And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away, and be at rest;
Psalm 55 is the prayer of a man who fears no army outside the gates. His danger is inside his own city, among friends he once worshipped with — and in verse 6 his heart gives up on the place and asks for wings.
The wish for wings comes out of a scene the psalmist knows from the inside.
Psalm 55 is a distressing picture of wickedness in Jerusalem. The speaker is outside the city, but he has felt this wickedness in the betrayal of his closest friends. His resource is in God: Jehovah will save… Wickedness went about her walls. Wickedness, deceit, and guile were in her midst, and did not depart from her streets. He would gladly have fled from it all. The enemy was outside, the wicked inside… Still his trust was in God, for where else should he seek help?
The choice of bird carries meaning. One writer traces what the dove's wing once did, and what it does now.
It is not without meaning that the dove — the type of heavenly purity and love and sorrow, the symbol of the Spirit of Christ, as in the gospels — is named here rather than any other bird. The wing of the dove carried Christ into the scene of sin and misery to deliver men. But here, when grace has been rejected and the sin of men has ripened, just ready for the harvest, the dove is preparing for her flight away. Holiness now means only separation from stubborn rebellion and unrelenting hatred of God. And now the solitude of the wilderness attracts her.
Notice what the psalmist is willing to trade: a walled city for open country where wild animals live.
We may notice that the strong thought in this Psalm is this: the city is worse even than a wilderness. For if the afflicted one here could have done it, he would have exchanged the first for the second. But what a view of man this gives us! He makes his place more terrible than the haunts of wild beasts! For "the city" is man's place. And through human strife and fraud and violence, it becomes worse than the place of the untamed creatures. … Jesus found it to be so, and His relief was only in God.
Commentators read the psalm on more than one level: David's own history, and a greater sorrow it points to.
This Psalm still, like the ones before it, has in view the lawless or wilful king and his faction. Some of it is the utterance of the Lord Jesus as He considers the treachery of Judas and the faction that followed him. … But this Psalm is also the utterance, in his measure, of David himself, under the craft and treason of Ahithophel in company with Absalom. (See 2 Sam. 15, 16.) John 13:21 shows us how deeply the Lord felt the conduct of Judas, as this Psalm does; as also Ps. 41. But His relief was in prayer.
This prayer is not a mood God corrects. One writer sees God meeting it with a real place.
God will answer the psalmist's desire. He will provide a place in the wilderness where the godly may fly away (Rev. 12:14), safe from the judgments that will fall on Jerusalem at that time — the three and a half year Great Tribulation. … In fact, the godly will be called at that time to "flee to the mountains," not even taking time to gather their possessions (Matt. 24:15-18).
In a later psalm the same image returns, but the wings are no longer his own.
When David was fleeing before Saul to the cave (Ps. 57:1), he cried out, "Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in You my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by." Now he is not seeking the wings of a dove with which to fly away, but the shadow of the wings of the Most High to take refuge under. So we read at the end of Psalm 55, in verse 22: "Cast your burden on the LORD, and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved."
- Within — The threat is not an army at the gates. It is corruption inside the walls, and betrayal by trusted friends. Commentators find the same wound in David under Ahithophel and in Christ over Judas.
- Wings — The dove is no random bird. Its wing once carried Christ into the world's misery. Now it readies itself to leave a scene that has refused grace.
- Wilderness — His trade exposes man. He would sooner live among wild animals than in the city man built.
- Wish granted — God does not rebuke the longing to fly. One writer sees Him answering it with a real place of shelter, and a real call to flee.
- Wings again — But the psalm does not end in flight. The wings he rests under at the end are God's. The burden he wanted to outrun is one God tells him to hand over.
Behold, I would flee afar off, I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah;
The psalmist wants to be gone — out of the city, far away, camped in the wilderness. But the danger he wants to escape sits inside the walls of the very city God chose. So the psalm has to answer one question. Is running away the resource of faith, or is there something better?
One writer sets the scene. The wickedness is in Jerusalem itself, and the psalm looks at it from outside. Yet trust in God holds:
From outside, Psalm 55 grieves over the wickedness in their Jerusalem. Yet God is trusted, and Jehovah will save.
The wish sounds strange. The wilderness is empty, while Jerusalem had the temple. One commentator, writing about the land Jesus came into, explains why the empty place was still the better one:
It was a moral wilderness He came to, but the wilderness was better than the city with its temple, where they were all spiritually wrong. The Psalmist says, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove!" — he wants to get from the city to the wilderness.
Another writer shows how far things have fallen. Jerusalem should be an Israelite's greatest joy:
Inside the very city God chose as His earthly center, conditions will be such that God is pushed right out. Believing Israelites would normally value Jerusalem above their chief joy (Psalm 132:6), and would want to live there. But now the psalmist says, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest" (v. 6).
Several writers read the psalm as a picture of godly Israelites in a coming time of trouble. God does not refuse their longing. He gives them the very escape they ask for:
God will answer that desire. He will provide a place in the wilderness where the godly may fly away (Rev. 12:14). There they will be kept safe from the judgments that will fall on Jerusalem at that time — "a time, times and a half a time" — the three and a half year Great Tribulation. In fact, at that time God will call the godly to "flee to the mountains." They will not even stop to gather their possessions (Matt. 24:15-18).
