, and those who oppress the innocent must necessarily rank themselves among His enemies. David accordingly bases his first plea on his complete destitution of all earthly means of help, exposed as he was to plots on every side and attacked by a formidable conspiracy. His second plea he rests on a declaration of innocence.

It may be true that afflictions are sent by God to His people as a chastisement for their sins. However, as far as Saul was concerned, David could justly exonerate himself from all blame and takes this occasion to appeal to God on behalf of his integrity, which was under suspicion from the base slanders of men. They might pretend otherwise, but he declares that they could charge him with no crime or fault. Yet, groundless as their hostility was, he tells us that they ran, and were unremitting in their activity, solely to accomplish the ruin of their victim.

Awake to hasten for my help, and behold. In using this language, he refers to the eagerness with which his enemies, as he had already said, were pressing upon him, and states his desire that God would show the same haste in extending help as they did in seeking his destruction.

To conciliate the divine favor, he once more calls upon God to be the witness and judge of his cause, adding, and behold. This expression reflects at once faith and the infirmity of the flesh. In speaking of God as if His eyes had been until now shut to the wrongs he had suffered, and needed now for the first time to be opened to discover them, he expresses himself according to the weakness of human understanding. On the other hand, in calling upon God to behold his cause, he shows his faith by virtually acknowledging that nothing was hidden from His providential knowledge. Though David may use language of this description, suited to the limitations of human perception, we must not suppose him to have doubted before this time that his afflictions, his innocence, and his wrongs were known to God. Now, however, he lays the whole before God for examination and decision.

He continues the same prayer with even greater vehemence in the following verse. He addresses God under new titles, calling Him Jehovah, God of Hosts, and the God of Israel, the first of these names denotes the immensity of His power, and the second the special care which He exerts over the Church and over all His people.

The manner in which the pronoun is introduced, and Thou, etc., is emphatic, denoting that it was as impossible for God to lay aside the office of a judge as to deny Himself or divest Himself of His being.

He calls upon Him to visit all the nations: for although the cause which he now submitted was of no such universal concern, the wider exercise of judgment would necessarily include the lesser. Furthermore, if Gentiles and foreigners were subjected to the judgment of God, it followed that an even more certain and heavy doom would be awarded to enemies within the Church, who persecuted the saints under the guise of brothers and overthrew those laws which were of divine appointment.

The opposition David encountered might not encompass all nations; but if these were visited in judgment by God, it was absurd to imagine that those within the Church would be the only enemies who should escape with impunity. In using these words, it is also probable that he was struggling with a temptation with which he was severely assailed, connected with the number of his enemies, for these did not consist merely of three or four abandoned individuals.

They formed a great multitude, and he rises above them all by reflecting that God claims it as His prerogative not only to reduce a few rebellious individuals to submission but also to punish the wickedness of the whole world. If the judgments of God extended to the furthest parts of the earth, there was no reason why he should be afraid of his enemies, who, however numerous, formed only a small part of the human race.

We will soon see, however, that the expression can be appropriately applied to the Israelites, divided as they were into so many tribes or peoples.

In the words that follow, when he pleads against God extending mercy to wicked transgressors, we must understand him as referring to the reprobate, whose sin was of a hardened character. We must also remember, as has already been observed, that in such prayers he was not influenced by mere private feelings of a rancorous, unhealthy, and excessive kind. Not only did he know well that those of whom he speaks with such severity were already doomed to destruction, but he is here pleading the common cause of the Church, and this under the influence of the pure and well-regulated zeal of the Spirit. He therefore sets no example for those who resent private injuries by uttering curses on those who have inflicted them.

They will return at evening. He compares his enemies to famished and furious dogs, which hunger drives to roam endlessly in every direction. Through this metaphor, he denounces their insatiable fierceness. This fierceness is shown in the ceaseless activity to which they were driven by their desire to cause harm. He says that they return in the evening to suggest that they did not rest at other times but were tireless in pursuing their evil ways. If they made no progress during the day, the night would still find them at their work. The barking of dogs aptly represented, as a metaphor, the formidable nature of their assaults.

In the following verse, he describes their fierceness. The expression prating, or “belching out with their mouth,” indicates that they proclaimed their infamous plans openly and without attempting to hide them. The Hebrew word נבע (nabang) metaphorically means to speak; however, its proper meaning is to gush out, and here it signifies more than simply speaking.

He informs us that, not content with secretly plotting the destruction of the innocent among themselves, they published their intentions widely and boasted of them. Accordingly, when he adds that swords were in their lips, he means that they breathed out slaughter, and that every word they spoke was a sword to slay the oppressed.

