David: The Poet

This is the fourth in a series on the life of David.

When I think of David, I see a man of action—lean, desert-hardened, powerful and quick. He was a warrior. He killed men in close combat. He spent years in wilderness exile. This is the David portrayed in 1 and 2 Samuel.

But he was also a musician—that is how he first came to Saul’s court—and a poet. It’s not easy to put that together with the image of a warrior. The Pentagon is not a place for poetry seminars. I don’t see the colonels pouring over William Carlos Williams during their lunch hours. That’s who David was, however—a serious poet.

Exactly half of the 150 psalms in the Bible are attributed to David—73 explicitly, and two more attributed to David in the New Testament. Thirteen of these attributions relate the psalms to incidents in David’s life.

We don’t know exactly what is meant by the inscription “of David.” It’s usually taken as a mark of David’s authorship, but it could also mean “in the style of David.” Either way, David is the poet indelibly linked to the psalms.

I love the psalms. They are ever-new. I learn from them. I enjoy them more every year.  David’s psalms surge with energy and intensity. Amazingly, a man dead for 3,000 years is giving us access to his soul. Poetry is not, as some people apparently think, a dreamy medium for spontaneous expressions of feeling. It is a careful, studied and skillful use of words and rhythm and juxtaposition. Good poets work hard. David was more than a good poet, he was a great poet.

If poetry were simply a hobby, on the level with stamp collecting, it would make no difference at all for David’s monarchy. A case can be made, however, that David’s psalms were the most influential and long-lasting of all his accomplishments.  They shaped the heart and soul of Israel’s worship. It was Israel’s passionate relationship to God, not its war-making abilities, that made Israel great.

So David, in writing poetry, was building a nation.

They say that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s radio Fireside Talks helped Americans regain confidence in the Depression. They say Winston Churchill’s speeches enabled the British to withstand Nazi bombs. David’s poems did more. They shaped Israel’s relationship with God. As a nation infused with God’s calling, Israel’s very nature and identity were involved, and not just for a temporary crisis. This was for all time.

David was a warrior and a king, but most importantly of all, he was a poet. Words matter.

**

Sometimes it is unclear whether a passage in the Bible should be read as poetry or prose. Since Hebrew poetry does not rhyme, there are no crystal-clear indications. For example, God’s words to Adam, Eve and the serpent in Genesis 3 are often rendered as poetry, though they make perfectly good sense as prose. Bible translators have to decide whether to set up the fragmented lines that indicate poetry. If the passage sounds “poetic”—if it uses unusual words or metaphors, if it is aphoristic—then it is shown as poetry.

The earliest passage in the Bible that is indisputably poetry is Genesis 15:1-18, the Song of Moses and Miriam. The first words give it away: “I will sing.” You sing in poetry. This is a song of triumph, led by Moses and his sister Miriam, celebrating the defeat of the Egyptians. It’s a rollicking praise song to God, who has rescued his people.

Moses is also named as the author of a song in Deuteronomy 32. It is a poem that tells the history of a wonderful God who chose Israel as his people, and a faithless people who constantly go astray.

These themes from Moses—praise and triumph, a gracious God and a faithless people–get repeated many times in the Bible, particularly in the poetry of the prophets. Each prophet has a distinctive message, speaking to a distinctive situation, but most of what the prophets write has to do with justice—the justice Israel owes the poor, and (even more) the justice Israel owes God. Your neighbor deserves more! the prophets say. Your God deserves much more!

The prophets preach sermons in the second and third person. The psalms offer something quite different from that. They offer David’s personal relationship with God, told in the first person.

His psalms speak in the unmistakable voice of an individual praying to God in intimate relationship. His prayers are passionate and personal. The psalmist is frustrated by enemies. He pleads for mercy. He basks in God’s love. There is darkness and light, cheer and gloom, guilt and forgiveness, praise and pleas for help. This is why psalms have captured the hearts of believers for thousands of years: each one of us can adopt them as our personal plea. These are our prayers.

Praying the psalms, a person affirms that life is difficult. Yes, there is joy and exultation in God and all he has done. But there is also much complaining, questioning, worrying. All of it is lifted up to God.