The oppressor here is not a foreigner. Another commentator names the man behind the terror, and names the storm the wings would carry the godly away from:
The man of sin, the Antichrist, stands out in this Psalm. Because of him and his oppression, the godly remnant calls for help. Horror overwhelms them. Seeing the abomination, they wish for wings like a dove, to escape the storm and tempest of the great tribulation. And this wicked one, the Antichrist, belongs to the nation itself. He is not a stranger. He is the man with a flattering tongue, who even walked in the house of God.
Yet the psalm does not end here. One writer sets this verse beside a later psalm of David, and the wings change owner:
When David was fleeing from Saul to the cave (Ps. 57:1), he cried out, "Be merciful to me, O God ... for in You my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by." Now he is not looking for the wings of a dove to fly away with. He wants the shadow of the wings of the Most High to shelter under. So at the end of Psalm 55, in verse 22, we read: "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved."
- Wings wished for. The cry is honest panic in a city that has pushed God out, and the psalm records the wish without shame.
- Wings, because the city is worse. The wilderness wins not for its beauty, but because the city with the temple in it had gone wrong before God.
- Wings against a named storm. Commentators read the tempest as the great tribulation, driven by an oppressor from within the nation, not a stranger.
- Wings granted. God answers the longing instead of refusing it. He prepares a place in the wilderness and calls the godly to flee without stopping to pack.
- Wings to hide under. The psalm ends with better wings: not a dove's, to fly away with, but God's, to shelter under — and a burden handed to Him instead of carried out of town.
I would hasten my escape from the stormy wind, from the tempest.
Verse 8 closes a wish that began two verses earlier. The sufferer is not asking for a better mood. He wants distance — a shelter far off, reached in a hurry, before the storm breaks. Commentators ask two things of this wish: what is he running from, and does God ever say yes to a prayer like this?
Commentators read the wind and tempest as judgment gathering over Jerusalem. The flight is a move from a defiled place to an empty one.
The verses that follow show the misery of the godly remnant in Jerusalem, during the reign of antichrist. Inside, the heart of the godly man is deeply distressed. Outside, he faces death. He longs to flee from the defiled city to some lonely spot. There he may escape the storm and tempest of judgment about to break over the doomed city (see Matt. 24:15-22).
Escape looks attractive because no direction is safe. The trouble is not only at the gates.
Wickedness went around her walls. Wickedness, deceit and guile were inside her, and never left her streets. He would gladly have fled from it all. The enemy was outside, the wicked inside. But they charged the godly with wickedness, and hated them bitterly. Worst of all was the heartless treachery of those within — those with whom the godly had gone to the house of God. Still his trust was in God, for where else should he seek help?
The longing to be far away is not treated as a failure of faith to be corrected. One writer reads it as a prayer God intends to grant, in the very terms it was asked.
But now the psalmist says, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest" (v. 6). God will answer that desire. He will provide a place in the wilderness where the godly may fly away (Rev. 12:14). There He will keep them safe from the judgments that will fall on Jerusalem at that time — "a time, times and half a time," the three and a half year Great Tribulation… In fact, at that time God will call the godly to "flee to the mountains," and they will not even take time to gather their possessions (Matt. 24:15-18).
Note what he leaves behind. It is not a foreign city. It is the one place he loved, now unfit to live in. So the cry is for separation, not comfort.
The next section dwells on the misery of the remnant amid the general departure from God. They long to escape from the city, which is still to them the city of God. But it is defiled and profaned, and the Spirit of Christ makes them cry out for separation from it. And they do get that chance, as we know (Matt. 24:15 and following); the first psalm of this book finds them outside the city.
This urge to leave a place that has shown its true character is not foreign to the Lord. One writer points to His own withdrawals in the Gospels.
It is, so to speak, the departure of Christ (in Spirit in the remnant) from the city in that day (Matt. 16:13; Mark 7:24; John 11:54). He has discovered — they have discovered — their true character. He withdraws, and His Spirit would withdraw as far as possible from such a scene and state… A friend or religious associate was the worst enemy, because the nearest. Everyone knows how this came true in the blessed Saviour Himself.
The escape wish is verse 8, but it is not the psalm's last word. By the end the same man is telling others what to do when the people they trusted turn on them.
He is sure of deliverance, because he counts on God (16-19). He tells of the treachery of the man who has broken the covenant (20, 21). He then advises other godly ones what to do in such a situation (22, 23)… Friends, counsellors and companions of years may fail. But Jehovah will sustain His servant, and He is ready to take his burden from him.
- Storm — The wind and tempest are judgment coming on a corrupt city. The enemy is outside and treachery inside, so no direction is safe.
- Escape — Wanting to fly far off and shelter in the wilderness is the honest cry of a believer who can no longer stay.
- Answer — Commentators read the wish as one God means to grant. He prepares a place in the wilderness and calls them to leave in haste, without packing.
- Separation — The place he flees is still "the city of God" to him. Defilement drives him out, so the flight is separation, not desertion.
- Rest — The psalm does not end in the wilderness. It ends with the burden handed over: friends may fail, but the Lord Himself sustains the one who trusts Him.