He identifies the cause of their rushing to such an excess of wickedness as their having no reason to fear disgrace. It is quite probable that David, here as in many other places, alludes to the gross stupidity of the wicked. These individuals, to banish fear from their minds, imagine God as if He were asleep in heaven. However, I believe he instead attributes the confidence with which they pursued their plans and openly proclaimed them to the fact that they had long before now possessed the uncontrolled power to inflict harm.

They had succeeded so completely in deceiving the people and making David hateful through their slanders, that no one had the courage to say a word in his defense. Indeed, the more atrociously anyone chose to persecute this distressed victim—for no other reason than to secure the king's favor—the more that person rose in esteem as a true friend to the public good.

But thou, O Jehovah! shalt laugh at them. In the face of all this opposition, David's confidence only increases. When he says that God would laugh at his enemies, he employs a figure of speech well suited to enhance God's power, suggesting that when the wicked have perfected their schemes to the utmost, God can, without any effort and, so to speak, as if in sport, dissipate them all.

As soon as God overlooks their actions, their pride and insolence take the opportunity to emerge, for they forget that even when He seems to have paused His activity, He only needs to nod, and His judgments will be executed. David, accordingly, in his contempt for his adversaries, tells them that God had no need to make extensive preparations but, at the moment He saw fit to enact retribution, would, by a mere play of His power, annihilate them all. In this way, he conveys a severe rebuke to that blind infatuation which led them to boast so excessively of their own powers and to imagine that God was sleeping in the heavens.

At the end of the verse, mention is made of all nations, to suggest that even if they might equal the whole world in numbers, they would prove to be a mere mockery with all their influence and resources. Or the words may be read—even as thou hast all the nations in derision. It is obvious that David ridicules the vain boasting of his enemies, who thought no undertaking was too great to be accomplished by their numbers.

I will entrust his strength to you. The obscurity of this passage has led to a variety of opinions among commentators. The most forced interpretation proposed is that which supposes a change of person in the relative his, as if David, in speaking of himself, employed the third person instead of the first: I will entrust my strength to you.

The Septuagint, and those who adopt this interpretation, have probably been led to it by the insufficient reason that in the last verse of the psalm it is said, I will ascribe with praises my strength to you, or, my strength is with you, I will sing, etc. But when we come to that part of the psalm, we will have an opportunity to see that David there appropriately asserts of himself what he here, in another sense, asserts of Saul.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the relative here is to be understood as referring to Saul. Some consider that the first words of the sentence should be read separately from the others—strength is his—meaning that Saul had the evident superiority in strength, so that he is triumphant at present.

Others join the two parts of the sentence and offer this explanation: Although you are his strength at the present moment, insofar as you sustain and preserve him on the throne, yet I will continue to hope until you have raised me to the kingdom, according to your promise.

But those who construe the words as one continuous sentence—I will entrust his strength to you;—seem to come nearest to the Psalmist's meaning. This interpretation means that however excessively Saul might boast of his strength, David would rest satisfied in the assurance that a secret divine providence was restraining Saul's actions.

We must learn to view all people as subordinated in this manner, and to conceive of their strength and their undertakings as depending on the sovereign will of God.

In my opinion, the following version is the best—His strength is with you, I will wait. The words are parallel with those at the end of the psalm, where there can be no doubt that the nominative case is used, My strength is with you; I will sing. However, as far as the meaning of the passage is concerned, it does not matter which of these latter interpretations is followed.

It is evident that David is here enabled, from the high vantage point of faith, to despise the violent opposition of his enemy, convinced that his enemy could do nothing without divine permission. But by taking the two parts of the sentence separately, in the way I have suggested—His strength is with you, I will wait,—the meaning is more distinctly brought out.

First, David, in vindication of that power by which God governs the whole world, declares that his enemy was under a secret divine restraint. He was so entirely dependent for any strength he possessed upon God that he could not move a finger without His consent. He then adds that he would wait for the event, whatever it might be, with composure and tranquility.

For the word we have translated I will entrust, may here be taken as signifying I will keep myself, or quietly wait for the Lord's will. In this sense, we find the word used in the conjugation Niphal (Isaiah 7:4). Here it is put in the conjugation Kal, but that is no reason why we may not render it, I will silently wait for the issue which God may send.

It has been well suggested that David may allude to the guards sent to besiege his house. He might then be seen as countering this with a watch of a very different kind, one that he himself maintained as he looked for God's outcome with quietness and composure.