Praying the psalms, each person becomes like Jacob, wrestling with God and demanding that God bless him. This viewpoint is so basic a part of our faith today that we might take it for granted. But if you think of religion through the ages, and in many different traditions, you will realize that it can be dominated by law and doctrine. It puts many demands on people; it makes them feel small. All they hear are facts that they must account for. Such religion may offer no space for the individual person. If you talk to people who have left their faith in rebellion or despair, very often their fundamental complaint boils down to this: there was no room for me.

In the psalms, there is always plenty of room for me.

This is David’s legacy. The individual may (and must) speak to God with complete honesty.

**

I went through all David’s psalms and noted down the parts that are expressed in the first person singular. I wanted to think about the themes that David brought to the poetic expression of his relationship with God.

The first thing I noticed was how much material there is. It’s not just a few lines in a few poems; David is credited with scores of poems that scale the emotions of life in company with God. What I quote here barely touches the whole.

Enemies. The great biblical scholar Derek Kidner noted two fundamental realities that appear in nearly all the psalms: the presence of God, and the presence of enemies. Time and again, David presents these enemies to God, asking for protection and vindication.

Lord, how many are my foes!

How many rise up against me!

Many are saying of me,

“God will not deliver him.”

                         –Psalm 3:1,2

 See how numerous are my enemies

and how fiercely they hate me!

                                    –Psalm 25:19

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

 I will sing the Lord’s praise,

for he has been good to me.

                                    –Psalm 13:1-6

Rescue me, Lord, from evildoers;

protect me from the violent,

who devise evil plans in their hearts

and stir up war every day.

                                    –Psalm 140:1-2

Listen to my cry,

for I am in desperate need;

rescue me from those who pursue me,

for they are too strong for me.

                                    — Psalm 142:1

Security. David is sometimes frantic with worry, but time and again he returns to the comfort and security of resting in God. He expresses this with great, convincing eloquence: 

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.

I will not fear though tens of thousands

assail me on every side.

                                    –Psalm 3:5-6

In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, Lord,

make me dwell in safety.

                                    –Psalm 4:8

Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

                                    —Psalm 23:4

One thing I ask from the Lord,

this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

For in the day of trouble

he will keep me safe in his dwelling;

he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent

and set me high upon a rock.

                                    — Psalm 27:4-5

Asking for help. This is so basic that we may overlook it: David asks God for help. His faith engages a God who sees his troubles, who can hear his plea, and who cares.

Turn to me and be gracious to me,

for I am lonely and afflicted.

 Relieve the troubles of my heart

and free me from my anguish.

Look on my affliction and my distress

and take away all my sins.

                                    –Psalm 25:16-18

Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;

my eyes grow weak with sorrow,

my soul and body with grief.

My life is consumed by anguish

and my years by groaning;

my strength fails because of my affliction,

and my bones grow weak.

Because of all my enemies,

I am the utter contempt of my neighbors

and an object of dread to my closest friends—

those who see me on the street flee from me.

I am forgotten as though I were dead;

I have become like broken pottery.

                                    –Psalm 31:9-12

Lord, you have seen this; do not be silent.

Do not be far from me, Lord.

Awake, and rise to my defense!

Contend for me, my God and Lord.

Vindicate me in your righteousness, Lord my God;

do not let them gloat over me.

Do not let them think, “Aha, just what we wanted!”

or say, “We have swallowed him up.”

                                    –Psalm 35:22-25

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

                                    –Psalm 51:10-12

But as for me, I am poor and needy;

come quickly to me, O God.

You are my help and my deliverer;

Lord, do not delay.

                                    –Psalm 70:5

But you, Sovereign Lord,

help me for your name’s sake;

out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.

For I am poor and needy,

and my heart is wounded within me.

                                    –Psalm 109:21-22

Asking mercy. David needs help, but he also needs mercy. He knows that he is not always in the right. God’s forgiveness is a persistent subject for prayer.

Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger

or discipline me in your wrath.

Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;

heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.

My soul is in deep anguish.

How long, Lord, how long?

                                    –Psalm 6:1-3

When I kept silent,

my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

For day and night

your hand was heavy on me;

my strength was sapped

as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you

and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess

my transgressions to the Lord.”

And you forgave

the guilt of my sin.

                                                      –Psalm 32:3-5

My guilt has overwhelmed me

like a burden too heavy to bear.

