(A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.) Jehovah, how many are they that trouble me, many they that rise up against me!
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Many say of my soul, There is no salvation for him in God. Selah.
The words in this verse are not David's own. They are the verdict of a crowd watching him flee from his son Absalom — a verdict about his God. Does a man under God's own discipline still have any claim on God's help? And who has the right to answer that?
David's trouble was not one enemy but a movement. One writer counts the crowd behind Absalom, and sees in it a picture of a later betrayal:
David was not thinking only of Absalom, but of the great number whom Absalom had influenced to follow him. Absalom's uprising reminds us of the treachery of the coming Antichrist. He will first win the favour of the Jewish remnant, then turn against them, lifting himself up to claim to be God.
Another writer sees the same pattern in the future remnant of Israel. The mockery comes from their own people, not from foreigners:
The remnant is suffering persecution, and it comes from their own unbelieving brothers, who sneer at them and mock. "There is no salvation (deliverance) for him in God."
The mockers did not deny that God was at work. They saw His hand in David's collapse, and that is where their mistake began. Older translations word the taunt as "There is no help for him in God," which is how the writers below quote it:
All around him they murmur, "there is no help for him in God." Many are right to see God in the circumstances, but wrong to judge Him by the circumstances alone. There is an easy faith — the faith of Job's friends — that takes the clouds and darkness "all around Him" at face value, as if they revealed Him instead of hiding Him. It is a simple theology, and the sufferer himself is often tempted to adopt it: that God's love never wears a disguise. In fact it is His delight to find a soul close enough to Him to see through the disguise, and climb through the darkness to the perfect Light above.
The taunt was not just unkind. It was the truth turned inside out:
In this conclusion they were completely wrong. The exact opposite was true. There was no help for him anywhere but in God, as the next two verses show. Jehovah was a shield of protection to him. He was also the One in whom he could make his boast, the One who would lift up his head when men sought to cast him down.
The same writer traces the taunt back past the crowd to its real source. His warning is for any believer under God's discipline:
The devil's aim would be to keep us from turning to God. He will never lack many voices to speak his wishes and hint that God is no longer on our side: there is no hope or help for us in Him. Let us learn the lesson that this is a lie. David under discipline was not shut out from God, and neither are we.
David's calm rested on something settled long before Absalom marched. The prophet who exposed his sin had also announced that God had taken it away:
"The Lord also has put away your sin." That was the prophet's ready word of reassurance to the guilt-stricken king. So his soul had been fully restored to God. His conscience had been washed clean from the stain of his sin. Yet many quiet years had passed since then, and he had to keep in mind the discipline the Lord had announced. God would surely carry it out at the right time.
The same sentence came back centuries later, at the cross:
Many said of David, "There is no help for him in God." In the same way, the chief priests, scribes and elders of Israel mocked Christ as they watched Him on the cross: "He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him." So men mistake God's patience for not caring, or for letting them off. But God's time is not man's. In His own time He will step in, just as He did after Christ was crucified and buried.
The verse ends with a word that is an instruction, not a comment:
The word Selah occurs 71 times in the Psalms. It means "to pause." A second meaning is to "lift up." We can take it as a sign that as we read we should pause, think, and then lift up our hearts in praise and prayer.
- Many say. The pressure here is a chorus, not a single enemy — and it came from David's own people, sneering while he fled.
- Many misread. They were right that God was in the disaster. They were wrong to judge Him by it — the easy faith of Job's friends.
- Many are wrong. Reverse their sentence and you have the fact: there was no help for David anywhere except in God.
- Many carry a lie. The whisper "God is finished with you" comes from the devil, and he never lacks mouths to carry it. David under discipline was not shut out from God, and neither are we.
- Many will hear it again. The same taunt met Christ on the cross, and God answered it in His own time. So the verse ends with Selah: pause, and lift up your heart.
But thou, Jehovah, art a shield about me; my glory, and the lifter up of my head.
David is running for his life from his own son Absalom, and the cruelest wound is the taunt that God has left him. Verse 3 turns from what men say to what God is.
The taunt in verse 2 looked true. Nothing visible argued that God was for David.
This taunt was the most bitter part of his bitter cup. All his life he had faced enemies, and men had hunted him like a partridge on the mountains. But if the wicked hint that God had now abandoned him were true, he had never been in so bad a state. To human eyes his enemies were right, for every sign of God's help and favour was missing. Yet faith won. Though David was in the deepest pit of trouble, he turned from men and appealed to God.
