Why do many of the psalms of David sound so sad?

God’s anointed hunted like a partridge on the mountains, a king without a throne; at best a motley crew around him in the cave of Adullam, those distressed, in debt, discontented, all with their lives in their hands. It was a rough experience, and patience and endurance were sorely tried; yet tribulation taught David happier lessons than the prosperity of the throne. Those years of tribulation produced the Psalms, which have comforted the saints of God well nigh three thousand years. When Doeg, the Edomite, tells Saul that David had come to the house of Ahimelech, hear the answer of David’s heart to the question “Does God care?” “Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually” (Ps. 53:1); when the Ziphims come and say to Saul, “Doth not David hide himself with us?” his response is, “Behold God is mine helper: the Lord is with them that uphold my soul” (Ps. 54:4); and when he flees from Saul in the cave, he can sing, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise” (Ps. 57:7). So it ever is. God does care, spite of appearances to the contrary.

Psalms 57; 63; 142 from their titles date from about this time, a time of intense peril, yet of unequalled blessing, for David. Saul's forces were greatly increased, and he was more determined than ever to seek out his prey and destroy him. David felt it keenly: "Refuge hath failed me; no man careth for my soul. I cried unto thee, O Lord; I said, Thou art my refuge, My portion in the land of the living" (Ps. 142). yet, let his enemies rage as they may, he was never more sensible of the boundless range of the power of the Most High God, or more simply dependent on Him for protection. "I will cry unto God Most High, Unto God that performeth all things for me. He shall send from heaven, and save me From the reproach of him that would swallow me up" (Ps. 57).

What can David do with Goliath's sword in Gath? Would he even dare to show it? Association with the world and looking to it for protection too often lead to subjection to it. The title of Psalm 56 implies that this was his case, "The Philistines took him in Gath." Thus, after all that Ahimelech had risked for him and had ministered to him, his unbelief brought him into greater difficulties than those from which he fled. He confesses this in the Psalm: "Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; All the day long he fighting oppresseth me." His distress, more effectual than ministry, cast him upon the mercy of God, and not in vain. Brought into His presence, his faith revived: he became like the David of early days. What now was the estimate of his troubles? He saw at once the utter impotency of man, of whom he had lately been in such abject fear. "What can flesh do unto me? What can man do unto me? What time I am afraid I will trust in thee." If such was man, what had he learned of the Lord? That He was most compassionate, most merciful, entering into all his sorrows and with a perfect knowledge of them. Rarely was David's harp attuned to a sweeter note than is found here. Thou tellest my wanderings: Put thou my tears into thy bottle: Are they not in thy book"? And it is to be noted, that it is when in distress the soul values the word of God. The bed of suffering is very different from the study chair. There the heart has but little sympathy with questions as to the credit of the holy scriptures. Surely David had but little when he sung: "In God will I praise his word, In the LORD will I praise his word."

We are not told what caused David to write this psalm that at this time found him so depressed; but it may have been while he was an exile hunted by Saul. While his faith was in the Lord, yet faith wavered in feeling the Lord had forgotten him, and the time seemed so long that he feared it might be lengthened forever (v. 1). Such experiences are indeed a trial of faith, and especially since there is no indication of failure or sin on David's part. Yet the believer today may be lifted high above his circumstances if he only takes to heart the truth of the word of the Lord Jesus, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5). If it seems He has left us, this word is sufficient to negate such a fear.

Yet the psalm is surely prophetic of the distress of the godly remnant of Israel in the Tribulation period. In fact, the same words, "How long, O Lord," are in the mouths of the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6:10, though they will have been killed at that time. But here the psalmist asks, "How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?" Though the time seems interminable, yet it is God's wisdom that delays the answer, not only because He is patient toward the ungodly, but because He knows how needful it is for His servants to have prolonged exercise of heart in order for faith to be both tested and strengthened.

In the course of this group of psalms (11-15) the distress of the godly soul deepens. In Psalm 11 he sees the “foundations” going: in Psalm 12 the godly man ceases and the faithful fail from among the children of men; in this Psalm (13) the soul reaches the deepest point of distress, for the circumstances would make it appear that God Himself has forgotten the soul.

(v. 1) Though tried by evil without and fears within, the grace of God sustains the soul. Hence the cry, “How long?” This is the language of faith that clings to God, knowing that He will put a limit to the trials of His people, and the evil of the wicked. Faith can ask, “How long wilt thou forget?” in the midst of circumstances which seem to say, “For ever.”

