KING AND COUNTRY
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Opening Prayer
Father in Heaven, speak to me today through your Word. Help me to hear and respond to what you say, empower me to do your will.
Read PSALM 144
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Psalm 144
Of David.
1 Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
who trains my hands for war,
my fingers for battle.
2 He is my loving God and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield, in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples[a] under me.
3 Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,
mere mortals that you think of them?
4 They are like a breath;
their days are like a fleeting shadow.
5 Part your heavens, Lord, and come down;
touch the mountains, so that they smoke.
6 Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy;
shoot your arrows and rout them.
7 Reach down your hand from on high;
deliver me and rescue me
from the mighty waters,
from the hands of foreigners
8 whose mouths are full of lies,
whose right hands are deceitful.
9 I will sing a new song to you, my God;
on the ten-stringed lyre I will make music to you,
10 to the One who gives victory to kings,
who delivers his servant David.
From the deadly sword 11 deliver me;
rescue me from the hands of foreigners
whose mouths are full of lies,
whose right hands are deceitful.
12 Then our sons in their youth
will be like well-nurtured plants,
and our daughters will be like pillars
carved to adorn a palace.
13 Our barns will be filled
with every kind of provision.
Our sheep will increase by thousands,
by tens of thousands in our fields;
14 our oxen will draw heavy loads.[b]
There will be no breaching of walls,
no going into captivity,
no cry of distress in our streets.
15 Blessed is the people of whom this is true;
blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.
Footnotes
- Psalm 144:2 Many manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Aquila, Jerome and Syriac; most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text subdues my people
- Psalm 144:14 Or our chieftains will be firmly established
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
When you ask God for help in difficult circumstances, how expectant are you for him to intervene, thanking him before he does?
The king praises God on behalf of the nation. The psalm, as we have it, was probably put together in the period before the fall of Jerusalem in Ezekiel’s time, with almost all of the content repeated from earlier psalms—what Anderson calls ‘a mosaic of various fragments of other psalms’1 The psalm opens with an acknowledgment of who God is and what he has done, causing the psalmist first to turn to prayer for God’s intervention (vv. 5–8) and then to break out in song (vv. 9–11), before ending with a reflection looking beyond the present to a time of future prosperity. The intervention he requests is a full-on theophany (v. 5), a ‘breaking into time and space of a colossal eternal energy with devastating effect.’2
The psalmist may be a king, but he is struck by his own mortality and insignificance in comparison with God. He raises a great philosophical question: why should God, who is eternal—always has been and always will be—take note of humans whose lives, in comparison, are but a breath or a fleeting shadow? In another psalm, the writer marveled in a similar fashion that God had made humanity ‘a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.’3 Paul, too, recognized that, as humans, ‘we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.’4
Prosperity in Old Testament times was seen as a blessing from God, so it is normal for the psalmist, having prayed for God’s intervention to deliver the people from their enemies, to anticipate the outcome in terms of economic and social blessing. Yet he finishes with a clear acknowledgment of the source of their blessings and of how favored they are to be the recipients.
Apply
In our sophisticated society and our greater understanding of how the universe works, how can we maintain a humble and thankful spirit?
Closing prayer
Lord Jesus, who set us an example of meekness and majesty, help me to imitate your humility and express your love to those around me.
1 AA Anderson, The New Century Bible Commentary Psalms 73 –150 (Eerdmans, 1981), 931. 2 Leslie Allen, ‘Psalms’, in A Bible Commentary for Today (P&I, 1970), 698. 3 Ps 8:5 4 2 Cor 4:7
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