Psalms 3:1 - Meaning and Application

The title of this psalm, like the titles of many others, is like a key hanging ready at the door. It helps us open the psalm and understand it better. This psalm was written, or at least carefully thought through and prepared in David’s mind, when he fled from his son Absalom, who plotted against him to take his crown and his life as well. We have that story in 2 Samuel 15 and following.

David was in deep grief. As he fled, he went up the Mount of Olives, weeping bitterly, with his head covered and his feet bare. Even then, he composed this comforting psalm. He wept and prayed, wept and sang, wept and believed, and so he was sowing in tears. Is anyone suffering? Then let him pray. Better still, let him sing psalms, and let him sing this psalm. Is anyone suffering because of disobedient children? David was, and yet that did not keep him from rejoicing in God or from being fit for holy songs.

He was also in great danger. The plot against him was laid deeply, those seeking his ruin were powerful, and his own son stood at their head. His situation looked like it was at the very end. Yet even then, he held fast to his confidence in God and made use of it. Trouble and fear should drive us to God, not away from him.

He also faced much provocation from those he had every reason to expect better from, especially from his son, whom he had treated with great kindness, and from his subjects, to whom he had been such a blessing. That could have stirred up strong anger in any man. Yet he was so far from showing wild passion that he still had enough calmness for acts of devotion, which require a settled and free mind. The Spirit often works on still waters. Let no harshness, not even from a child or a friend, weigh on us so heavily that it keeps us from fellowship with God.

He was also suffering because of his sin in the matter of Uriah. This was the trouble God had said would rise up against him from his own house because of that sin (2 Samuel 12:11). David no doubt saw this and used it as a reason to renew his repentance. Even so, he did not throw away his trust in God’s power and goodness, and he did not give way to despair. Our sorrow for sin must not stop our joy in God or our hope in him.

He may have seemed weak when he fled from Absalom and left the royal city without first fighting for it. Yet this psalm shows that he had real courage, born from faith in God. True Christian courage is shown more in a gracious calm, in patient endurance, and in patient waiting, than in bold acts with sword in hand.

In these three verses, David turns to God. Where else should we go when anything troubles or frightens us? David was far from his own room for prayer and far from the courts of God’s house, where he usually worshiped. Yet he still found a way open toward heaven. Wherever we are, we may come to God, and we may draw near to him wherever we are driven.

In his flight, David comes before God with a picture of his distress, in Psalm 3:1, Psalm 3:2. He looks around, as if he were taking in the enemy camp, or learning of their plans against him, and he brings that to God rather than to his own advisers. He complains about two things in his enemies.

First, they were very many: “Lord, how they have increased!” They were more than they had been at first, and more than he ever expected. Absalom’s party, like a snowball, strangely kept growing as it moved. David speaks as one amazed, and rightly so, that a people he had helped in so many ways had almost all turned against him, rebelled against him, and chosen as their leader such a foolish and unstable young man as Absalom. How unreliable large crowds can be. And how little faithfulness and steadiness can be found among people. David had once had the hearts of his subjects as fully as any king ever did, and yet suddenly he had lost them. People should not trust too much in rulers (Psalm 146:3), and rulers should not trust too much in the people’s support. Christ, the Son of David, also had many enemies. When a great crowd came to seize him, and the people cried, “Crucify him, crucify him,” how greatly those who troubled him had increased! Even good people should not think it strange if the stream turns against them and the powers that threaten them grow stronger.

Second, they were very hateful in their speech. They rose against him and tried to trouble him, but that was not all. They said about his soul, “There is no help for him in God.” This meant several things. They put a cruel and unfair meaning on his troubles, like Job’s friends did to Job, assuming that because his servants and subjects had abandoned him and did not help him, God must have left him too, and his cause must be lost. So, they treated him as a hypocrite and a wicked man. They also spoke against God himself, as if he were unable to save David, saying in effect, “His danger is so great that even God cannot help him.” It is shocking that such unbelief would be found in anyone, especially in many among Israel, as if any group of people were too strong for Almighty God to handle.

They also tried to shake David’s trust in God and push him toward despair. The words can be read, “They said this to my soul.” Compare Psalm 11:1 and Psalm 42:10. This was what hurt David most, that they thought so badly of him as to believe they could pull him off the very foundation of his trust in God. The mere temptation struck him hard, like a thorn in the flesh, or even a sword in the bones. A child of God recoils from the very thought of despairing of God’s help. Nothing troubles him so much as when someone tries to persuade him that there is no help for him in God.

So David comes to God and tells him what his enemies said, just as Hezekiah spread Rabshakeh’s blasphemous letter before the Lord. “They say there is no help for me in you. But Lord, if that were true, I would be lost. They say to my soul that there is no salvation for him in God.” But then he asks the Lord to speak a better word to him, “I am your salvation” (Psalm 35:3), and that would satisfy him and silence them in time.

To this complaint he adds Selah, a word that appears about seventy times in the book of Psalms. Some connect it with the music used when the psalms were sung in David’s time. Others think it points to the meaning and calls for a solemn pause. It is as if the psalm says, “Mark that,” or, “Stop here and think for a moment.” Here the thought is, “They say there is no help for him in God. Selah.” Pause and consider that kind of claim. Reject such a wicked suggestion. Then David moves on to his profession of trust in God, in Psalm 3:3.

An active believer, the more he is pushed away from God, whether by God’s fatherly discipline or by the insults of enemies, the more firmly he will hold to God and stay close to him. That is what David does here. When his enemies say, “There is no help for him in God,” he answers with stronger confidence, “But you, O Lord, are a shield for me.” He means, “Let them say what they want. I know you will never leave me, and I am resolved never to doubt you.”

Notice what God is to his people, and what David found him to be. First, he is safety: “You are a shield for me,” or, as some read it, “a shield around me,” to protect me on every side, since my enemies have surrounded me. It is more than saying, “You are my shield” (Genesis 15:1), which points to belonging to God’s protection. It also means, “You are a shield for me,” pointing to the present benefit of that protection.

Second, God is honor: “You are my glory.” Those whom God calls his own are not only safe and at peace, they are truly honored. They have a kind of honor far above the pride of the great people of the earth. David was in shame at this time, and the crown had fallen from his head, but he would not think less of himself while God was his glory (Isaiah 60:19). Some understand him to mean, “You are my glory; I count your glory as mine.” That is what he wants, and what he aims for, no matter what happens to his own honor, that he may be to God for a name and a praise.

Third, God is joy and deliverance: “You are the lifter up of my head.” God will lift his head out of trouble and restore him to honor in due time. Or, at the very least, God will lift his head while he is still under trouble, so that he will not sink in sadness or lose heart. If God’s people, even in the worst times, can lift up their heads with joy because they know all things will work for their good, then they must say it is God who lifts up their heads. He gives them both the reason to rejoice and the strength to rejoice.

As we sing this psalm and pray it through, we should feel the danger from the many and bitter spiritual enemies who try to ruin our souls by pulling us away from God. We should also care about the troubles and dangers of the church of God, which is spoken against everywhere and attacked everywhere. But in both cases, we should encourage ourselves in our God. He owns his people, protects them, and in due time will honor his own cause both in the world and in the hearts of his people.