This psalm comes from the night David’s own house was surrounded — Saul’s men posted outside, waiting for morning to kill him on his own doorstep. He escaped only because his wife, Saul’s own daughter, chose him over her father and lowered him out a window in the dark.
A study in Psalm 59 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 10 min read
Deliver Me From Mine Enemies, O My God
“Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men.”
Psalm 59:1-2
The heading behind this psalm places David in his own house, watched by men Saul had sent specifically to kill him at daybreak. This is not danger met on a battlefield or in a wilderness cave — it is an ambush laid at his own front door.
Not For My Transgression, Nor For My Sin
“For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD. They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.”
Psalm 59:3-4
David is careful here, twice insisting on his own innocence in this particular matter — not a general claim of sinlessness, but a specific statement that whatever grievance Saul thinks he has, it has nothing to do with any actual wrong David has done him. David’s wife Michal, Saul’s own daughter, was the one who warned him and lowered him from a window in the dark to make his escape that same night, choosing her husband over her father’s murderous plot.
They Make A Noise Like A Dog
“They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear?”
Psalm 59:6-7
“For who, say they, doth hear?” names the assumption behind the whole ambush — that this plot was happening unwatched, unheard, entirely private. The rest of the psalm exists to correct that assumption directly.
“But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence.”
Psalm 59:8-9
God laughing at a plot this serious is startling until the scale is remembered — men waiting outside a house all night with swords, treated from heaven’s vantage point as something closer to a child’s scheme than a genuine threat to the outcome.
Slay Them Not, Lest My People Forget
“Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield.”
Psalm 59:11
This is a genuinely unusual request inside an otherwise fierce psalm — not for quick removal, but for a prolonged, visible humbling that Israel would actually witness and remember, rather than a death that could simply be forgotten once it was over.
“Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah.”
Psalm 59:13
“Let them know” is the actual goal named directly — not simply David’s safety, though that mattered plenty, but that the men lying in wait outside his house would be forced to recognize a rule they had assumed did not reach that far.
I Will Sing Of Thy Power
“But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.”
Psalm 59:16
“In the morning” is the precise detail that makes this line land — the men outside had been waiting specifically for morning to kill him, and morning instead becomes the hour David chooses for singing, the ambush having failed entirely by then.
“Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.”
Psalm 59:17
The psalm closes on the same phrase, “God is my defence,” that first appeared back at verse 9 while the danger was still fully present — David’s confidence was not manufactured by the escape. It was already there the night before, stated in the dark before the window was ever opened.
