Psalms 55:1 - Meaning and Application

In these verses we see David praying. Prayer is a healing balm for every hurt and a comfort under every burden. “Give ear to my prayer, O God” (Psalms 55:1, Psalms 55:2). He does not repeat the exact requests he brought to God in his distress, but asks God to hear the prayers his heart kept lifting up at every moment, and to answer them with peace. “Listen to me, hear me.” Saul would not listen to David’s pleas, and his other enemies ignored them too. Still, David says, “Lord, please listen to me. Do not hide yourself from my appeal,” meaning, do not turn away as if you were unconcerned, or as if you were angry with me and therefore with my prayer.

If we honestly open ourselves, our troubles, and our hearts to God in prayer, we have good reason to hope that he will not hide himself from us. He will not hide his favor or his comfort from us.

David is also weeping, and in this he points ahead to Christ, the Man of sorrows who often wept (Psalms 55:2). “I mourn in my complaint,” or in my sad thoughts, “and I make a noise.” He cannot hold back the sighs and groans that show his grief to those around him. Deep sorrow is often loud, and speaking it out can ease it a little. Pain that is crushed down and never expressed often grows heavier.

But what caused his tears? It was “the voice of the enemy” (Psalms 55:3), the threats and insults of Absalom’s party, who stirred up the people to cry out against David and drive him from his throne and city. Later, the chief priests did the same thing to the Son of David, Jesus, when they stirred up the crowd to shout, “Away with him, crucify him.” Yet David was not moved only by the enemy’s noise. He was also broken by their oppression and the hard treatment they brought on him.

“They cast iniquity upon me.” They could not honestly prove any wrongdoing in his rule, so they loaded him with lies and slander. Though they found no fault in him as a king, they accused him of every kind of evil and painted him as a tyrant who should be pushed out. Innocence is no protection against violent and lying tongues. They hated him deeply, with both anger and settled malice. So they worked to make him hated by others too. This grieved David all the more because he remembered the time when he had been the people’s favorite, and his own name meant “beloved.”

David is also trembling and deeply alarmed. That is easy to understand when Absalom’s conspiracy broke out and many people, even those David had little reason to suspect, turned away from him. David was a brave man and had shown great courage in striking ways. Yet when danger came suddenly and strongly, his heart failed him. Let no strong man boast in his courage any more than in his strength.

Now David says his heart is pained within him. The terrors of death have fallen on him (Psalms 55:4). Fear filled his mind, trembling shook his body, and horror overwhelmed him (Psalms 55:5). When there is fighting outside, there is no surprise if there are fears inside. If this was during Absalom’s rebellion, then the memory of David’s sin in the matter of Uriah may also have added to his fear, since God was now dealing with that sin.

At times David’s faith made him almost fearless, and he could say, even when enemies surrounded him, “I will not be afraid of what man can do to me.” But at other times fear took over and ruled him. Even the best people are not always equally strong in faith.

In his fear, David longed to withdraw into a desert, anywhere far from the enemy’s voice and their oppression. He says, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!” (Psalms 55:6). He says this to God in prayer, to himself in reflection, and to his friends in complaint. Jerusalem had often been dear to him, but now that it had become rebellious, he longed to be away from it. Like the prophet, he wished for “a lodging place for travelers in the wilderness,” a place where he could leave his people and go away from them, because they were a company of treacherous men (Jeremiah 9:2).

This fits well with David’s decision when the plot first broke out: “Arise, let us flee, and make haste to depart” (2 Samuel 15:14). Notice three things. First, he wanted to escape somehow. He was so surrounded that he could see no way out except by flight, so he wished for wings. He does not mean wings like a hawk, fast for attack, but wings to flee from birds of prey, which is what his enemies had become. The wings of a dove suited his gentle spirit better than the wings of an eagle.

Second, he wanted to escape from the storm, the unrest, and the danger that filled the city. In that way he was like a dove, which cannot bear noise. Third, his goal was not victory but rest. “I would fly away and be at rest” (Psalms 55:6). He would go anywhere, even into a barren and frightening wilderness, if only he could be quiet (Psalms 55:7). Peace and quiet in silence and solitude are often what wise and godly people most long for, especially when they have been worn down by the noise and trouble around them.

Godly souls often want to step away from the rush and fuss of this world so they can enjoy God and their own hearts in peace. If there is any true peace on this side of heaven, they often find it there. This is one reason death can be so welcome to a child of God, because it is the final escape from all the storms of this world into perfect and lasting rest.