The same accusation is still thrown at believers today. One writer names its source:
The devil's aim would be to keep us from turning to God. He will never lack many people to voice his wishes and hint that God will no longer be on our side, and that there is no hope or help for us in Him. Let us learn the lesson that this is a lie. David under discipline was not shut out from God, and neither are we.
The first title is protection. One writer notes how complete it is.
With this shield of faith the psalmist fortifies himself. Better still, it is God who is his shield — so it is no partial defence, but a defence "round about" him. Perhaps he would not have realised He was so near, if the need had not been so great... So he can add, "the Uplifter of my head." What holds him up is not pride, and not stubbornness that refuses to give in, and not natural courage on its own. It is the sweet grasp of the "I AM" of God.
A man on the run has nothing left to boast about. David still had something, and his critics could not see it.
Verse 3 shows the simplicity of faith. Against the sneers of wicked men, David declares that the Lord was a shield for him, his protector even in the middle of his sufferings. But the Lord was also "my glory," the Object of David's pure delight. Others could not see what David did: that when he was persecuted, God was still his cause of rejoicing.
The third title looks ahead. God will lift the head, but David could not see it yet.
Despite outward appearances, faith sees that the Lord is a shield for the godly. He is his glory, the One in whom he boasts. And in due time He will lift up his head, though for the moment the enemy looks like the winner (Ps. 27:5-6; Ps. 110:7).
David's trouble was God's hand on him after his own sin. One writer links this psalm back to Psalm 51.
We venture to say that David would never have written like this in Psalm 3, when he fled from Absalom, if he had not first written Psalm 51. That psalm poured out his heart in confession of his great sin. But he had judged himself and acknowledged his sin. God restored him to communion with Himself, so he could face with confidence the trouble that came on him under God's governmental dealings.
Another writer looks at David's flight and sees the purpose of the sorrow:
How the discipline of that hour entered into his soul!... The true value of sorrow and trial is to lead the soul into simple and felt reliance on God.
The taunt did not stop with David. One writer hears the same sneer at the cross.
Many said of David, "There is no help for him in God." In the same way the chief priests, scribes and elders of Israel mocked Christ as they watched Him on the cross: "He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him." So men mistake God's patience for indifference. But God's time is not man's. In His own time He will step in, as He did after men had crucified and buried Christ. What a deliverance that was, when God raised Christ from among the dead!
- The taunt. "No help for him in God" was the sharpest part of David's pain. The devil still whispers that lie to believers under God's discipline.
- The shield. Not a partial defence but God Himself all around him — and it may take great need before we realise He is that near.
- The glory. With everything else gone, David still boasted in the Lord. Others could not see why a hunted man was rejoicing.
- The lifted head. God lifts the head He promised to lift, in His own time — even while the enemy still looks like the winner.
- The reach. The same taunt reached Christ on the cross, and God answered it by raising Him from the dead.
With my voice will I call to Jehovah, and he will answer me from the hill of his holiness. Selah.
David wrote this psalm while running for his life from his own son Absalom. Here he cries out, and God hears him. Where the answer comes from matters as much as the answer itself.
This cry comes out of one particular kind of trouble. David had not earned it by innocence. He had earned it by his own sin.
Sometimes a child of God suffers trials and sorrows he has brought on himself. In His holy government God has placed His hand upon him, and he has to reap what he has sown. This is the hardest test of all. When David wrote Psalm 3 he was in this plight, for he was fleeing from Absalom his son. That was the darkest hour of his whole life, because every detail of it paid him back for what he had done.
A person under God's discipline can still pray with confidence. But something has to happen first. One writer traces David's freedom here back to an earlier psalm of confession.
We would say that David could never have written Psalm 3 as he did, while fleeing from Absalom, if he had not first written Psalm 51. That psalm poured out his heart in confession of his great sin. But he judged himself and admitted his sin. God then brought him back into communion. So he could face the trouble God's government brought on him, with confidence in Him.
Anyone in trouble can cry out. What matters is what came back.
In the third psalm we have the enemies, the surroundings; and the One who is here for God is the blessed Lord Himself. So it is written, "I cried, and He heard." That is the great point with us. It is not merely crying because of sorrows and difficulties here, but it is having the sense in our souls that He hears.
Being heard and being rescued are not the same thing. David's own story shows the gap between them.
