Big Idea: In our deepest conflicts God’s emissaries of love and truth will guide us into safe harbor.

Understanding the Text

Psalm 57 is generally recognized as an individual lament. Some commentators, including Dahood, also see a royal element, and he calls it a “lament of a king.”1This view is largely based on the title’s association of David with the psalm and the description of persecution that could easily be applied to a national leader.

We should also note that the psalm is a prayer with intermittent reflective comments (see “Outline/Structure”). While it is not unusual for a psalmist to reference God in the third-person singular (“he”) during a prayer when he normally would be using the second-person singular (“you”), the exceptions in this psalm are too long to be considered …