Church of Christ Studies

 

Psalm 4.
An Evening Psalm

 

It is tempting to seek a historical setting for Psalm 4, just as for Psalm 3, but there is little justification for it. The setting for Psalm 3 is indicated by the title: "A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom." When we studied that psalm, I argued that the setting indicated by the title should be taken literally if for no other reason than that the title is part of the canonical Hebrew text. We do not have the same situation in Psalm 4. The title says merely: "For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm of David."

 

In spite of this, a number of commentators link the psalm with the one preceding and therefore carry the setting of Psalm 3 over to Psalm 4. Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Franz Delitzsch assume the connection. H. C. Leupold argues it as follows: "To refer the psalm to the days when David fled before Absalom certainly fits the words of the psalm in a number of striking ways: the author is obviously in distress; his honor is assailed; he seeks to set his erring son and those that err with him aright; a paternal type of admonition is used such as David might well have used over against the rebel son; and lastly, the author manifests a courageous faith such as is often noted in the life of David."

 

Those connections between the psalm and David's flight from Jerusalem are tenuous, however, and in some cases they are even questionable. But the chief reason for doubting that Psalm 4 has to do with David's flight is that the problems in the two are quite different. The problem at the time of David's flight from Absalom, reflected in Psalm 3, was one of physical danger. Thousands of troops had aligned themselves against David. He needed God to be his "shield" against these armed enemies.

 

This is not the problem in Psalm 4. In this psalm the problem is one of malicious slander and lies. It is the psalmist's reputation rather than his person that is being attacked, and what he needs is a sense of the presence and approval of God rather than physical deliverance.

 

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Earlier, in our study of Psalm 1, I mentioned that scholars speak of various types or genres of psalms, pointing out that there are perhaps seven types in all. The seven genres are usually referred to as hymns, laments, psalms of thanksgiving, psalms of confidence, psalms of remembrance, wisdom psalms, and kingship (possibly messianic) psalms. Psalm 4 could be classified in two ways and is perhaps best seen as a combination of two genres. It is a psalm of individual lament, but it is also a psalm of confidence. In fact, it moves from one to the other, from distress to quiet confidence in God.

 

P. C. Craigie says, "It is not a psalm of penitence, arising out of the recognition of sins committed; there are other psalms for that purpose. It is rather a psalm which reflects the anguish of the innocent and oppressed, or of the righteous sufferer. And thus it is a particularly important kind of psalm, for it addresses a fundamental human experience, the experience of injustice, suffering and oppression."

 

Is there such a thing as a totally righteous sufferer? Is anyone ever really innocent? The answer is: of course not, unless we are thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the way some scholars have interpreted Psalm 4. But that is not the point here. None of us is ever utterly innocent, but there are nevertheless times of relative innocence in which evil people really do heap injustices on us. There are times when we are falsely accused. At other times we are slandered. Someone may want to advance himself by getting us out of the way. Or an attack may be occasioned by pure envy.

 

When a citizen of Athens was asked why he had voted for the condemnation of Aristides, called "the Just" (c. 530-468 B.C.)—he was one of the most outstanding statesmen that nation had produced—the citizen replied, "I voted against him simply because I was tired of hearing him called 'the Just.'"

Perhaps you have experienced something like that. In fact, I would be surprised if in this sinful world you had not. All are slandered at one time or another. All have their reputations attacked. Although the attacks on you probably have not been accompanied by actual physical danger, they have nevertheless probably hurt you a lot. When we were children and our friends and playmates said nasty things about us, we were taught to say,

 

Sticks and stones can break my bones,

But names will never hurt me.

 

But it was not true, as we probably found out. Names do hurt. To be falsely accused is agony, and we have to rise above it.

 

But how? How do we rise above it? In this psalm, David, the target of many false accusations, shows how.

The psalm falls into three parts. First, there is an urgent plea to God for help in distress (v. 1). This is a real distress, requiring genuine relief. David needs an answer from God, which is why he is praying. Second, there is a moving remonstrance addressed to the psalmist's enemies (vv. 2-5). In these verses David shows a surprisingly kind attitude to his enemies and gives advice that not only would solve his difficulty but also would help them. His enemies would become different people if they would do what he advises. Third, there is a final expression of the psalmist's security in God (vv. 6-8). This enables him to say, as he closes,

 

I will lie down and sleep in peace,

for you alone, O Lord,

make me dwell in safety.