Deliverance did not come at once. It did not, as we know. But David knew in his soul that the Lord had heard his cry. So he could wait calmly and expect His help in His own time and way… Whatever the outward circumstances, it is enough for the soul to be sure that God has bent down His ear and heard its cry.
David does not just say he got an answer. He names the place it came from. God's chosen King reigns on the holy hill of Zion, and that is where the answer comes from.
Where does He hear me from? "Out of His holy hill." He is there. We are here with all our small concerns, our disappointments, our stumbles, our failures. And we find that He is there, at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high, God's anointed King on His holy hill of Zion. In the psalm He says that is where He hears from — from His holy hill. Knowing that He hears us from His holy hill gives real rest. It is what makes us able to face ten thousand people drawn up against us without fear.
The word "holy" is not decoration. It describes the character of the One answering, and it explains the pause marked at the verse's end.
His prayer in verse 4 was the prayer of faith, with simple confidence that God would hear. And God did hear "from His holy hill" — that is, from the place of high exaltation, where holiness stays clean of the emptiness of human thought. Because God is holy, He loves what is good and hates evil… No wonder the word says "Selah" — pause and consider.
(Note: the older translation these writers use reads "he heard me"; the ESV renders it "he answered me.")
The answer did not move the threat. It moved the man.
Prayer does not always change our circumstances. It changes us. Instead of being distressed and distracted we are kept in peace and sustained in the trial (Phil. 4:6-7). We see this again and again in the psalmist's own experience. In the middle of his trials he cries to the Lord and knows he is heard. The trials go on as before, yet God keeps him in peace. He sleeps, and God sustains him. He wakes to the full weight of the trial, but can face it without fear.
Commentators also read this psalm beyond David's own crisis. One writer sees in it a prophetic picture of Christ:
Read this way, this Psalm is full of profit. Yet it carries a higher meaning still. It is a prophetic picture of what the Holy One of God went through. Enemies who wanted His life closed in around Him, and He trusted God as One near at hand both to justify and to deliver.
- Reaping. David's trouble was the harvest of his own sin — the hardest test of all, and still no barrier to prayer.
- Restored. Confession came first. A conscience already judged let him pray with confidence under discipline.
- Heard. The turning point is not the volume of the cry but the settled sense in the soul that God has heard it.
- From Zion. The answer comes from the holy hill, where God's anointed King reigns. Knowing where it comes from takes away the fear of ten thousand enemies.
- Rest. Prayer changes the person before it changes the circumstances. David sleeps, wakes, and faces the same threat unafraid. Selah — pause and consider.
I laid me down and slept; I awaked, for Jehovah sustaineth me.
David wrote this while running for his life from his own son Absalom, with no palace and no army — and yet he slept. The question every reader asks is how a hunted man sleeps at all, and whether that rest is available to anyone else.
One writer sets David's restless nights of comfort beside this night in the open:
Days of ease are not the best for us. Grasp that, and it will help us greatly. David's career gives striking proof of it. When his prosperity was at its high tide, he forgot the God whose goodness had followed him all his life. He could not rest, even though he lay on a curtained couch in a great palace. There his unsatisfied heart and restless eye led him into that foul sin that stained his name. But in the darkest hour of this strange history, his traitor son hunted him for his blood, and his only bed was the cold earth on the hillside. Still he could sing… Prosperity and the palace, with forgetfulness of God, gave birth to sin. Adversity, with the Lord at hand, produced the Psalm that still sings its music to our souls.
The calm of this verse is harder to explain than it looks. One writer traces it back to something David had already settled with God:
We venture to say this. David would never have written like this in Psalm 3, as he fled from Absalom, if he had not first written Psalm 51. That psalm was the outpouring of his heart in confession of his great sin. But he judged himself and acknowledged his sin. God restored him to communion with Himself, and so he could face the trouble that came on him under God's governing hand, with confidence in Him.
There is a sleep that only means a man is finished. This verse means something else:
"I lay down and slept," he says. This is plainly not the sleep of someone who is only worn out, for whom sleep has become a necessity. Men have slept on the deck of a ship in battle; but that is not the sleep spoken of here. It is the peace of a known wall of defence all around that makes such sleep possible. Night has its special dangers in the middle of warfare, and in the darkness the imagination pictures more than may be there. Yet faith can rest and be quiet under the watchful eye of God, and the morning proves the assurance right: "I woke again, for the LORD sustained me."
