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.
The Bed This Song Came From
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.
Confession Came First
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.
What Kind of Sleep
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."
Nothing Changed, Everything Changed
No enemy has withdrawn.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.
Waking as a Picture
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 Question It Puts to the Reader
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.
Summary
- 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.