 

It is because of these words that Psalm 4 has been called an evening psalm.

We are going to study this psalm according to this obvious three-part outline. But I need to say at the outset that what is important about the psalm is not the outline but rather what happens to the psalmist as he prays. What happens is that he changes. He moves from anxiety because of his accusers to quiet trust in God, which is to say in modern jargon that prayer is his therapy. It does him good.

 

Since all of us have had the psalmist's experience at some time or another, perhaps regularly, Craigie is certainly right when he says, "There are days in the lives of all human beings which require a psalm like this at their end."

 

 

An Appeal to God

Whom do you turn to when you hear of an unjust accusation that someone has been making against you? You are at work, and the secretary down the hall stops by your desk and says, "Do you know what so-and-so said about you yesterday?" Then she pours out the story, perhaps even embellishing it a little. Or a business associate circulates a memo in which you are pictured in an unjust light. What do you do? Whom do you tell? Most of us would go to our friends and complain, looking for sympathy. We might even start a slander campaign of our own. It might go: "Well, the only reason she said that is because she...."

 

This is not what David did. Instead of turning to friends for sympathy or even attacking his enemies, David turned to God.

 

Answer me when I call to you,

O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

be merciful to me and hear my prayer.

 

David knew that his only help was in God, which strikingly is where the psalm also ends. The last words of the psalm say: "You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety" (v. 8, italics added).

Notice two important things about this appeal.

 

David's appeal is honest. If David were presenting his case before some other person, he might have pretended something other than what he really felt—or at least, that is what we probably would do. We would pretend that we were less affected by the attack than we were. We would try to keep up appearances. However, David is coming to God, who knows the situation perfectly anyway, and thus he does not need to keep up appearances. He can tell it as it is. He indicates that his enemies are significant men, not people who can safely be ignored. This is implied by the Hebrew words beni ish, rather than the more common beni adam. Again, he is deeply distressed by their actions. The next verse describes what is happening. His enemies are dishonoring him by ruining his reputation (turning his "glory into shame"). Why are they doing this? It is because they love lies ("delusions") and are opposed to his religious convictions (they "seek false gods").

 

Do you know the advantage of coming to God with your troubles? It is an important one. To come to God means that you do not need to pretend. You can tell him exactly where you hurt and how you feel.

 

David's appeal is balanced. I mean by this that although he is conscious of the injustice of his enemies' accusations and is appealing to God for relief on the basis of God's righteousness ("O my righteous God"), the psalmist is nevertheless also aware of his own sin in relation to God. This is why he speaks of mercy, saying "be merciful to me and hear my prayer." Isn't that an interesting combination of ideas? Before other men and in comparison with his enemies he is righteous. He can properly appeal to God for relief. But in relationship to God he is a sinner like everyone else and can only ask God to intervene mercifully.

 

We will have to remember this when we begin our study of the difficult imprecatory psalms.

 

An Appeal to His Enemies

The most interesting part of this psalm is the second section (vv. 2-5), in which David relates to those who are harming him. They are wrong. He is right. He is asking God to help him. Nevertheless, although slandered and injured by them, David speaks of his enemies kindly and tries to win them from their errors. And there is this: in trying to help them, he unintentionally but inevitably helps himself.

 

We see how this works in verse 3. In this verse David reminds his enemies of a truth that is very important, namely, that "the Lord has set apart the godly for himself." This is something the enemies of the righteous do not want to hear. It refers to election, which they hate. In David's case, the statement was a reminder that he had become king by the sovereign choice of God, not by man's authority. Therefore, he could not be attacked with impunity. His enemies would have resented that a great deal. In our case, the statement is a reminder that we have been brought into the company of God's people by God's choice and actions, not our own. That too is a doctrine widely hated. But it is nevertheless true. And it follows from the truth of election that, if God "has set apart the godly for himself," he will obviously not abandon them. He will stick by them, for "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6). The ungodly need to be reminded of this, because it means that their attacks upon God's people will not ultimately be successful.

