Ps. 56.12-13 ("light of life")

I have bound myself / with vows to you / O God

I am ready / to make thank offerings / to you

Surely / you will deliver me / from death.

Have you not / kept my feet / from stumbling?

to let me / go on walking / before God 

in the light / of life.   

In this concluding portion the psalmist places himself within a the span of covenant and liturgy. In the past, he “bound himself with vows” to God—referring, it seems, to a covenantal ceremony whereby he (probably with sacrifices and vows) entered into covenant with God. It was on the basis of this covenant that he implored in verse 1 for ‘mercy’ (in covenant, this is the act taken by the stronger party on behalf of the weaker, that are to be performed in order to remove all obstacles to covenantal fidelity and obligations). Furthermore, this past action is clearly being restated in order to ‘activate’ the covenantal bond of ‘mercy’ (i.e., it is an implicit ‘demand’ that God perform an act of redemption on his part because of the bond he has made with the psalmist). The present is therefore a time not merely of anticipation but of igniting through complaint the covenantal power of God in redemption. For that reason, he now looks forward to the liturgical effect of redemption: thank-offerings. These offerings would be made after a time of deliverance from sickness or enemies (or, here, perhaps a thwarted coup). It is likely, also, that the ‘vows’ alluded to were vows to provide these thank-offerings to God in the presence of the community. The present, therefore, is also a time of forward-looking, of seeing the fulfilled vow, of finding the future, in a sense, already made present: “Surely, you will deliver me from death…”. The final verse restates this but in a personal key. It looks back to the personal understanding of the psalmist when God has “kept my feet from stumbling (into Sheol)” and then shifts to the future when God will “let me go on walking before God, in the light of life”. This final verse is crucial to see as it relates to the themes that we have traced throughout, specifically that deliverance ‘has a date’. One does not see any conception of deliverance here that is not a purely ‘earthly’ one. The psalmist is looking forward to a concrete time in the future that he will be delivered from his enemies, a time where he will be able to offer thank-offering in fulfillment of his vows. It is not a time ‘after death’. Deliverance comes within the current time-spectrum of the living. The reason this is important to stress is because here we find the germ of resurrection faith, the concrete belief that deliverance will come, that heaven will ‘come to earth’ and deliver God’s people from affliction. This deliverance will not be an escape. If it were merely an escape, God’s wrath would not be necessary. Rather, what we find is, in the full sense, redemption (leading to, resurrection).