David, his Tens of Thousands

The Psalms are a rich source of blessing to us. My Dad would often say, “The Psalms speak to us - but they also speak for us.” These 150 songs are not only ways that God delivers truth into our lives, but there are many times the Psalms give us words where we have none. So often, we find ourselves in dire circumstances and the Psalter furnishes us with vocabulary to bring our dilemma to God.

In Psalm 3, David is in a dilemma of his own. The subscript in my Bible provides this explanation: A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

We don’t always have this level of detail when we come to the Psalms, so it’s all the more enlightening when we do. This additional context points us to the account as it’s recorded in 2nd Samuel 15. David’s own son has run a secret political campaign, schmoozing with people at the city gate and wooing them over to his team. All of this eventually sends David on the run, with his throne (and even his life) being threatened.

I can’t imagine the betrayal, the heart-break, or the grief that David must have felt. As he had done at many other times in his life, the aged David turns his pain into prose. (Why is it that the most creative people have also seemingly been through the darkest valleys?) David writes:

Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.”

‭‭I love how David voices his complaint to God, then declares his trust and his confidence in the Lord. The God who is big enough to hear his problems is certainly big enough to do something about them. Verse 6 includes this important statement about David’s trust:

I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.

That phrase “tens of thousands” has appeared in David’s life before, many years prior. As a younger man, the women of Israel sang this song: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel‬ ‭18‬:‭7‬).

It’s the same Hebrew in both places: רְבָבוֹת. This moment in Psalm 3 is so crucial for David because he has faced intense battles before. He has been wildly outnumbered. He has made it out of some threatening circumstances before. And he certainly knew that song. But David never believed his own press. He didn’t reach down deep and find the inner fortitude to persevere. He didn’t look in the mirror and recite his mantras. David’s ultimate hope was in the Lord, and not himself. Psalm 3 concludes with this:

From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.

‭”From the Lord.” Not from David. Not from David’s general. Not from his army. David’s deliverance comes from God and God alone.

I wonder: if I had seen what David had seen and experienced what David had experienced, would I have been this humble? Would I have remained this dependent on the Lord?

Presently, having seen what I’ve seen and experienced what I’ve experienced - how often am I guilty of believing my own press? How often do I get caught in the trap of self-reliance, thinking that my only way out of a dilemma is through my own resources and ingenuity? How quickly do I forget God’s deliverance and rely on myself?

So it’s here in the Psalms that God uses the third entry to speak to me and speak for me. To me, because I need to continually teach my soul that deliverance comes from the Lord. For me, because instead of thinking (or saying), “I’ve got this - I can handle it,” Psalm 3 gives me a new script: “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.”