 

How does that help David? In this way. As soon as he reminded his enemies that the Lord protects his people, David must have realized afresh that what he was telling his enemies applied to him. He was one of God's people. God had set him apart and would not abandon him. Therefore, as he says in the second half of the very same verse, "the Lord will hear when I call to him."

 

Do you see how it is working? David began with a cry of real anguish:

 

Answer me when I call to you,

 

 

O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

be merciful to me and hear my prayer.

 

 

 

Now, having reminded his enemies that God cares for his own, David turned what began as a prayer into a statement of confidence: "the Lord will hear when I call to him" (italics added).

Are you confused by attacks upon you? Go through David's procedure. In your thoughts remind your enemies that God will take care of you, and you will find that the very act of reminding them will strengthen your own confidence. You will quiet your distress by this exercise.

This same thing—David himself benefiting by the way he expresses concern for his enemies—occurs again in the psalm's second half. It grows out of David's advice to them in verses 4 and 5.

Verse 4 is a bit of a problem, however. There are two ways the words "in your anger do not sin" can be interpreted. The first is the meaning given to the words in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and then apparently picked up by the apostle Paul and quoted in Ephesians 4:26. It is, in effect: "Be angry, but do not let your anger carry over into sinful acts." Paul seems to mean this, because his next words in Ephesians are, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry"—that is, deal with your problem in the anger stage.

However, the verb be angry can also mean "tremble," which is the way H. C. Leupold takes it. Tremble in what way? Well, it could mean tremble in anger, which is why most versions use the word anger to translate it. But it could also mean tremble before God, which is what Leupold thinks it means. That is, "Stand in awe of God, and because you are in awe of him cease sinning as you have been doing." This makes good sense in the psalm, for the thought would then be: "The evil you are planning should be abandoned, because God is against you in it. You should be able to see this when you are upon your beds searching your hearts silently."

I do not know which is the right answer, but I incline to the second view because of what comes next. Verse 5 says,

 

Offer right sacrifices

and trust in the Lord.

 

These sacrifices must be sacrifices for sin. So verse 4 probably does not mean, "deal with your anger and do not sin," but rather, "tremble before God and cease from the sin you are committing." It would follow from the latter that, having recognized the sin as sin, the enemies of the psalmist would then offer the proper sacrifices of atonement for it.

The final step would be for them then to live as those who "trust in the Lord" rather than in their own devices (v. 5).

 

The Psalmist's Trust in God

Were David's enemies likely to follow his advice, tremble before God, offer sacrifices for their sin, and begin to trust the Almighty? It was not very likely! It is not even likely that David spoke these words to them. They are part of the psalm, words that David spoke to God and would have liked to have spoken to his enemies but probably did not have the chance to utter. But here is the important thing: although his enemies did not come to trust God, David did. He had trusted God in the past. He had laid before him his grief over the false accusations of his enemies. Now God provided the peace he was seeking by doing three things.

 

God assured him of his favor (v. 6). In their distress the people around David were asking, "Who can show us any good?" In their opinion, there was nothing good about their circumstances at all. But God brought to David's mind the well-known Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6:24-26.

 

The Lord bless you

and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine upon you

and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you

and give you peace.

 

He remembers it in an abbreviated form in verse 6. Thus, he was reminded that the one who had shown him good in the past can be counted on to show him good again, even God himself.

God filled him with joy, greater than the joy of those reaping an abundant harvest (v. 7). Joy floods our hearts when we are conscious of the Lord's favor.

 

God gave him peace even in the turmoil (v. 8). This is the final blessing that came to David as he tried to help those who were his enemies. As Craigie says, "At the end, the psalmist has seen that he is better off than his adversaries. He has advised them to lie still on their beds, in an attempt to curtail their evil (v. 5 [v. 4, our numbering]), but he could lie on his bed and sleep the sleep of peace which came from God." It is always that way. If we leave our problems with God, he will shoulder them. And he will enable us to sleep in peace.