Psalms 144:1

PSALM 144

THANKSGIVING FOR ISRAEL'S HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS MORNING

This glorious hymn of thanksgiving came upon the realization of David and all Israel that "the morning" he had so earnestly prayed for in the preceding psalm (Psalms 143:8) had indeed dawned. A united, happy Israel were enjoying great prosperity and peace following the defeat and death of Absalom. Upon the horizon of Israel's future, there still appeared the external threat of foreign enemies; and the psalmist includes a prayer unto God for their defeat (Psalms 144:5-8).

There is no doubt whatever of the Davidic authorship as stated in the superscription. We have lost all patience with unreasonable denials of this and with arbitrary dating of the psalm in "post-exilic times."[1] The exuberant happiness and prosperity of this psalm absolutely forbid its assignment to times after the captivity. Never one time in those long post-exilic centuries did Israel enjoy the prosperity visible here.

We deplore the near-unanimous clamor of critics denying all of this last group of Davidic psalms to their true author. Such views might have been tenable in the first quarter of this century, prior to the torpedo that shot down the myth that Aramaisms are a sign of post-exilic date. However, after the discoveries of the Ras Shamra expedition have been well-known for half a century, here come the die-hard critics alleging late dates on the basis that, "The vocabulary contains Aramaic ... elements."[2]

"Nothing but the disease that closes the eyes to fact and opens them to fancy could have led learned critics to ascribe this psalm to anyone except David."[3] What is that disease? In some instances, it might very well be the "darkening," "hardening" or "blinding" mentioned by Paul in Romans 1.

AUTHORSHIP. Of course, we accept the Davidic authorship of Psalms 144, and shall here outline our reasons for doing so.

(1) The superscription so ascribes it; and the ancient superscriptions are at least as dependable as the speculative guesses of modern critics.

(2) Mitchell Dahood ascribed the language of this psalm, based upon technical observations, "To the tenth century B.C."[4] Those, of course, were the times of David.

(3) The psalm is freely admitted to be "A Royal Psalm."[5] That fact alone eliminates the post-exilic period as a possible date, because Israel never had anything that even resembled a king following their return from exile.

(4) As noted above, the prosperity of Israel as revealed in the psalm, came not in the post-exilic period but in the days of the monarchy.

(5) In Psalms 144:10, the psalmist refers to himself as "David"; and only one of Israel's kings ever bore that name. Furthermore, the name "David" does not mean "some member of the Davidic dynasty."

(6) In Psalms 144:9, the psalmist promised to sing a new song, accompanying himself on a harp with ten strings. What other king in the whole history of Israel was either a singer or a proficient player on the harp? The silence of the critics on this point is deafening! Only David could have made such a promise.

(7) The style, language, thought-patterns, etc. are David's and only his. The critical device for meeting this argument is their unsupported, unprovable and ridiculous postulation that "some imitator" carefully put together a "mosaic" of known Davidic sayings to produce this psalm. They realize, of course, that the psalm contains a great deal of new, original material found nowhere else. How do they get around that? Dummelow tells us how! Psalms 144:12-15," are supposed to be, "A quotation from a lost Psalm, possibly by David."[6] The remarkable thing here is that the critics have no trouble at all ascribing that `lost psalm' to David. Behold here the genius of criticism which boldly ascribes some psalm that was never seen, or never heard of, to David, but, contrary to all the evidence, insists that David is NOT the author here! We do not hesitate to say that that is ridiculous.

Every weapon in the arsenal of criticism is forced into action against this psalm. Briggs called it, "A composite,"[7] finding two separate compositions and a "fragment" (Psalms 144:1-15). However, Spurgeon's view on this is correct. He wrote, "The whole psalm is perfect as it stands. It exhibits such unity that it is literary vandalism as well as a spiritual crime to rend away one part from another."[8]

Psalms 144:1-4

"Blessed be Jehovah my rock,

Who teacheth my hands to war,

And my fingers to fight:

My lovingkindness, and my fortress;

My high tower, and my deliverer,

My shield, and he in whom I take refuge;

Who subdueth my people under me.

Jehovah, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him?

Or the son of man, that thou makest account of him?

Man is like to vanity:

His days are as a shadow that passeth away."

"My rock ... lovingkindness ... fortress ... high tower ... deliverer ... shield ... refuge" (Psalms 144:1-2).. All of these metaphors for God are used frequently in the Davidic psalms, as we have often noted.

"Who teacheth ... to war ... to fight" (Psalms 144:1). This acknowledges on David's part that God had instructed and helped him in the long struggles that had brought him to the throne and preserved him through the rebellion of Absalom.

"Who subdueth my people under me" (Psalms 144:2). This speaks of a period of tranquillity in the kingdom. The rebellion had been ruthlessly put down; its leaders were dead; its armies had been defeated with the slaughter of tens of thousands of them; and the people were then content to settle down and enjoy the prosperity of David's kingship.

The whole paragraph here (Psalms 144:1-4) was paraphrased by Delitzsch: "Praise be to Jahve who teaches me to fight and conquer (Psalms 144:1-2), me, the feeble mortal who am strong only `in Him' (Psalms 144:3-4)."[9]

Baigent also has a beautiful word on this paragraph:

"Such martial skills and exploits as he (David) achieved are gratefully traced back to God, their only source. `Every virtue' he possesses, and `every victory won' are God's alone. He is a kindred spirit of Paul, who wrote, `By the grace of God, I am what I am.' (1 Corinthians 15:16).[10]

"Psalms 144:2 here has marked resemblances to Psalms 18:2, but there are peculiar and original touches which indicate the author, and not the copyist."[11]