OF DAVID. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.
1I will extol the LORD at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
2My soul will boast in the LORD;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
3Glorify the LORD with me;
let us exalt his name together.
4I sought the LORD, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
5Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
6This poor man called, and the LORD heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles.
7The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.
8Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
9Fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him lack nothing.
10The lions may grow weak and hungry,
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
11Come, my children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
12Whoever of you loves life
and desires to see many good days,
13keep your tongue from evil
and your lips from speaking lies.
14Turn from evil and do good;
seek peace and pursue it.
15The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their cry;
16the face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
18The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
19A righteous man may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers him from them all;
20he protects all his bones,
not one of them will be broken.
21Evil will slay the wicked;
the foes of the righteous will be condemned.
22The LORD redeems his servants;
no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.
Original Meaning
PSALM 34, LIKE the preceding Psalm 33, has twenty-two verses, indicating its relationship to the Hebrew alphabet of twenty-two letters. Unlike the earlier “alphabetizing” song, however, Psalm 34 is indeed a full-blown acrostic psalm, albeit a somewhat imperfect one. The verse that should begin with the letter waw (the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet) is missing, and an additional verse beginning with the letter pe is included at the end (34:22). The addition of a final pe verse is not unique, appearing also in Psalm 25 and in a medieval Hebrew version of Sirach 51, a much earlier Hebrew version of which has been discovered in broken form in the Qumran Psalms Scroll designated 11QPsa.1
The normal explanation of the additional verse in psalms like these is to observe that the expansion shifts the center of the acrostic to the twelfth letter of the alphabet (lamed) and so allows one to take the beginning (aleph), middle (lamed), and final (pe) letters to form the Hebrew verb for “learn, teach” (ʾlp). This structure becomes apparent only to the most astute observer and is one more evidence of the painstaking care exercised by the poets who constructed alphabetic acrostics. In any account, since the waw verse is missing in Psalm 34, the normal explanation does not fit, so the circumstances are left unexplained.
The psalm begins with an invocation to praise Yahweh along with the psalmist (34:1–3); it is followed by his personal testimony of deliverance and confidence (34:4–7). The body of the psalm is a series of proverbial instructions encouraging faithful reliance on Yahweh (34:8–22).
The Heading (34:0)
PSALM 34 IS the fourth of thirteen psalms that seek in the heading to connect with a specific event in the life of David.2 Most of the incidents mentioned in these headings are known from elsewhere in the Old Testament narrative, though a few (e.g., Pss. 7; 60) are not recognized outside the reference of the particular psalm heading. In the case of Psalm 34, the incident seems to parallel 1 Samuel 21:10–15, when David feigns madness while in the court of the Philistines. The passage in Samuel uses the name Achish for the Philistine who “drove him away” rather than Abimelech, as in the psalm heading. Attempts to explain the discrepancy are speculative. Other than the historical reference, the psalm is simply attributed to David.3
Invocation to Praise Yahweh (34:1–3)
THE PSALM PROPER begins with an invocation to praise Yahweh, in which the psalmist first proclaims personal determination to “extol,” “praise,” and “boast in” Yahweh (34:1–2) and then invites the listener/reader to join in “glorifying” and “exalting” the name of Yahweh along with him. The poetry of these verses is generally affirming parallelism, although the grammatical structure of each line varies significantly. The first three lines (34:1–2a) follow the theme of the psalmist’s personal praise of Yahweh, while the fourth line (34:2b) shifts to the invitation of a larger audience, which dominates the remainder of the invocation. The purpose of praise is subtly hinted at in the second line of verse 2, where those called to join the psalmist’s praise are called “the afflicted,”4 suggesting it is deliverance from oppression that occasions the psalmist’s joy.
