Ps. 3:6

Ps. 3.6

Diag.

I will not  /  fear  /  the multitudes  /  of the people,
Who  /  on every side  /  have deployed  /  against me

If the sleep of vs. 5 stood in the middle of the Psalm, this verse stands as the counter-point to vs. 1. And yet, notice how little attention is now given to the “many”. In vs. 1-2, they were an oppressive weight. Their reality grew, and grew, while it constricted and choked out David’s strength. There, it was “How many…; How many…; How many…”. We had that sense of unbearable closeness, that sense that fear generates, and the inability to escape. It was almost claustrophobic and filled with a frantic searching for an exit.

But here: the many are afforded one verse and they are simply referred to as “the multitudes of the people.” No longer are they this faceless, and terrifying, giant in the darkness. One cannot help but being reminded here of the Israelites as they approached the promised land. Standing on the border of the promise they send in twelve men to search out the land. They find it to be everything the Lord had told them. Except, they also report that giants live in the land. On the brink of conquest they shrink back at the size and magnitude of the enemies they have been called to displace. And their fear is pervasive and contagious. It spreads like flames throughout the camp. The Israelites are dismayed and terrified. They have no escape. They will die if they return to the desert and they will die (they think) if they enter the land. It is, to them, in impossible and dreadful situation.

The Lord abandons them. They will not take the promised land but, rather, just as they saw exaggerated giants in the land, so too will their punishment become an exaggeration: forty years to match the forty days of their journey through the land will they now walk in the waste of the dessert. Foolishly some run and buckle on their war gear and attempt to take the land. But, without the Lord, they are utterly routed. There is no choice but to go into exile.

Once they have been purged of their faithlessness, Joshua is raised up. They enter the land and in a massive and astonishing display of military might this inconsequential tribe crawls over the length of the land and evicts those who were there, taking possession for themselves.

My point in referring to this passage is not that the Psalm points to it. It is, rather, to highlight the fact that within the consciousness of Israel, and here it is reduced to the consciousness of one man, David, there is a profound sense that one’s enemies can take on the proportions of giants when one is either not trusting or cast from the presence of the Lord. Likewise, it is not the case that these enemies are not in fact of large significance. The whole point of Joshua’s conquest is that they were riding the land of ‘giants’. However, just as when Israel had the Warrior King on their side, the Lord, and their strength was leavened with his glory, so too is David here lifted up and empowered by the fact that his father will answer him from the very source of his power: Zion. It is as if Zion itself deploys the enormity of its strength and sends to and for David. Those bearing down on David are in fact a great multitude. They are led, no less, by his own rebellious son whom he loves.

However, after his ‘sleep’ they are no longer afforded the droning and deadening weight of “How many…; How many….; How many…”. This faceless horde is afforded one description, set in a context of utter confidence. The distortions inherent in the night and its ability to breathe an evil and consuming life into any thought, concern or anxiety, has been dispelled. David has been filled with same confidence that was poured into Israel when they finally moved into the land. The ‘night of his exile’ is ending. And, his confidence, stated so matter-of-factly, is disarming (or, perhaps better stated, empowering). It is abrupt, to the point, and short. The coils have not only been loosened. They have, in this confidence, already been defeated. For David, victory is not a hope, in the sense of optimism; it is a future reality that has entered into the present. David has tasted the future.

Note how, in vs. 2, the attack is leveled at “me” that David’s god has abandoned him. This “me” represents David’s essential being. This is where David’s ‘heart’ is: it is in communion with the Lord. The ‘many’ could not aim a more deadly arrow because, for David, his ‘essential being’ is his relationship with his father, the Enthroned Lord. It is his ‘Achilles heel’. In the midst of this gathering “many” David utters a cry to this One. If in fact David’s being is his sense of being the son of the Lord, then this cry could be no more desperate.

The contrast is deliberate and powerful. Intimacy cannot be had with the ‘many’. Assurance in ‘numbers’ is not what David is afforded. Standing (al)one he calls upon the One, his own father.

