Psalm 62
1. Upon God alone doth my soul rest peacefully; from him is my salvation.
2. He only is my rock and my salvation; my high fortress: I shall not be greatly moved.
3. How long will ye assail a man; will ye seek , all of you, to break him down as a bowing wall or a tottering fence?
4. They only consult to thrust him down from his excellency; they delight in lies; they bless with their mouth, but in their inward part they curse. Selah.
As we read the psalms of David we often wonder about the circumstances that provoked such praise and prayer and prophecy, for it is easy to see that all of these elements are somewhat indiscriminately mixed into the words we read, and yet instinctively we apply David’s words to our own situation without any problems and we find the same God and the same help that he did, but these verses seem to leave some questions unanswered. Who are these people who assail David and try to break him down? And also what does he mean by excellency?
Of course the Philistines and other unbelieving nations wanted to see David fail, but would they be the ones who said a blessing on him? And the word excellence seems to be another strange word that demands enlightenment. What and who was David talking about?
The word excel is a comparative word, and it is interesting that these men are comparing themselves with David and admitting that he is better than they are, and instead of wanting to excel as they saw David doing they wanted to demote him down to their standard. And because David openly declares that his trust is in God, the inference is that they feel convicted of God by David’s life and moral character. As if David being as out of favour with God as they are would exonerate them, but that seems to be what is described here.
That this is the kind of envy that drives them to assail David and lie to his face is another reason to believe that these are not the outside enemy but the inside enemy, supposedly his friends. We might ask who was Jesus’ worst enemy, Judas who was the liar or the persecuting Pharisees, for it is not hard to see that Jesus might have taken this psalm as His own experience. And there were other disciples than Judas who did not understand the plan of God.
When Jesus began to tell His disciples that He must suffer Peter rebuked Him for thinking that He would have to die, Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” How startled Peter must have been to be called the Devil, the Adversary of God? But Jesus went on to explain to His friend that the cross was the way of excellence even when worldly wisdom thought it was very foolish. Peter, at that time was one of “them” who was nervous and convicted at the idea of the cross, he had consulted with “them”
To start with we notice that their target is better than they are, he excels them in some respect and we suspect this to be a spiritual superiority for surely David is looking at it from that point of view. In such an event it is likely that “they” have been watching David, or us, and noticed something in our conduct or speech or attitude that caused their conscience to poke them into being uncomfortable in the presence of David who seemed so comfortable in God’s presence. We may even have seen it ourselves when someone gets right with God and his old friends avoid him, knowing that he excels them in his response to what God has done.
So although surely the outside enemy, for David the Philistines and others, were included in this word, “they”, there were others in his company who must have felt uncomfortable in His closeness to God. Joab was a nephew of David’s, his general, a man of great courage and valor and leadership ability, but we do not ever hear that he had a personal relationship with God, instead we see instances of his anger and envy and murder and in the end he even turned against David. And yet at the time that this psalm came to David he was probably the closest man to David. Would he once in a while hint to David to tone down his testimony of God’s presence for it made the other followers jittery and convicted? In other words “Do not be so excellent, it shows up how far we are from what we should be?”
When we compare scripture with scripture we find that usually there are deeper meanings than are seen on the surface. This verse in Psalm 62 provoked us to dig deep and we have profited from it. Now we ourselves ask “Who are the ‘they’ he speaks of?”, and just what is it that “they” are doing or trying to do? Are they the enemy outside that we have not met or are they people whom we interact with almost every day? And who is it that they are plotting against?, for we take it that this verse is part of the all scripture that is inspired and meant to help us grow more into the likeness of Christ. May it never be that we be one of “them”?