The series of terms used to express praise and glorification of God are suggestive and not exhaustive. The first (from brk) is probably best rendered “bless” rather than the NIV’s “extol,” which has limited meaning to most readers today.5 The second verb (from hll) occurs in the reflexive Hithpael stem that sometimes means “praise oneself (i.e., boast).” Here the idea of boasting is carried over but is directed away from self to God. This publicly expressed pride in Yahweh has the goal of encouraging the afflicted and providing cause for rejoicing (34:2).
The actual invitation to praise calls the hearers to join the psalmist to “glorify” (gdl; lit., “make great”) and “exalt” (rwm, “raise up, exalt”) Yahweh and his name together. This is one of the chief objects of communal worship. The commitment to continual praise of God was likely part of the ongoing service of temple worship. The Qumran scrolls describe a twenty-four-hour system of organization by which someone was always studying and expounding Scripture.6 The opening verse of Psalm 34 suggests something like this for the continual praise and exaltation of Yahweh.
Personal Testimony of Deliverance (34:4–7)
THE PSALMIST HERE presents a personal testimony of deliverance by Yahweh, interwoven with encouragement to others to entrust themselves to his care. The movement from specific personal testimony to general exhortation occurs twice in these four verses: specific testimony (34:4), general exhortation (34:5), specific testimony (34:6), general exhortation (34:7).
I sought the LORD. The term translated “sought” (drš) is never used of seeking someone or something whose location is unknown. When one seeks God in this fashion, one does so knowing full well where he is, but is seeking either a restored relationship with him or, most commonly, information, guidance, or direction from him. This seeking may be accomplished through prayer or by some more technical means, such as the casting of the Urim and Thummim or receiving the word of a prophet. Such seeking is serious, purposeful searching, not confused wondering or wandering. The psalmist’s search was rewarded by an answer from God and deliverance from “all [his] fears.”
Those who look to him are radiant. The psalmist’s personal experience of deliverance leads to a general conclusion that those who trust Yahweh will experience the same. They radiate joy in a tangible, visible way.7 In some sense this radiance stands in contrast to the possibility of shame that is to be avoided. The faces of those who are radiant because of their trust in Yahweh “are never covered with shame” (34:5).
This poor man called. The psalmist returns to the description of specific deliverance, assuming the identity of the ʿani (“poor person; weak, helpless”) whose desperate cry has been met with divine deliverance (34:6). In describing Yahweh’s salvation, he introduces a phrase that will return twice later in the psalm: “He saved him out of all his troubles” (cf. 34:17, 19); in these latter two verses it is generalized to the experience of the “righteous” and becomes the dominant theme of the proverbial section of the psalm.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him. Once again the psalmist shifts from personal experience to a general encouragement of the listening community. As he has experienced the responsive deliverance of Yahweh, so the community can anticipate divine protection from “the angel of the LORD” in response to their attitude of dependence (“fear him”).
The “angel of the LORD” occurs some fifty times in the Old Testament, with 80 percent in the historical books. Seven more appearances occur in the Prophets (one in Isa. 37:36; six in Zech. 1, 3, and 12), and the three remaining occurrences are in the Psalter; once here and twice in the following psalm (35:5, 6).8 The angel of Yahweh is a rather enigmatic figure in the Old Testament. He often appears in human form to deliver messages from God or to carry out Yahweh’s purposes on earth. There is some tendency in these narratives to equate this angel with God himself, so that often it is difficult to draw a clear, distinctive portrait of the angel.
In most passages in which the angel of Yahweh is mentioned, he serves as a divine messenger mediating communications between God and humans. This is clear, for example, in the story of Hagar in the desert (Gen. 16), Abraham when asked to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22), Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3), and Balaam (Num. 22). On occasion the angel of Yahweh appears as a fearsome avenging angel delivering divine wrath. Consider the role of the angel in 2 Samuel 24 (cf. 1 Chron. 21), when he afflicted the people of Jerusalem with plague at God’s command, or in Isaiah 37:36 (cf. 2 Kings 19), where he “put to death” 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (again probably by plague) besieging Jerusalem. In Zechariah 12 the angel of Yahweh is depicted as going before the restored people of God to destroy their enemies.
