David’s God-Entranced Song

There came a point where David’s relentless conflicts with Saul and with the Philistines ceased. Up until that time, “Saul was David’s enemy continually” (1 Samuel 18:29). And when Saul died, the Philistines were a continual thorn in David’s side. Second Samuel 21:15 says, “There was war again [with] the Philistines.” Then 2 Samuel 21:18: “There was again war with the Philistines.” Then 2 Samuel 21:19: “There was again war with the Philistines.”

It is hard to imagine the privations and dangers and threats under which David lived during those years. But he had this assurance: God had spoken to him. “I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul” (2 Samuel 12:7). “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). So, he lived with the continual threats to his life combined with the promise that he was the head of a dynasty that would never end.

Then came a season when this relentless conflict with Saul and the Philistines ceased. The cessation of hostilities was evidently so striking that he called it a day, as though it happened in a single day, in 2 Samuel 22:1:

And David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.

The relief he felt, and the memories of years of God’s help and protection, were so powerful that David virtually exploded with poetry and song to the Lord that goes on and on and on for 51 verses. He calls it a song in verse 1: “David spoke to the Lord the words of this song.”

God’s Glory in Song

About a third of the Old Testament is given to us in poetic form. This is striking because divinely inspired poetry and song is the witness of God to the indispensability and the inadequacy of human language to express what is inexpressible — not just the beauties and the horrors of reality, but also the heights and depths of what we ought to feel about reality. God made poetry and music — song — because God values human feelings. Strong, positive feelings for God glorify him more than true words about God that carry no affections. There is a difference between saying, “God is awesome and his wonders are great,” and singing,

O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy pow’r throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art,
How great thou art!

That is musically and lyrically almost perfect. The lyrics, the soul, and the music rise together with the words, “Then sings my soul.” It’s a microcosm of why God created music and poetry. It awakens and carries the affections of the soul to God and to each other. And God gets glory because of the beauty of the truth, and the beauty of the lyrics, and the beauty of the affections, and the beauty of the music carrying them all to God. God loves to be loved by the human heart. It is the first and great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:5). That’s why a third of our Old Testament is poetry.

This is David’s song, not David’s sermon, not his essay. We might wonder why it says in 2 Samuel 22:1, “David spoke” these words, and in verse 2, “He said.” Why not “He sang”? My guess is that these two Hebrew words (dabar and amar) are being used, not to say speaking over and against singing, but rather speak by singing, because at the end of the song in verse 50, he’s singing:

For this I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations,
     and sing praises to your name.

So, David takes a deep breath with the cessation of hostilities, and he pours out his heart to God.

David’s Song

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
     my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation,
     my stronghold and my refuge,
     my savior; you save me from violence.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
     and I am saved from my enemies.

For the waves of death encompassed me,
     the torrents of destruction assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me;
     the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
     to my God I called.
From his temple he heard my voice,
     and my cry came to his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked;
     the foundations of the heavens trembled
     and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
     and devouring fire from his mouth;
     glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens and came down;
     thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub and flew;
     he was seen on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness around him his canopy,
     thick clouds, a gathering of water.
Out of the brightness before him
     coals of fire flamed forth.
The Lord thundered from heaven,
     and the Most High uttered his voice.
He sent out arrows and scattered them;
     lightning, and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen;
     the foundations of the world were laid bare,
at the rebuke of the Lord,
     at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

He sent from on high, he took me;
     he drew me out of many waters.
He rescued me from my strong enemy,
     from those who hated me,
     for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
     but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a broad place;
     he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness;
     according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me.
For I have kept the ways of the Lord
     and have not wickedly departed from my God.
For all his rules were before me,
     and from his statutes I did not turn aside.
I was blameless before him,
     and I kept myself from guilt.
And the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
     according to my cleanness in his sight.

With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
     with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you deal purely,
     and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
You save a humble people,
     but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down.
For you are my lamp, O Lord,
     and my God lightens my darkness.
For by you I can run against a troop,
     and by my God I can leap over a wall.
This God — his way is perfect;
     the word of the Lord proves true;
     he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

For who is God, but the Lord?
     And who is a rock, except our God?
This God is my strong refuge
     and has made my way blameless.
He made my feet like the feet of a deer
     and set me secure on the heights.
He trains my hands for war,
     so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
You have given me the shield of your salvation,
     and your gentleness made me great.
You gave a wide place for my steps under me,
     and my feet did not slip;
I pursued my enemies and destroyed them,
     and did not turn back until they were consumed.
I consumed them; I thrust them through, so that they did not rise;
     they fell under my feet.
For you equipped me with strength for the battle;
     you made those who rise against me sink under me.
You made my enemies turn their backs to me,
     those who hated me, and I destroyed them.
They looked, but there was none to save;
     they cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them.
I beat them fine as the dust of the earth;
     I crushed them and stamped them down like the mire of the streets.