How did this change occur? As we already have seen, it happened in David’s sleep. And I want to spend some time on how this sleep operates in the Psalm and how the Psalm uses the imagery of day and night to point to a profound theological point.

Although not stated, it is apparent that vs. 1-3 represent the night. Vs. 4 is David’s sleep and vs. 6-8 are the morning. The Psalm spans and entire day, which, in Jewish thought, began with nightfall, not with daylight.

There is no sense here that David’s fear and anxiety are inappropriate. Just as the night is a reality to the day, just as Israel really did have to displace those in the land by military conquest, (just as, if one has been reading carefully, did Jesus on the Mount of Olives sense the coming of ‘rebellious son’ Judas), so too is Absalom and his agents bearing down upon David. The night is real; the fear and anxiety engendered by the night is real and justified.

Yet, the night is also the time for humans to sleep. It is the time, in a very odd but significant way, during which man is let go of every defense, the time during which he is to appear to world as if he is dead. And from this rest does he enter into daylight. How do we explain this? What is meant by it? Does it not seem to be backward? Man cannot see well at night, wouldn’t that be the time he should be most vigilant? Isn’t the night precisely the time he is most vulnerable? And yet, this is the time that his defenses are lowered? This, incredibly, is the time of his rest?

Might the answer, in part, be that the night is also the time in which man is hidden. When night falls the light is robbed of the earth. It is, then, the only time man is afforded, by the creation itself, a moment of protection. In a way, the creation closes its eyes at the same time as man and any evil is robbed of an essential power. Evil has not been disarmed, of course. But it has been hampered.

For what would man be without sleep? Would not time seem to be but a steady continuation? Time without interruption, without cycles and without change would be hell. Just as creation closes its eyes for half of every day, so too does man need to close his eyes. Man must return to this state of death-like passivity when the only thing moving is the breathe.

“Return”? In the bible, the night is the beginning of the day. Creation and man then begin the day with this time of death-like passivity and rejuvenation. The day does not begin with the light and activity, of man’s ‘going forth’. Rather, man is always reminded (with creation) that he begins in rest. It is from there that light emerges and explodes upon the earth. It is from there that the light in man’s eye opens.

The night, then, this time of rest, is such an ambiguous and yet powerful reality. And this is where the Psalm begins. Now the Psalm begins to unfold in a manifold amount of directs. When the day begins in darkness, David should be asleep. It is the time of rest and the time during which man is reborn. However, something has gone terribly wrong. The king is not upon his throne but is being hunted by his own son. He cannot, in fact, sleep. He is being robbed of the very thing that can bring him strength. Creation and man, as epitomized in man’s king, has been separated just as David is separated from Zion. This has made the night, not a source of security, but the sense of being an oppressive and overpowering threat. David, who is a type of Adam, is wondering if the presence of this threat at a time when complete vulnerability should exist, actually points to the absence of his father. It is his father, after all, who has established the rhythms of time.

A cry emerges from David’s mouth. And, immediately, the threat is not disposed of, but David is provided the protection he needs to enter into sleep. His father will be his shield ‘round him’. His father will watch over him. David enters into sleep, which is his ‘beginning’. In this sleep we see that David has entered into and become what should be the proper relationship between man and creation. When man is awake during the night, the night will likely overtake him as it was about to overcome David. When he sleeps man is ‘made anew’ as in Genesis 1.

David’s confidence in the morning carries with it this sense that man begins and is made in his sleep. God has been long at work, providing both the needed darkness and the needed protection, to David long before his eyes open. This is why, mid-way through the Psalm, just as it is mid-way through the day, and long after we have been given a glimpse of the Lord’s ‘work’, that we are given this one, brief, and in its brevity, profound sense of life giving confidence. David’s assurance and the sun’s rising are embodiments of a creation that is being reestablished in the righteousness of God and his anointed.