It is perhaps this last image that informs the picture presented in Psalm 34 (and in 35:5–6). The angel of Yahweh encamps around God’s people, surrounding them with divine protection from their enemies. In 35:5–6 he drives away the psalmist’s enemies and pursues them as if to destroy them in battle. The role of the angel in the Balaam narrative (Num. 22) as he stands in the way of Balaam with sword drawn to bar his approach to curse Israel may also feed into the traditional understanding of the angel of Yahweh as the protector of Israel. The view of the angel moves from the most general understanding as a divine functionary communicating the divine will to humans, to an avenging angel of God who metes out punishment on earth, to a protecting angel who creates a shield around those whom Yahweh would make secure.
Proverbial Instruction (34:8–22)
VERSE 8 SETS the tone for the following collection of proverbial aphorisms that make up the remainder of the psalm. This verse is an exhortation to discover the goodness that Yahweh represents and to “take refuge in him.” That verses 8–22 form a collection is indicated by the use at beginning (34:8) and end (34:22) of the parallel phrase “take refuge in him” as a pair of boundary bookends (inclusio). The former is an exhortation to trust Yahweh while the latter is a promise of divine protection. Together these statements bind the varied proverbial statements into a unity and provide a thematic cohesion that links them together.
Fear the LORD. From the opening exhortation to “taste” (i.e., prove by experience) Yahweh’s goodness, the psalmist moves to a set of two proverbial statements (34:9–10) focused around the common phrase “lack nothing/no good thing.” Those who “fear the LORD” receive what they need from him. The second proverb draws on the animal world for confirmation. The young lions may be unable to meet their own food needs and thus “grow weak and hungry,” but those who “seek [drš] Yahweh” as the psalmist “sought” (drš) him (34:4) will lack nothing.
I will teach you. Having established “fear of the LORD” as the foundation of security, the psalmist lays out for the reader/listener the nature of this most important relationship (34:11–14). He assumes the classic wisdom role of the teaching parent and calls his readers to come as children to be instructed in what it means to demonstrate the appropriate “fear of the LORD.”9 In the following verses, those who wish to experience long life (34:12) should avoid malicious slander and lies (34:13) and should “turn from evil and do good”10 (34:14), seeking diligently after wholeness.11
The eyes [and ears] of the LORD. The next two verses (34:15–16) provide contrasting examples of Yahweh’s response to the righteous and those “who do evil” (contrary to the exhortation in 34:14). The eyes and ears of Yahweh are attentive to the needs of the righteous, while the wicked can anticipate only opposition from God, which will result ultimately in their complete eradication from life and even from “memory” (34:16). The verses encourage the hearers to follow the path of “fear of the LORD” laid out in the preceding verses.
He delivers them from all their troubles. Verses 17–20 are linked together by the repeated concept “deliver from all troubles” (34:17, 19). It is the deliverance of the “righteous” (34:17, 19) that is at issue here. These verses are intended to be an encouragement to those experiencing opposition and oppression that Yahweh is aware of their trouble and will act to deliver them. When the righteous cry out, Yahweh hears and acts in their behalf (34:17).
These verses also exhibit an interesting wordplay using the Niphal participle of the verb šbr (“be broken”). Yahweh is “close to the brokenhearted” (34:18; Heb. nišbere leb) and will protect the bones of them so that “not one of them will be broken” (34:20; Heb. loʾ nišbarah). The wordplay serves to bind these verses (34:17–20) together as a unit. Those who fear Yahweh can trust that their cries will come to the attention of a watchful God, who will oppose the wicked and deliver the righteous.
Evil will slay the wicked. The psalm concludes with a final contrast between the wicked and the righteous in the classic tradition of wisdom literature. In an interesting way in verse 21, it is “evil” itself that brings about the downfall of the wicked, who are identified here with the “foes of the righteous” (34:21). While it is not unambiguously stated how evil slays the wicked, the parallel line suggests that it is their evil acts (their failure to fear Yahweh and turn from evil) that leads to divine condemnation.