                                    — Psalm 38:4

I said, “Have mercy on me, Lord;

heal me, for I have sinned against you.”

                                    — Psalm 41:4

Lord, the Lord Almighty,

may those who hope in you

not be disgraced because of me.

                                    –Psalm 69:6

Innocence and confidence. Even though he knows his failings, David is quick to assert his fundamental faithfulness. He has confidence in his relationship with God.

Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself;

the Lord hears when I call to him.

                                                –Psalm 4:3

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

                                    — Psalm 16:9-11

Though you probe my heart,

though you examine me at night and test me,

you will find that I have planned no evil;

my mouth has not transgressed.

                                    — Psalm 17:3

You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you;

your right hand upholds me.

                                                      — Psalm 63:1-8

You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

                                    — Psalm 139:1-4, 23-24

Speaking of trouble. David not only prays for help and mercy, he examines his life in the presence of God. All is not easy, and all is not well.

But I am a worm and not a man,

scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

All who see me mock me;

they hurl insults, shaking their heads.

“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,

“let the Lord rescue him.

Let him deliver him,

since he delights in him.”

                                    — Psalm 22:6-8

I said, “I will watch my ways

and keep my tongue from sin;

I will put a muzzle on my mouth

while in the presence of the wicked.”

So I remained utterly silent,

not even saying anything good.

But my anguish increased;

my heart grew hot within me.

                                    — Psalm 39:1-3

If an enemy were insulting me,

I could endure it;

if a foe were rising against me,

I could hide.

But it is you, a man like myself,

my companion, my close friend,

with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship

at the house of God,

as we walked about

among the worshipers.

                                    — Psalm 55:12-14

Love and praise. In spite of trouble and sin, David’s love for God wells up like a spring. His relationship is not fundamentally transactional, it’s personal and grateful. David lives by grace.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

                                    — Psalm 18:1

Lord, I love the house where you live,

the place where your glory dwells.

                                    — Psalm 26:8

You turned my wailing into dancing;

you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

                                    — Psalm 30:11

My heart, O God, is steadfast,

my heart is steadfast;

I will sing and make music.

Awake, my soul!

Awake, harp and lyre!

I will awaken the dawn.

I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;

I will sing of you among the peoples.

For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;

your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

                                                      — Psalm 57:7-10

From the ends of the earth I call to you,

I call as my heart grows faint;

lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

For you have been my refuge,

a strong tower against the foe.

I long to dwell in your tent forever

and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.

                                                      — Psalm 61:2-4

Teach me your way, Lord,

that I may rely on your faithfulness;

give me an undivided heart,

that I may fear your name.

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;

I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your love toward me;

you have delivered me from the depths,

from the realm of the dead.

                                    — Psalm 86:11-13

Praise the Lord, my soul;

all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, my soul,

and forget not all his benefits—

who forgives all your sins

and heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit

and crowns you with love and compassion,

who satisfies your desires with good things

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

                                    — Psalm 103:1-5

My heart, O God, is steadfast;

I will sing and make music with all my soul.

Awake, harp and lyre!

I will awaken the dawn.

                                    — Psalm 108:1-2

**

We learn a lot about David from reading his psalms. We learn about his skill set: he was artistically alive, gifted in crafting poetry. More significantly, he had a deep, personal, emotive and transparent relationship with God. David didn’t see God as far off. He didn’t think of him in terms of principles and values. He perceived God as a living person, as close as his breath. He trusted the goodness of God. Even when he complained or questioned God—which he often did—he did so in faith. He believed in God’s fairness and his love. He believed in God’s power to make things right, and when it didn’t happen, he wanted to know why.

It wouldn’t be true to say there is no “personal prayer” like this in the rest of the Old Testament. But it’s relatively rare. Most of the emotion is God’s emotion. God gets angry; God is indignant; God loves; God shows tenderness. The focus of most Old Testament poetry is God’s plan for the world and for his people. Very little focuses on human joy and sorrow. David’s poetry is different: distinctly human-focused, even while it is God-centered.

David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 1716-27 gives a good example of how remarkable David’s relationship with God was. Unlike most of the psalms, it’s completely rooted in a historical event, and can’t really be adapted to our personal prayers. (That’s why it’s not in the psalmbook, I assume.)