You delivered me from strife with my people;
     you kept me as the head of the nations;
     people whom I had not known served me.
Foreigners came cringing to me;
     as soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me.
Foreigners lost heart
     and came trembling out of their fortresses.

The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock,
     and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation,
the God who gave me vengeance
     and brought down peoples under me,
who brought me out from my enemies;
     you exalted me above those who rose against me;
     you delivered me from men of violence.

For this I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations,
     and sing praises to your name.
Great salvation he brings to his king,
     and shows steadfast love to his anointed,
     to David and his offspring forever. (2 Samuel 22:2–51)

God’s Song

God considered this song important enough, beautiful enough, God-centered enough, exuberant enough to be recorded in the Bible twice almost verbatim — all 51 verses — here and in Psalm 18. What is the intended divine impact of this song as a whole? What is God doing in this song?

In Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg’s commentary he says,

David’s history could have been narrated as that of a great and powerful king. This chapter, however, is concerned that it should be understood as the action of a great and powerful God.¹

That seems exactly right to me. The focus here is not on David. It is on David’s God. If you take all the nouns and pronouns that refer to God, he is mentioned over 90 times in 51 verses.

The beginning of the song explodes with ten names for God: rock, fortress, deliverer, God, rock, shield, horn, stronghold, refuge, savior (verses 2–3). At the beginning David explains, “[He] is worthy to be praised” (verse 4). At the end he says, “I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name” (verse 50). It is a song about God — relentlessly about God, and according to verse 1, to God.

“Strong, positive feelings for God glorify him more than true words about God that carry no affections.”

If David refers to his own distresses, it is to show God as the great deliverer (verses 5–7). “He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me.  . . . He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me” (verses 17–20).

If he describes the earth reeling and the mountains trembling, it’s to show that the Lord was angry (verse 8). The thundering is his voice (verse 14). The lightning is his arrows (verse 15). The wind is his breath (verse 16).

If he mentions his own righteousness, he measures it by the Lord’s ways (verses 21–22). From his statutes he did not turn away (verse 23). It is from God that he has not wickedly departed (verse 22). This is not to exalt himself, for “You save a humble people, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down” (verse 28). You are a merciful God (verse 26). You lift up not the self-sufficient, but those who take refuge in you (verse 31). God has been my lamp to show the way. God has been my light to dispel the darkness (verse 29). It is you who have made my way blameless — not sinless, but forgiven and faithful (verse 33).

If he calls attention to his prowess in battle and his military victories, it is God who gets all the credit. “He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze” (verse 35). “You equipped me with strength for the battle” (verse 40). “[You] made my feet like the feet of a deer” (verse 34). “You made my enemies turn their backs to me” (verse 41).

If he calls attention to his headship over the nations, it is God who has done it. “You kept me as the head of the nations” (verse 44). “[You] brought down peoples under me” (verse 48). “You exalted me above those who rose against me” (verse 49). “Your gentleness made me great” (verse 36). Yes, the nations came, and they obeyed (verse 45). And what did David do with the headship God had given? “For this I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name” (verse 50). He’s singing! He’s singing to the Lord.

The Pastor’s Song

So, yes, Hertzberg is right. The song is about David’s God. It is a God-besotted, God-saturated song. And I think the impact that God intends is that the song of our lives be God-besotted, God-saturated, dominated, permeated by the reality of God. When you stand in your pulpit and sit in your counseling chamber and meet with your elders and mingle among your people, your people will sense the aroma of God.

They don’t need you to be funny or clever or shrewd or worldly-wise or culturally savvy or intellectually brilliant. They need you to be God-besotted. They don’t even know that phrase. Many of them don’t even know that reality. But that’s what your life is for, so that twenty years from now that’s the way they talk. That’s the way they think about you. That’s the way they think about the ministry and the Bible and the church and the world. God has moved from the margins of their lives to the center and the bottom and the top and the sides because you have been their God-besotted minister. The song of your life has been like David’s song.

