isely this conflict of faith and fear which the
psalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and second
of which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structure
which is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms
(_e.g._, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these two
portions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to
the faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the same
thoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of
composition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts.
He sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be many
fighting against me disdainfully"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creeps
round his heart ("he was sore afraid," 1 Sam. xxi. 12), he rouses
himself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically
the co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality
of even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt
and dread.

[I] Literally, "loftily." Can there be any allusion to the giant stature
of Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men "born to the giant
in Gath," who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. xxi. 22.)

"(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee."

And then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which
he has climbed by the ladder of prayer.

"In God I praise His word,
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall flesh do to me?"

How profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being
not merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specific
promise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God who
promises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union
with God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him
now to say, "I do _not_ fear."

But again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over
him, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaseless
malice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they
long for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of the
peril and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with the
ground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are
dying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; he
turns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later day