No enemy has withdrawn. No throne has come back. Only one thing has moved:
He was so calmed by the assurance that God had heard him that he lay down and slept. His circumstances had not changed at all. But now he had the Lord between him and his circumstances, and that changed everything. So peace reigned in his soul, and he could lie down and sleep, for in truth the everlasting arms were underneath him. So he adds, "I woke again, for the LORD sustained me." What a blessed rest, which the sense of the Lord's protection and favour brings! And no sleep refreshes like the sleep that ends with the assurance, on waking, that the Lord has sustained.
One writer finds a picture in the daily round of sleeping and waking:
Others have observed that our history every twenty-four hours (the period covered in these Psalms) is itself a kind of mystery. After spending the day, at night we lay aside our clothes and enter into sleep, the emblem of death. There we stay, with visions in the spirit, until the morning wakes us. Then we put on our clothes again, as we shall be clothed in the second morning — the morning of resurrection and glory.
The verse also tests where our own rest sits:
"I lay down and slept... for the LORD sustained me." How forceful and how simple! Is it so with you, reader? Does all trouble find your heart resting on God as your Father? When trouble multiplies, is your spirit still at rest, your sleep sweet? Do you lie down, sleep, and rise as if all were peace around you, because you know God is there and disposes of everything? Is He like this between you and your troubles and your troublers? And if He is, what can reach you? The thousands of enemies make no difference if God is there… We are foolish about difficulties and trials. We measure them by our strength instead of God's, who is for us if we are His.
- Heard. God heard David first, and the sleep followed. Rest is the result, not a technique.
- Cleared. Confession came before calm. A heart already judged before God can face the results of its own sin without panic.
- Kept. This is not collapse from exhaustion. It is rest inside a known defence — the everlasting arms under a man on bare ground.
- Unchanged. Not one circumstance improved. God stood between him and them, and that changed everything.
- Waking. Every night of trusting sleep points to a larger morning. Then sleep gives way to resurrection and glory.
I will not fear for myriads of the people that have set themselves against me round about.
David wrote this line while running for his life. His own son Absalom had turned the nation against him, and he had no army to count on. Nothing around him had changed when he said it. So what makes a surrounded man fearless?
David is not speaking from safety. He speaks from the lowest point of his life, out of trouble he brought on himself.
Sometimes a child of God is in a place where he is hurting under trials and sorrows that he has really brought on his own head. In His holy government God has laid His hand on him, and he has to reap what he has sown. This is perhaps the hardest test of all. David was in this plight when he wrote Psalm 3, for he was fleeing from his son Absalom. That was perhaps the darkest hour in his whole life, because every detail of it paid him back for what he had done.
That confidence had a history. David had already confessed his sin to God.
We dare to say that David would never have written like this in Psalm 3, when he fled from Absalom, if he had not first written Psalm 51. That psalm poured out his heart in confessing his great sin. But he had judged himself and owned his sin, so God restored him to communion with Himself. That is why he could face the trouble God's government brought on him, and face it with confidence in Him.
Read the verse carefully and you notice the crowd is still there. Something else went.
So had all the enemies been driven away? No — but his fears had... Inside he was safe, like a city with a garrison, even though on the outside he still looked exposed.
Fear drains away because of who stands between David and the crowd. Once God is in that place, counting the enemy is pointless. (Older translations read "ten thousands" where the ESV has "many thousands.")
When troubles come, whether one or many, the believer can find his "shield" in the Lord. A shield is the piece of armour a man holds between himself and his enemy. It is a blessed thing when faith sees that God is between us and all our troubles. Then it does not matter if the enemy grows to "ten thousands of people." If it is a question of us and the enemy, even one is too strong for us. If it is a question of God and the enemy, it makes no difference whether one or ten thousand stand against us.
Nothing in David's situation improved to justify this. His courage rested on something other than odds.
Courage, divine courage, now filled the king's heart. It was no longer a question of appearances or numbers. He had no more supporters than when he escaped from Jerusalem. Humanly speaking, he had no chance of beating the forces lined up against him. But the Lord had shown Himself to his soul in blessing, and now he could quietly hope and wait for His salvation.
Verse 6 does not stand alone. It draws its strength from the cry two verses earlier and from where the answer came.
He is there, at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high — God's anointed King on His holy hill of Zion. And in the psalm He says that this is where He hears from: from His holy hill. Knowing that He hears us out of His holy hill is what gives real rest. It is what makes a man able not to fear the ten thousands of people lined up around him, but to keep looking at Him.