The situation is David’s plan to build a palace for God. He has built a palace for himself, but God still lives in a tent. The prophet Nathan encourages this generous ambition until God speaks to him directly, telling him otherwise. David is not the one to build a temple. One of his sons will do it, and through him God will establish a lasting dynasty. “His throne will be established forever.” (1 Chronicles 17:14)

The message offers some wonderful promises to David about the future. Still, its heart is a check on the ambitions of a king. David has a plan to honor God through a building, but God turns him down. Not everybody would take this well.

David, however, appears unaware that he might resent the slight. He responds with wonder, with humble awe, that he has been honored by God’s promise to his offspring. “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?” (1 Chronicles 17:16) What seems to amaze him is the promise that his family and God’s name will be associated for all time.

You might ask yourself whether you would respond in the same way. How much do you care about your future grandchildren’s walk with God? What would it do for you if you knew that your family would have a lasting reputation for godliness? Would you jump up and down in delight? Do you long to establish a heritage of Christian leadership through your family? I asked my adult Sunday school class that question, and got the distinct impression that they had never given it any thought.

David treats it as though it is the most wonderful thing he could imagine.

Two of David’s comments deserve particular notice. “For you know your servant, O Lord.” (verse 18) David is well aware of his failures and his sins. The coming years will make him even more aware. Knowing what God knows, he is astonished at God’s treatment. David had many flaws, but never the failing of arrogance before God. He knew God’s grace as a very personal matter.

David also says, “For the sake of your servant and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made known all these great promises.” (verse 19) He is citing the divine combination: caring for David as an individual while relentlessly pursuing God’s purpose in the world. David’s intensely personal prayers—with their open feeling, their transparency—nearly always reflect this combination, connecting his personal needs to God’s grand plans to redeem the nations through his people and their anointed king.

Years later David offered another prayer when the Israelites gave generously to the temple building fund. Having been denied permission to build the temple himself, David was doing everything possible to prepare for his son Solomon to follow through. David provided his own riches—gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone—for a glorious building. Then he asked for the Israelite leaders’ contribution, and they gave with great liberality.

David is once again overwhelmed. “Who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” (1 Chronicles 29:14) It’s nothing like a prayer of self-congratulation. Rather, David recognizes that God is the true king. “Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.” (verse 11) In contrast, “we are aliens and strangers in your sight…. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.” (verse 15)

David’s focus is not the magnificence of the building, or the amount of money raised. His focus is on a generous heart. “O Lord, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.” (1 Chronicles 29:18) The temple, after all, is the place of worship. It is there that David’s psalms will be sung. That is what David’s people give to with such openhandedness. This prompts David’s prayer of praise.

Humility, transparency, gratefulness, passion, love, hope—these are the personal attributes that come through David’s poetry and prayer. In them we see quite clearly why David was said to be “a man after God’s own heart.” (Acts 13:22)

Think what David is not “about.”

–He is not about accumulating money or power.

–He is not about winning admirers.

–He is not about building great monuments.

David’s passion is to protect and strengthen his people so they can live up to their calling as God’s people. His passion is for God, whom he loves, and for God’s plans in the world. What we know about these qualities in David, we know from David’s poetry.

**

Jesus, the son of David, was not a poet. To the best of our knowledge, he never wrote anything. Nevertheless, he believed that words matter, and he used them powerfully to lead his people toward the redemption of the world. In this, he was like David.

Jesus’s primary message was “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” This was not particularly addressed to the priests in the temple hierarchy, or to the rulers in the government, or to the Roman occupiers, or to the traitorous tax collectors. Jesus addressed everybody, including leprosy victims, women with gynecological problems, blind beggars, people crippled by orthopedic issues, farmers, fishermen. He addressed them as individuals, whoever they were and whatever they did. To the everlasting disappointment of those with political, sociological or economic analyses of human problems, he began with a call to ordinary individuals rather than institutions or organizations. He called to the same people who prayed David’s prayers.

Jesus’ call certainly applied to political, sociological or economic problems. He called individuals to repent in order to join in the great happening of the kingdom of God. God’s people should come together and work together, challenging and changing governments and institutions. It begins with the individual, however, and the call is addressed to the individual consciousness. This is David’s world view: life with God as a personal relationship that carries us into a plan much bigger than we have dreamed.

