Ps 3:1-2

Ps. 3.1-2

O Lord  /  how many: are my foes

                               Rise up against me

                               Are saying of me,

“There is /  no victory  /  for him  /  from God!”   Selah

Immediately we are in a very different place that in Ps. 1 and 2. Although all three Psalms begin very similarly, there is a complete contrast between this speaker (‘David’) and the ones before him.

1)       In Psalm 1 the men the blessed man avoided were never given much reality (which lent to the powerful description of them as ‘chaff’). They seemed ephemeral from the beginning. They were foils to the blessed man, of course, but they were more than just foils. The reader of the Psalm never felt threatened by them in any manner. They were ‘curiosities’.

2)       In Psalm 2, by contrast, the arrogant men/nations are given much more reality. However, they too are never really an object of concern. Rather, the reader was alienated from them from the initial verse onward. They were a puzzlement, a question, an absurdity. The reader stood above them, in act of superiority.

3)       In Psalm 3, however, these men are an object of threat. The reader here is immediately set within a context of fear and almost despair. A few things on this:

a.       In Ps. 1 & 2 the Psalmist was a type of ‘chorus’ to the Psalm. In Psalm 1 the Psalmist offered praise for the ‘blessed man’ (but wasn’t the blessed man). In Psalm 2, the Psalmist provided the dramatic (almost narrator-like) contours to the movement. In these two Psalms then there is this distance between the Psalmist/reader and the character. In a way, it is spectacle-like, as if one were watching something unfold in front of you, but you are not a part of it. In Psalm 3, the Psalmist is the character. There is no remove between the two. It is entirely personal. For this reason the reader experiences this Psalm in a very different fashion than 1 & 2. This sense of identity is never lost in the Psalm either. There is no ‘reprieve’. This is not a dramatic enactment the reader watches. The reader has become the Psalm and wears it like he wears his own skin.

b.       This is an incredibly effective vehicle for communicating this element of fear and despair. Elation (blessedness: Ps. 1) always has this ‘liberating’ feeling to it. One is “not ones-self” so to speak. One is ecstatic (literally, outside-one-self). Fear, on the other hand, has this tendency of making the person feel all too much ‘inside themselves’. Fear creates a sense of isolation, a sense of withdrawal—the opposite of the outward movement of happiness.

c.       Likewise, in Psalm 2 especially, the repeated question, “Why…; Why…; Why…” only served to heighten the alienation the reader felt from the nations. By contrast, the repeated “How many….; How many…; How many…..” works in the opposite manner. They are like heavy weights being continuously placed on David’s chest, oppressive and terrible. The movement here is one of continuous inner withdrawal in fear and despondency. It is a mounting tension and one gets a sense of falling darkness with each “How many…”.

d.       “How many…”: there were a lot of ways of conveying this sense of oppression, but this simply word “many” brings with it a sense of all encompassing danger. These men are surrounding David and it feels as if they are pressing in on him from all corners, getting closer and closer. David is like a rabbit caught in a snare.

4)       In Psalm 2 the arrogant men’s description found its fulfillment (or enactment) in their words of rebellion. Their words were an expression of the ‘congregating and murmuring’. Here, these foes of David also are finally described as speaking, behind David’s back, these words of an almost curse-like quality.

a.       The fact that they are not spoken to David is very effective. David is sinking underneath their weight already and now he comes to learn that he is totally on the outside. One gets the sense that a messenger has come to him and told him this. He is not even given the respect of a direct address. He has become inconsequential to these men. Shrouded in darkness David has learned that he is perceived as abandoned by God. He could not be more vulnerable. This could be the final dropping of the curtain before all turns to black.

b.       “There is no victory….”: David is like a city whose walls have been completely torn down. The gates have been thrown open and the enemy has no obstacles to its desired pillage. The King is abandoned and defenseless. There is something important to this: this is not an ‘everyman’ sense of despair. This is the despair of a king who is about to be thrown out of power, humiliated and probably killed. His death is not his own—his people, his flock, rests on his shoulders. Portraying David like vulnerable city is very apt in this situation: people will die if he is abandoned by God. A nation could fall.

                                                               i.      Perhaps another way of describing the despair David feels is that of a father who senses that he is about to be killed and has no way of protecting his family from what he knows will be their destruction. This is no isolated man despairing over his own, individual fate. This man’s fate is absolutely bound to his subjects. Or, their fate is absolutely bound to his. One is reminded here of Ezekiel’s terrifying prophecy that God “will strike the shepherd” and his “sheep will be scattered” (what this prophecy doesn’t explicitly state but is very near the surface is that scattered sheep are easy prey for wolves). David senses his sheep are about to be devoured.