Psalm 54 Commentary

Psalm 54 tells a story in just seven short verses.  Like most if not all of the stories the psalms tell, it is a very generic tale.  We have no precise clue who the psalmist is, who his enemies are, exactly what actions the enemies take, or what God does to earn the praise he receives at the conclusion.  But there it is.  A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  We have no idea how much time elapsed from the opening verse and its powerful plea for salvation and the final verse that claims the psalmist has looked in triumph on all his foes.  For all we know it may have been a long time in coming and if so, there had to be long-ish stretches of time during which the psalmist likely experienced uncertainty, doubt, agony, and fear.

In other words, we should not let the apparent tidiness of this short poem fool us into thinking life is as simple and straightforward as a certain reading of this psalm might make one think.  Even if we too can tell a story like the one here in Psalm 54, we know it was a journey to get from a terrible place in life to a better one.  And at any given moment, some of the people to whom we preach each Sunday are definitely nowhere near the happier conclusion of this psalm.  Thus we preach on something like Psalm 54 with that pastoral sensitivity firmly in place.

But let’s walk through these seven verses.

Verses 1-2 do what most psalms and prayers in the Bible do and that is to show no hesitancy whatsoever in addressing God in the imperative mood!  The psalmist does not couch his request behind polite words like “Please” nor does he frame his demands with phrases like “If it could be your will” or “Would you consider, O Lord, granting me this prayer request.”  Nope.  “Save me!  Listen to me for crying out loud!”  Such rhetoric is a reminder that although we all are only right to address our Almighty God in Christ with all due reverence, God is apparently not offended if we come across as being a bit on the insistent side of things.  God understands.

Verse 3 focuses on arrogant foes and enemies who are on the attack and who have no regard for God at all.  They are ruthless.  But were they literally trying to kill the psalmist?  That is what the psalm says quite straightforwardly.  And since the Old Testament is rife with stories of real enemies engaging in real warfare with real weapons—and that includes incidents from the life of David—it is fully possible the threat to the psalmist’s life was just that real.  For many of us, thankfully, that puts us at a bit of a remove from the literal rhetoric of this prayer.  What we mostly all can relate to, however, is the idea that in our lives there are people who oppose us, who talk us down, who berate us, who in this social media-saturated age use posts and Tweets to spread lies about us.  So ok, no one is aiming literally to take us out physically but nasty people who are out to get us?  Yeah, we get that.

Verse 4 is the fulcrum, the dead center, of this prayer.  It is not addressed to God like verses 1 and 2 are but it is said in God’s hearing and is the psalmist’s not-so-subtle way of reminding God that he is his help and the one who alone can sustain him.  “Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.”  And you can almost picture the psalmist then cutting his eyes in God’s direction and as much as saying, “Isn’t that right, Lord?”

Verse 5 dispenses with the enemies rather swiftly.  The psalmist wishes for the evil committed by his enemies to boomerang back upon themselves.  But this is not only a passive wish for justice to be done but a plea with God to destroy these foes.

Finally come verses 6-7 as the conclusion of the matter has apparently taken place (although curiously the psalm itself does not recount any details on that).  The psalmist is going to make a sacrifice to God to praise God’s good name for having delivered him and allowing him to look in victory over those who had previously shown such reckless disregard for God and for all that is good.

Again, such deliverance does not always come swiftly and sometimes we wonder if it will ever come at all in this life.  But Psalm 54 reminds us we are always right to ask God to save us—and to be bold and upfront about it at that—and that if and when salvation comes, we give all praise and glory to our good God alone.

Illustration Idea

OK, for some of you this may be a stretch but something about Psalm 54:5 and its desire for evil to recoil back upon those who inflict the evil reminded me of something that happens very near the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s series.  The evil Lord Voldemort at long last gets to confront directly his nemesis, Harry Potter.  Harry has decided to sacrifice himself to save his friends and so appears before Voldemort in a forest not far from Hogwarts, the school Voldemort’s forces have been laying siege to.  Voldemort then raises his wand and hurls the killing curse “Avada Kedavra!”  Harry instantly falls, apparently dead.

But wait: Voldemort has recoiled backwards as well and is flat on his own back.  As it turns out—and as Voldemort will soon discover—what he killed was not Harry but the second-to-the-last remaining piece of his own soul that Harry harbored inside him.  Voldemort’s evil recoiled upon and rebounded to his own self.  Voldemort contributed to his own death, not Harry’s.

Sometimes like the psalmist in Psalm 54:5 we all secretly wish that those who commit crimes and kill the innocent will somehow suffer the consequences of their acts when all the evil they have ever done somehow or another catches up with them.  Yes, our Lord tells us to forgive and pray for those who persecute us, and we must.  But maybe even that does not preclude the coming of a larger justice that will at long last balance out the moral books of life.