n does not
reproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but the
echo of them broken up and etherealised. It broods over them till life
stirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar.

If we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the first
of these Songs of the Outlaw. It refers to the time "when Saul sent, and
they watched the house to kill him." Those critics who reject this date,
which they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos of
assumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. The Chaldean invasion, the
assaults in the time of Nehemiah, and the era of the Maccabees, are
alleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. "We believe that
it is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific to
ignore these hypotheses built on nothing." (Delitzsch.)

It is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in Samuel. There
we get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round David's
house; of Michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, and
of his hasty flight to Samuel at Ramah. In the narrative David is, as
usual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm,
we learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all the
vulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith.

The psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which is
repeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremity
of the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. The peculiar
tenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly Friend, which
is so characteristic of David's psalms, and which they were almost the
first to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help,
"my God." The enemies are painted in words which accurately correspond
with the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable they
were to the psalmist. They "lie in wait (literally weave plots) for my
life." They are "workers of iniquity," "men of blood," insolent or
violent ("mighty" in English version). He asserts his innocence, as ever
in these Sauline psalms, and appeals to God in confirmation, "not for my
transgressions, nor for my sins, O Lord." He sees these eager tools of
royal malice hurrying to their congenial work: "they run and prepare
themselves." And then, rising high above all encompassing evils, he
grasps at the throne of God in a cry, which gains additional f