The Hebrew behind "people" here is not a general word for crowds. It sharpens the pain of the scene: these are David's own nation.
The word used for "people" in the singular usually means Israel... In Psalm 3:6 the word is am, Israel.
One writer sees the psalm reaching past David's own crisis to a time still ahead.
Notice again that we are in the last days here. Though the godly man is surrounded by his enemies, he rests in peace. By prophecy he sees their destruction, and blessing on Israel. The psalm expresses confidence in God when hostile numbers press in and there is nothing else to fall back on. Christ has surely entered fully into this.
Another writer adds a caution. Faith like this is real, but it still has to grow.
This faith is beautiful. It is real, fully warranted, and certain to be proved right in the end. Yet as we follow these psalms to their close, we find how many painful experiences may come first. The childlike instinct has to grow into the settled knowledge of a grown man. Only then does "I will not be afraid" become something the soul holds onto for good.
- Confessed — David had judged his own sin, and God had restored him. That is why he could face discipline calmly.
- Heard — this fearlessness rests on verse 4. David knew God had answered his cry from His holy hill.
- Shielded — God stood between him and his troubles. Against God, one enemy or ten thousand is the same.
- Unchanged — the enemies never left; his fears did. He was safe inside while still exposed outside.
- Growing — these words are real faith. Even so, painful trials may come before "I will not be afraid" is settled in the soul.
Arise, Jehovah; save me, my God! For thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone, thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked.
David prays this while running for his life from his own son Absalom. Yet the second half of the verse speaks of the enemy as already beaten. That mix of urgent plea and settled certainty is worth slowing down over. What does it mean to ask God to "arise" while saying He has already struck?
One writer draws out why this trouble cut so deep. The betrayal came from inside David's own circle.
No enemy is so trying as the traitor among God's people; and the nearer to the king, the more pain, sorrow, and shame there is. The king had known more than one deep humiliation, but never one so heartbreaking, and so public, as this. Yet David's sorrow was far from pure. In Christ the same sorrow was purer and deeper in every way.
The first half of the verse asks God to act. That prayer looks past the danger of the moment to a final outcome.
He looks to the Lord to arise and act for him. He is looking ahead to the time when God sets all his enemies aside in judgment. Then the Lord's people reach their final blessing.
The verse gives a reason for the plea. Older translations put that reason in the past tense — God has struck them — and the writers quoted below follow that older wording. Nothing had visibly changed in David's circumstances; his confidence rested elsewhere.
Faith makes the things hoped for sure and solid, and so David saw all his enemies struck down and defeated. He was already enjoying the victory, because he knew that God had taken up his cause. It is a great thing for the soul to lean on the Lord with unshaken trust at the worst moment. It leaves everything in His hands. We so easily think something depends on our own energy and activity, and in this way we shut the Lord out.
The second half of the verse turns to teeth. One writer traces that picture through two other Bible scenes.
"You have broken the teeth of the ungodly." This is a picture of breaking their power to devour those they counted as enemies. Psalm 22:13 says, "They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion." Acts 7:54 shows the other side of it. The religious leaders of Israel had arrested Stephen. They hated being exposed as enemies of God, and they "ground their teeth at him." Break a man's teeth, and he can no longer grind them, however much he would like to.
David had already asked God to keep him safe. Here he turns to what should happen to his enemies.
In verse 4 he had cried to the Lord for his own protection. Now he is sure of it, so he asks for the defeat of his enemies (v. 7). He even grasps the answer in advance: "For You have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone." Such a blow leaves a man far less bold. God answered this prayer more fully than David wanted. David had asked for Absalom to be spared (2 Sam. 18:5), and he was not.
Commentators read the psalm as more than David's diary. One sees in this verse a single cause shared by the Messiah and the godly who suffer with Him.
In Psalm 3, verse 7, the Messiah and the godly share one common interest. The ungodly are active and in power. The right to rule belongs to the Messiah, but the ungodly still refuse it. Meanwhile the faithful few are oppressed and suffering.
That reading also sets a limit on how directly a Christian can borrow the words. Here, rescue comes when judgment falls on enemies. The Christian's hope has a different shape.
The soul's experiences here, and the desires it expresses, show that the psalm has in view a godly Jew. He is waiting for blessing on earth in the coming kingdom age. That blessing comes when God judges the nations living at that time. The Christian's blessings are heavenly. He does not reach his full and final blessing through the judgment of his enemies. He reaches it when the Lord comes to take him to heaven.
