John Calvin Commentary Psalms 59:1

"Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: Set me on high from them that rise up against me." — Psalms 59:1 (ASV)

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.