Psalm 57:1: “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusted in thee; yea, in the shadow of the wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.”

Hebrew is a language of poets and poetry expresses emotion.  The Psalms themselves are pure poetry.  Yet, many translations, in their quest for intellectual accuracy often overlook the emotional context of a passage. To be sure, one must consider the historical and cultural context of a passage and give understanding to idiomatic expressions as well as traditional understandings.  However, we need to be very aware of the emotional context of a passage.  We need to try to render a passage so that the reader can feel what the writer was feeling.

So try to picture David’s situation.  Many Biblical scholars believe this passage was written when David was a fugitive, pursued by the Saul’s men.  A price is on his head.  He is wanted, not dead or alive, just dead.  He is hiding out in a cave, he does not know one moment from the next if he will be discovered and his head will be loped off.  He has no guarantee that he will even live to see the next day.

Sitting in the cool, damp cave he does what I think all of use would do, he starts crying out to God.   “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me.”   The word merciful is chanan in the Hebrew and has the idea of showing favor.  There is a first person singular pronoun at the end and it is in an imperative (command) form. Hence it would be translated as favor me.  But as I said, we need to put this into its emotional context. David is not just calmly looking up to heaven with his hands folded as he quietly asks the Lord to favor him. Thecontext suggests something more like this: “O’ God, heeeeeeeeelp! This is not just a little exercise in prayer.  David is desperate.  He is breathing heavily, and  is crouched in a cave terrified.

The next phrase is curious. My soul trusts in you.  The word trust chasah is in a perfect (past) form. He is saying: I have trusted in you in the past.  Normally when we get into these desperate situations we put that into a participle phrase: “I am trusting in you.”  Yet, David is saying “I have been trusting in you.”   This is not the first time David has been in a tough situation, nor is it the first time for all of us.  David has been there before, maybe not quite like this situation but he had faced death defying circumstances.  What is going on in his mind is “God, I trusted you when I faced Goliath, and you came through.  I trusted you when I faced a lion, and you came through.  Now here I am again, there is no reason you will not come through for me this time as well.”

What is the situation you face to day?  Is it financial, health, or job related?  You’ve been there before and if you haven’t there is someone around who has and can testify that God’s always pulled them through and remember you are just as important to God as that person giving his testimony.  But for most us we been down that road before and we have already checked it out and God was right there with a life raft. He pulled us out every time. Yeah, I know, that thought always, comes to mind, “Maybe, He’s not going to make it this time.”  I had a student who had been an airborne army ranger. He made numerous jumps and he once told me, “You know,  no matter how many times you jump with that parachute opening every time, you still have that thought in your head, ‘maybe it won’t open this time.’”  No matter how many times God shows up on his white horse and slays that dragon, every time you feel the hot breath of that dragon you still start to wonder if He is going to show up this time.

Yet let’s just look at that word trust chasah and its built in commentary.  The first letter is a Cheth.  The sages taught something interesting about that Cheth. It is two Vav’s joined together with a vertical line at the top. The Vav represents a relationship between two people.   The vertical line represents God joining Himself to man face to face.  The next letter is a Samek which is a picture of a container or heart with a lid on it.  You are inside the heart of God and He has put a lid over his heart so no one or no thing can take you out.  The lid is locked on the outside only you have the latch to open the lid and climb out if you so desire. I mean who in their right mind would do that?  I guess sometimes we are not in our right minds.

Finally, the word ends with a Hei.  The Hei is a letter you speak with your breath, not with your tongue.  It represents the breath and presence of God.  Trusting is a picture of crawling inside the heart of God, locking yourself in and just sitting back basking in the warmth of his presence while the storm ranges outside.   When David said “I am trusting in You.”  He was not gritting His teeth and thinking “Trust, trust, trust,” He was crawling into the heart of God, and basking in his presence and thinking, “If I go down, God is just going to have to go with me.”    Of course there was not much chance of that happening.