- Betrayal — the sharpest wound comes from inside: a traitor near the throne, and public shame. Christ entered that same sorrow more deeply and purely.
- Arise — the prayer asks God to act now. It also reaches to the day when God sets every enemy aside and His people come into their blessing.
- Already — faith turns the plea into the past tense. David enjoys the victory before he sees it, because the cause is God's now, not his own effort.
- Teeth — cheek and teeth picture the power to devour and the rage to grind. Broken, the enemy keeps his hatred but loses his bite.
- More than asked — God answered beyond David's own wish. David wanted Absalom spared, and he was not.
Salvation is of Jehovah; thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah.
The psalm closes with a fugitive king, hunted by his own son, saying the one thing his circumstances seemed to deny. Everything before it is pressure: growing enemies, mocking voices, a cry for help. Then the psalm ends with two short statements about God. Rescue is His to give. His people are the ones He blesses.
One writer gives a more exact rendering of the line: salvation is from the Lord. He hears the same lesson in Jonah, the man who prayed from inside the fish that swallowed him.
The end is now reached, and the lesson of the whole psalm is proclaimed. It falls into two parts: "Salvation belongs to the Lord: Your blessing is upon Your people." Notice first that a more accurate rendering is: "Salvation is from, or of, the Lord." This is the very lesson Jonah learned in the belly of the fish. Remember what happened: the moment the words passed from his lips, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it threw Jonah up onto the dry land. To teach them this precious truth is the object of all God's dealings with His people.
The same writer describes how the lesson is learned. For many of God's people, it comes through sorrow.
Through all their sin and failure, as with David, Jonah, and Peter, God always has this end in view. The lesson must be learned; but oh, what sorrowful experiences many of God's saints have to pass through in order to gain it. They have to be sifted, broken down, and disciplined, so that they may discover there is no help for them but in God... Do not rest, dear reader, until you have learned this blessed truth, for it is the secret of a calm, victorious, and holy life.
If rescue belongs to God, the one rescued adds nothing to it. One writer shows how far down it reaches, and who does each part of it.
"Salvation is of the Lord," from first to last. It is free, unconditional, everlasting salvation. It reaches down to where the sinner is in all his guilt, ruin, and degradation. It lifts him up to where God is, in all His holiness, truth, and righteousness. And it lasts for ever. God the Father is its source, God the Son is its channel, and God the Holy Spirit is the power of application and enjoyment. It is all of God, from beginning to end, from the foundation to the topmost stone, from everlasting to everlasting.
David is still on the run when he says this. He is not reporting a victory. He is announcing one. The older wording quoted below speaks of his enemies as already beaten, where the ESV puts those words in the present tense.
It is not doubt but faith that made him say, "Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God! For You have struck all my enemies on the cheek; You have broken the teeth of the wicked." His confidence runs ahead of the facts, and in the spirit of prophecy sees the end from the beginning. "To the Lord belongs salvation; Your blessing is upon Your people." The Christian can sing an even higher song. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Up to here the psalm is personal: my enemies, my cry. The last line widens to "your people." Older translations read this half as a statement of fact; the ESV reads it as a prayer. One writer ties the safety of the many to the safety of the one.
The eventual triumph of the Lord is certain: "Salvation belongs to the Lord" (v. 8). That triumph also includes the blessing of all His people, for they are just as secure from defeat as their Lord is. Selah!
The verse does not say how large the blessing is. Another writer answers that by pairing it with what Christ received.
Do we really understand, deep in our souls, what God is doing? In everything He puts us through He has only one aim for us, and only one aim for Christ. As to us it is blessing; as to Christ it is glory... The blessed Lord glorified God in this world, and God has glorified Him in heavenly glory. So He has all the glory, and we have all the blessing. His glory is the measure of our blessing... The blessing we are set in here answers to the glory He is in at God's right hand.
- Emptied — God sifts and breaks His people down until they find there is no help anywhere but in Him.
- Owned — salvation is God's from first to last: Father the source, Son the channel, Spirit the power. We add nothing.
- Declared — faith says it while the enemies still stand. David announces the outcome while he is still running.
- Shared — what one hunted man received spills over to "Your people," who are as secure as the Lord they belong to.
- Measured — Christ's glory sets the size of their blessing. He has all the glory; they have all the blessing.