Psalms 11:1 - Meaning and Application

Here David shows his firm choice to make God his confidence: “In the Lord I put my trust” (Psalm 11:1). Those who truly fear God and serve him are welcome to trust him, and they will not be ashamed for doing so. It is the mark of God’s people, who have taken him as their God, that they make him their hope. Even when they have other things they could lean on, they do not rest their hopes there. They trust neither wealth nor military power, but God alone. So when secondary causes seem to fail, their hope does not fail, because the first Cause, God himself, never changes.

Before David tells us about the temptation to distrust God, he first records his resolve to trust him. That was the truth he meant to live by and die by. Then he speaks of the pressure on him: “How can you say to my soul, Flee like a bird to your mountain?” This may be understood in two ways.

First, it may be the earnest advice of David’s fearful friends. Some who truly cared about him saw how Saul was angry with him and eager to kill him. They urged him to run to a place of safety and not rely too much on the anointing he had received as king. They thought that promise was more likely to bring danger than rescue. What troubled David was not that fleeing would look cowardly, but that it would look like unbelief. It would not fit a man who had so often said, “In the Lord I put my trust.”

Taken this way, the next verses explain why these friends gave such advice. They said he should flee because he could not be safe where he was. “Look,” they say, “the wicked are bending their bow.” Saul and his men were aiming at his life, and David’s upright heart would not protect him from them. This shows the hatred the wicked have for the righteous, the serpent’s seed against the woman’s seed. They work hard to do harm, and they plan it in secret, so the victim does not see it coming, others do not stop it, and even God’s judgment is not feared.

They also said David should flee because he could no longer do any good where he was. “If the foundations are destroyed,” they said, meaning if the civil order and government were falling apart under Saul’s bad rule, what could David do with his righteousness to fix things? They believed it was pointless to try to save a kingdom so badly broken. Many people are kept from doing useful work in hard times because they lose hope of success.

Second, these words may be a taunt from David’s enemies. They mocked him for the trust he said he had in God and told him to test it now. “You say God is your mountain. Then flee to him now and see what good it does you.” In this way they made fun of the poor who look to God for help, as in Psalm 14:6 and Psalm 3:2. To a worldly mind, the comfort believers find in God, when every earthly support fails, seems strange and foolish. That is why the world laughs at it.

If that is the meaning, David’s next verses are his answer to the insult. He first complains about the cruelty of those who treated him this way. They were bending their bow and making their arrows ready. In Psalm 64:3, those arrows are described as bitter words, words meant to weaken faith and hope in God. David felt such words deeply, as if they were a sword in his bones.

Then he rejects the temptation with holy disgust. He sees this suggestion as an attack on the very foundations that every true Israelite stands on. If the foundations are destroyed, if people are pulled away from their hope in God, if religion is treated as a lie and a joke, then they are ruined. The principles of religion are the foundation of the righteous person’s faith and hope. We must hold fast to those foundations, both because it is right and because our own good depends on it. If these are destroyed, if we let them go, what can the righteous do? Good people would be lost if they had no God to go to, no God to trust, and no future blessing to hope for.