2 Samuel 22:29-31 - David's Psalm Of Thanksgiving.

"For thou, Jehovah, art my Lamp;

And Jehovah will make my darkness light.

For by thee do I run upon a troop;

In my God I leap over a wall.

God—his way is perfect;

The word of Jehovah is purified.

He is a Shield to all that trust in him."

Lamp . The lamp burning in the house is the proof of life and activity present there; and thus the extinguishing of the lamp means ruin and desolation ( Job 21:17 ). So David is called "the lamp of Israel" ( 2 Samuel 21:17 ), because the active life of the nation centred in him. In a still higher sense the life and being of his people centres in God, and without him the soul is waste and void, like the universe before God said, "Let there be light." I run. To the warrior in old time speed was as important as strength, and thus Homer constantly calls Achilles "fleet of foot." It was his fleetness which gave Asahel a high place among the mighties ( 2 Samuel 2:18 ), and to this quality David now refers. The troop signifies a light armed band of marauders, whom with God's aid David could overtake, and stop in their course of rapine. The wall means fortifications like those of Jerusalem ( 2 Samuel 5:7 ). Sieges were tedious affairs in old time, but David had captured that city with a rapidity so great that the metaphor in the text is most appropriate. Purified ; or, refined. This does not mean that it is proved by experience and found true, but that it is absolutely good and perfect like refined gold (see Psalms 12:6 ).