Week 14 1 Samuel
David seems like one of the most resourceful talented decisive and also cunning & ruthless outlaws imaginable. But Psalm 57 shows he was sometimes fearful and discouraged too.
David described his opponents as being like fierce lions – and he prayed a couple of when-a-lion-is-standing-staring-at-me prayers:
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy!
I cry out to God most high.
But he only asked for help a couple of times before moving on to other things. I noticed two of them:
First David had a forecastive-sense that things would turn out okay: (the Lord) will send help from heaven to save me.
Second he repeated this (what seems like an unrelated) phrase:
Be exalted, O God, above the highest heavens! May your glory shine over all the earth.
David started with a conventional Please-Help-Me-Lord type of prayer. But he moved forward to a (surprisingly) settled sense that help would be coming. And he made a point of ‘exalting’ to the Lord.
Three key elements of David’s prayer were:
1. Please help me
2. I’m confident that I’ll get Help-From-Heaven
3. You – Lord – are the Greatest.
Note: quotes from Psalm 57:4 1 2 3 5 & 11 (NLT).
Psalms 57 & 142 both say that they’re Cave-Psalms. The Psalm 57 subtitle says: ‘the time David fled from Saul and went into the cave’. But so does Psalm 142: ‘David’s experience in the cave’.
And there are also two Cave-Stories in 1 Samuel: 22:1-2 & 24:1-22.
1 Samuel 24 is the better story but it looks to me like which psalm refers to which story is an open-question.