Psalms 56 KJV
Trust in God's Word
About This Psalm
When I am afraid, I will trust in thee. Written while captured by enemies. Fear is real - but so is God.
1e merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
2 Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
5 Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
7 Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
8 Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
10 In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.
11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?
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Did You Know?
The superscription ties Psalm 56 to David's feigned madness before Achish of Gath in 1 Samuel 21, yet the body of the psalm deliberately avoids any explicit reference to that episode, transforming a personal anecdote into a template for any believer facing anonymous watchers and whispered plots.
The enigmatic title phrase "Jonath-elem-rechokim" ("the silent dove of the distant terebinths") functions simultaneously as a possible melody cue and a coded self-reference to David as a hunted, voiceless fugitive far from sanctuary, an image nowhere else attached to this incident in the historical books.
Verse 8's command that God "put my tears into thy bottle" draws on a documented ancient Near Eastern funerary practice of sealing mourners' tears in miniature vessels for burial with the dead, thereby casting divine remembrance as a counter-liturgy to human oblivion.
The psalm belongs to the small Michtam collection (Psalms 56-60), whose shared superscriptions and recurring "refuge" vocabulary suggest these texts once formed an independent sub-collection used in a post-exilic redaction to model trust during successive imperial threats.
The double occurrence of the refrain (vv. 4, 10-11) creates a deliberate asymmetry: the first instance rests on human fear, while the second is anchored in an explicit appeal to "the word," marking an internal movement from raw emotion to Scripture-grounded confidence unique among the individual laments.