The sermon on the mount and Jesus’ parables are brilliant compositions that explain this world view to ordinary people. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus said. “Blessed are those who mourn.” He might be describing the humility and the grief that mark so many of David’s psalms. In the sermon Jesus addresses social problems: violence, adultery, broken marriages, dishonest courts, social discord. Each one begins with an appeal to the individual to live in the consciousness of God and to do better than obey the law. We are urged not merely to punish murder, but to eliminate angry talk; not merely to avoid adultery, but to confront lust; not merely to follow the law in divorce proceedings, but to stop divorcing; not merely to avoid breaking contracts, but to stick to your word in all circumstances. The charge isn’t to change the laws, or reform the courts, or offer marriage seminars. It’s to walk with God and live blamelessly before him. Which is precisely what David aimed to do, and what his psalms continually consider.

Like a great poem, Jesus’ words in the sermon cannot be summarized or condensed or even fully comprehended. They expose us not just to a way of life, but to Jesus himself. We understand David’s life with God by reading the psalms, and in a similar way we feel Jesus’s person as we read the sermon on the mount.

The parables are also brilliant compositions–short, memorable word pictures to describe the kingdom of God and how it works. The parables help individuals seeking to follow God’s way. They describe large forces at work—the forces of God’s Spirit, but also the forces of evil. They are navigational and conceptual tools for the believer seeking to live in the presence of God. What David saw dimly—God’s great promises to redeem the nations through Israel—Jesus laid out in sharp focus.

In all his words, Jesus’ focus is on the person before God. He says very little about the Samaritans, the Gentiles, or the Romans—indeed about any political or social issue. His opposition to the Pharisees seems to be their short-circuiting of an individual’s response to God through their emphasis on rules and institutions. Jesus sees human beings who need mercy and healing. He calls individuals to join him in his ministry.

**

The gospel writers left us with a few short fragments of prayer from Jesus. The only long prayer, comparable to one of David’s prayers, is John 17.

That prayer is stylistically quite different from any of David’s prayers, but its mode of thought is very similar. Perhaps this would be true of any Jewish prayer, since David’s prayers had pervaded their worship. Jesus talks to God the Father in a simple, direct way, as though to a friend or an ally. “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you.” (John 17:25) Jesus speaks openly about his situation (he is about to die), and he asks God to act on his behalf without any doubt that God can do what he needs done. Not only does Jesus speak to God from within a very intimate and personal relationship, he asks God to draw his disciples into the same kind of relationship.

Jesus’s brief prayers on the day of his death could easily have come straight out of David’s mouth.

In Gethsemane, he prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

Three short prayers are recorded from the cross.

“Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46, Mark 15:34)

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

These all show the same personal encounter with a living God, the same powerful emotion as one of David’s prayers. As a matter of fact, the last two prayers are David’s prayers. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” is the first verse of Psalm 22, and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” is the fifth verse of Psalm 31.

I’ve come to believe that these are far from random quotations. Both of the psalms deal with David under attack from his enemies. They juxtapose trust in God with the horrors of betrayal and slander and death. I think Jesus, who prayed the psalms all his life, was praying these prayers on the cross. Out loud he spoke only one verse of each, but he surely knew the whole prayer by heart.

Psalm 22 is particularly of interest, because “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” is often cited as Jesus’ cry of inconceivable despair. Could God really abandon him? Apparently he believed so, for he took this prayer of David in his mouth.

When Jesus prayed this prayer, he was remembering that he walked in David’s footsteps. Silently, to himself, he was walking in David’s faith. For Psalm 22, after detailing violence that sounds like a lynching, suddenly turns. Without explanation, praise breaks out. Rescue has come, and the benefits have spread to the poor. Rescue has come, and it has drawn the whole world into praise.

Jesus prayed as David prayed, and in that prayer he lived the life of faith that David had explored.

**

From David the poet we learn the importance of artful words. David was a great poet in the service of prayer and worship. He shaped the nation of Israel through his words; he set the heart of worship so that Jesus himself borrowed from his prayers at his time of ultimate torment. Our tendency is to think that politics and programs and organization best serve the kingdom of God. David’s life offers evidence that careful and beautiful writing can do far more.

We must learn to pray like David: with passion and transparency, to a personal God who has power to rescue. In that way we will follow in the steps of Jesus, Son of David.