Psalm 63-65: God’s Protection & Provision

Read the Bible in 2011–2021* ◊ Week 22: Wednesday

There will be silence before You, and praise in Zion, O God,
And to You the vow will be performed.
O You who hear prayer,
To You all men come

Psalm 65:1–2

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Today’s Bible reading is Psalms 63–65. Remember to stop and ask God to teach you and help you from His Word.

As you read these psalms of David, think about how they reveal who God is. Look at what David says to God and when he says it. Derek Kidner writes this about Psalm 63:

“Once more the worst has brought out David’s best, in words as it did in deeds. The title in the canonical text identifies the desolate scene which set these thoughts in motion., and the mention of the king in verse 11 points to the time when Absalom rather than Saul had made him take to the Wilderness of Judah on his way to the Jordan (cf. 2 Sa. 15:23).”¹

David is in a desolate place being hunted by his own son, yet this psalm resonates with gratitude as he speaks primarily of God, who He is and what He has done:

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.

Psalm 63:3–5

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In Psalm 64 David opens with praying for deliverance. Kidner writes:

“While Psalm 63 was focused on God, with the enemy on the edges of the picture, here the composition is reversed, although the outcome is the same. In fact the brevity of God’s countermeasures, after the elaborate scheming of the wicked, tells its own decisive tale.”²

There is only one verse that speaks of what God will do to David’s enemies! David closes the psalm by describing reactions to God’s work:

Then all men will fear,
And they will declare the work of God,
And will consider what He has done.
The righteous man will be glad in the Yahweh³ and will take refuge in Him;
And all the upright in heart will glory.

Psalm 64:9–10

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In the last psalm for today, David recounts all that God has done, first, in God’s provision of forgiveness of iniquities, and then in God’s provision for man’s needs.

You have crowned the year with Your bounty,
And Your paths drip with fatness.
The pastures of the wilderness drip,
And the hills gird themselves with rejoicing.
The meadows are clothed with flocks
And the valleys are covered with grain;
They shout for joy, yes, they sing.

Psalm 65:11–12

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Look again at verse 5.

By awesome deeds You answer us in righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea.

Psalm 65:5

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David says that God is the trust of all the ends of the earth. As you finish reading, think about that. What do these three psalms teach you about David’s trust in God? Why does David trust Him? How does David’s trust in God affect David when he is hunted by enemies and when he is at ease reflecting on the bounty he sees?

In Exodus 33–36: God’s Goodness & Glory I quoted these verses from Jeremiah 9:

Thus says Yahweh, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares Yahweh.

Jeremiah 9:23–24

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How did David’s knowledge of God undergird his trust in God? We all need to grow in our trust in God. Are there areas in your life or circumstances that are especially difficult for you right now? Spend time in prayer asking God to help you to understand and know Him. Ask Him for help and deliverance in whatever you are facing and for help in trusting who He is and what He will do. Thank Him for His protection and provision for you.

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Isaiah 42 Photograph: ChristianPhotos.net – Free High Resolution Photos for Christian Publications. (Site has been deleted since posting).
Sheep in the Highlands: Rosa Bonheur. Public Domain.
^1,2Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, (Inter-Varsity Press, London, England: 1973) 224, 227.
³I’ve substituted Yahweh for LORD that is used in the NASB to translate God’s name. On Yahweh, Alec Motyer writes:
“The divine name ‘Yahweh’ well at first sound strange in your ears, being used to the established (but mistaken) English convention I’ve representing the name as ‘the Lord’. We who are of an older generation will remember the days when calling someone by their Christian name was a privilege granted not to be presumed upon. It meant something to us when a senior friend said, ‘Please call me by my Christian name’; the relationship had ripened into a new intimacy and privilege. So it was in Genesis 4:26 when people began to call their God by his personal name; so it was even more when the significance of that Name was revealed to Moses (Exod. 3:15). A totally false sense of reverence later said ‘The Name is too holy for us to use,’ and the custom was introduced of representing it as ‘the Lord’. No, no. He has granted us the privilege, and we should learn (belatedly) to live in the benefit of it. Hebrew has two main nouns for ‘God’. There is a plural elohim, God in the fullness of the divine attributes ― for simplicity I translate this as ‘God’ ― and the singular el which I translate as ‘transcendent God’. But there is only one ‘Name’. ‘God’ is what he is; Yahweh is who he is.”
Alec Motyer, Psalms By The Day: A New Devotional Translation (Christian Focus Publications Ltd, Ross-shire, Scotland, U.K. 2016) 10.

*In 2011 I started a year-long series of posts, “Read the Bible in 2011.” You can find the other posts in the navigation menu in the header. If a day doesn’t have a link to a post, the post was simply a brief reminder about the reading. I’m filling in some of those gaps with new posts with “Read the Bible in 2011 Redux” as a category.