For many years a picture of Jonathan Edwards hung on my church study wall. I had cut a page out of the magazine Christian History and framed it. There was a small picture of Edwards and then a quote underneath from Mark Noll, the historian. It hung there so that I could be confronted with these words almost every day. Here’s what it said:

Since Edwards, American evangelicals have not thought about life from the ground up as Christians because their entire culture has ceased to do so. Edwards’s piety continued on in the revivalist tradition, his theology continued on in academic Calvinism, but there were no successors to his God-entranced worldview or his profoundly theological philosophy. The disappearance of Edwards’s perspective in American Christian history has been a tragedy.²

When I read that as a new pastor, I thought, “Lord, I will never, I can never, be Jonathan Edwards. But Lord, if I could combine in my life and ministry the joyful, warm, evangelistic piety of my father, Bill Piper, and the God-entranced theology of Jonathan Edwards, that’s who I would like to be.”

And brothers, I don’t think it’s mainly a tribe. It’s certainly not a denomination. It’s a biblical vision, a biblical ethos. Mark Noll called it a “God-entranced worldview.” I’m not entirely happy with that phrase because “worldview” so easily connotes a philosophical orientation. And what I’m pleading for is a Bible-saturated orientation. The aroma of being God-entranced or God-besotted arises from being Bible-saturated, because the Bible is God-entranced. When you live in David’s song (2 Samuel 22), and you come out of it into your church, you might find yourself giving a six-minute devotion (which is how long it took me to read the song), after which somebody says, “I think you referred to God 90 times.”

Our Song

So, David’s song is a God-entranced, God-besotted song about David’s God. That’s the most prominent impact of the song. But it is about David’s God. And David is not a nobody. And who he is, and how we relate to him and his kingship, make all the difference in the world for whether we can participate in the blessings of this song. May we sing this song as our song? Is this our God? Is his strength and his gentleness and righteousness and mercy and perfection and truth and vengeance and deliverance and shield and salvation and love — are these ours? Is this rock our rock? May we read this psalm as our experience? May we say to the God of this song, “You are my God. This is who you are to me. This is who I am to you. Let my praises rise with David’s. Let me also praise you among the nations”?

Yes. This is our song. And the gateway into this experience is gradually opened for us in the song, first in verses 28–32 and then in verse 51. Only in verses 28 and 31 and 32 does David describe his experience of God as belonging to others besides himself. He says,

You save a humble people,
     but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down. . . .
     He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

For who is God, but the Lord?
     And who is a rock, except our God? (2 Samuel 22:28–32)

A humble people. All those who take refuge in him. Our God. This is an open door. The God that I am experiencing, David says, may be experienced by a humble people, a people who takes refuge in him, a people who say, “My God.”

Christ’s Song

How does one walk through this door into the very blessings enjoyed by God’s anointed, the king of Israel? The invitation comes in verse 51. For the first time in this song, we hear the words king, steadfast love (hesed), anointed (Mashiah), offspring, forever. And every Jewish ear — every ear trained by the Old Testament — leans in and remembers the seventh chapter of this book. God says to David,

I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. . . . My steadfast love will not depart from him. . . . And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:12–16)

The crescendo of David’s song is this: The blessings he has been singing are God’s covenant promises to the king of Israel, and not just to him, but to a kingship that will last forever. There is a coming king, an anointed one, who will live and die and live again and never die. He will be stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. But he will prolong his days forever, and the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand (Isaiah 53:4–5, 10).

Behold, [Mary,] you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:31–33)

He will be God with us (Matthew 1:23). And the king of Israel will prove to be the God of Israel. And all the humble — even the Gentile humble — all those who take refuge in this King, the God of Israel, all those who say, “My Lord and my God” will be welcomed into the everlasting blessings of David’s song.

The kingdom of David’s song is the kingdom of Christ. And according to Colossians 1:13, all those who have humbled themselves and take refuge in this King have been “delivered . . . from the domain of darkness and transferred . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

Brothers, this is your song. “All the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus]” (2 Corinthians 1:20). The Lord is your rock and your fortress and your deliverer, your God, your rock, in whom you take refuge, your shield, and the horn of your salvation, your stronghold and your refuge, your savior.

Be entranced, besotted with this God. Know him. Feel him. Speak of him. Sing to him.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art,
How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art,
How great thou art!