Psalms 11 to 15 disclose feelings of the remnant; but there is confidence in God in time of trial. Christ puts into their hearts just what they want in the circumstances. Psalm 12 is the extremity of their distress - a godly man scarcely to be found. Psalm 13 is deeper distress of soul because of a sense of its being from God. The faith of God's people cannot go on for ever; they cry, "How long?" "Art thou treating us as if given up? If it goes on thus, I shall faint under it!" Psalm 14 is the character of the wicked to be cut off, as Psalm 15 is the character of the remnant who stand. The practically godly remnant will have the blessing when Christ comes. There is in Psalms 9, 10, the history of the tribulation - the fact of judgment; and then in Psalms 11, 12 and 13, their condition, thoughts, and feelings; and Psalm 15, the character of those on the holy hill, in contrast with the wicked set forth in Psalm 14.

How interesting, in this respect, to find in each of the six days' work wherein, in Genesis 1, we have seen the type of just this new creative work, this same stamp exhibited! On the Sabbath of rest it can be at last omitted. Thus "the evening and the morning" constitute each "day." The day begins with light indeed, but with evening-light, destined, as it would seem, only to make haste to die out and disappear, but to have ere long its resurrection "morning." Here, one would say, the sole purpose of the psalm is to affix this stamp: God thus snapping the ties of nature in all that sin has blighted, ending all creature — so all self — dependence, that all our trust may fasten on Himself. Then, when we make Him all, we find Him all; the natural truth, that "in Him we live and move and have our being," becomes a spiritual truth, spiritually discerned and enjoyed. As here, the soul beginning with a groan ends with a song. We have passed through a tunnel of earth to the unveiled glory of heaven.

The six verses fall into three couplets, so that the six is really a 3 x 2. It is at once a discipline and a lesson in mastery that we have in them. The cry here is of one desolate indeed, although, as has been noticed, conscience is not accusing as in the sixth psalm. The psalmist cries a strange cry, bred at once of intimacy and estrangement, that Jehovah — the Unchanging — has forgotten! Then will His forgetfulness now not change? Will it be perpetual? Who, indeed, can read such a riddle as this? Clouds have hid the sun, but who would then identify the sun and the cloud? The cloud passes, but the sun abides.

They are, indeed, in sore distress. The sealed remnant of Israel, named in the last chapter, are now about to be cast into the sevenfold furnace of the great tribulation. Already the cry is ascending from many a heart, "How long wilt thou forget me, O Jehovah? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" (Ps. 13; 1) Already a remnant of Israel are praying, "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake. Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God? let Him be known among the heathen in our sight by the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed." (Ps. 74:9-10.) The time of their deliverance is not yet come, but their groans and cries for judgment on their adversaries are heard.

If we now recur to the Psalm, we shall learn that it was so with David at this very moment. In the first three verses the circumstances and the position are stated; and the Psalmist, like Hezekiah of a later age, spreads out his case before the Lord. This fact sheds the clearest light upon his condition of soul. Brought into his present straits through his own sin and folly, he can yet turn in fullest confidence to Him whose hand was so heavy upon him in chastisement. He "hears" the rod, and who has appointed it. "Lord," he says, "how are they increased that trouble me! Many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God." This reproachful taunt was the bitterest ingredient in his bitter cup. He had known throughout his life what it was to face enemies, and to be hunted like a partridge upon the mountains, but if the wicked insinuation that he was now abandoned of God were true, he was never in such an evil case. And, to human sight, his enemies were in the right; for every sign of God's intervention and favour was absent. But faith triumphed, though David were in the deepest pit of adversity, and he appealed from men to God, crying, "But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head."

“And David departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam” (v. 1). That is where he composed the beautiful 142nd Psalm which expresses the feelings filling his soul in his solitude. “There is no man that knows me: refuge has failed me; no man cares for my soul” (v. 4). “In the way wherein I walked have they hidden a snare for me” (v. 3), This is written when — what mockery — Saul had the audacity to accuse him, saying: “My son has stirred up my servant as a lier-in-wait against me” (1 Sam. 22:8). But David found, precisely because all human refuge failed him, a sure refuge for his soul: “I cried unto Thee, Jehovah, I said, Thou art my refuge” (Ps. 142:5). He could count on the God of Israel for deliverance from his persecutors, for they were stronger than he (v. 6). Could David ever regret being found at such an extremity, abandoned by all, since there it was it that his soul knew and appreciated the sovereign refuge that is found in God? Thus the psalm ends with the assurance that filled his soul, for his time of solitude and of being forsaken would come to an end. “The righteous,” he says, “shall surround me” (v. 7).