By contrast, those who “take refuge in” Yahweh (34:22) need not fear condemnation. Because they fear Yahweh and eschew evil, he will redeem them. This verse, with its reference to taking refuge in Yahweh, brings the series of proverbial exhortations begun in 34:8 to a close. As we have seen, what might appear to be an unorganized series of aphorisms does exhibit a certain order. The hearers are encouraged to take refuge in Yahweh (34:8) and to assume the appropriate dependence on him embodied by “fear of the LORD” (34:9). This all-important relationship of “fear” is defined as turning from evil (34:11–14), and the consequences of the response of righteous and wicked are illustrated (34:15–22) in order to encourage the righteous that dependence on Yahweh is the only hope for redemption.
Bridging Contexts
BLESSING YAHWEH AT ALL TIMES. The poet begins this psalm with the express purpose of “blessing” God. How, we might ask ourselves, is it possible for finite human beings to “bless” God in any way? Is not God complete in himself and unaffected by our praise? Is not praise actually directed at the well-being of those humans who profess their intent to bless God? Perhaps “blessing” is just another way of saying “praise”—meaning to proclaim the praiseworthy character, attributes, and deeds of God. This appears to be what the NIV translators suggest by their regular translation of the Hebrew verb brk (“bless”) as “praise” (or “extol” in 34:1) whenever it is found on the lips of humans and directed to God.
The Old Testament authors and writers—and particularly the psalmists—would seem to disagree. While they have in their vocabulary lists perfectly good and frequently used phrases to express “praising” God—verbs like hll (“praise”), gdl (“make great”), and rwm (“exalt”)—they persist in using brk (“bless”) in reference to God. This suggests they desired with this term to express their determination to do something more than just talk about the wonderful deeds and marvelous character of God. They intended to make clear their desire and purpose, even their determination, to return to God the blessing they had received from him. The kind of blessing God gives to his people calls forth a response in kind.
Leave it to the philosophers to debate the logic or rationality of humans blessing God. The psalmists are determined to do just that—to give good back to the king of the universe. That they believed in the power of the spoken human word to do good or harm is illustrated by the way in which many passages that hint of humans cursing Yahweh have been altered to remove any offense. Take, for example, the pointed encouragement by Job’s wife that he should end all pretense at integrity and “curse God and die!” (Job 2:9). While the clear import of the passage is that Job is exhorted to curse God so that the resulting destruction would end his suffering in death, the underlying Hebrew text reads barek ʾelohim wamut (lit., “bless God and die”). Because the Old Testament scribes were uncomfortable allowing a word for “curse” (ʾarur; qll) to be directed to God, they replaced cursing with blessing here and elsewhere.12 In other words, if curses against God were thought capable of doing harm to him, surely human blessings of God were considered equally capable of doing good.
By participating in the blessing of God, humans are aligning themselves with the purposes and plans of the deity rather than ranging themselves against them. While it may be theologically correct to say that God is unchanged by our blessing or cursing, it is certainly true that when his creation returns divine blessing, his purposes are brought to completion in a way that is not possible without that response.
A prototype of the Beatitudes? I am struck when I read this psalm at its similarity with the New Testament Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12). In both it is the persecuted who receive the kingdom of God. In Matthew’s treatment of the Beatitudes it is those who acknowledge their spiritual poverty and who are persecuted because of righteousness who enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:3, 10). The parallels with Psalm 34 are clear. On the one hand, Yahweh “is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (34:18). On the other hand, “the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry. . . . The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles” (34:15, 17).
Other parallels are apparent as well. In the Beatitudes, those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” will be filled (Matt. 5:6), while in Psalm 34, “those who fear [Yahweh] lack nothing . . . those who seek the LORD lack no good thing” (34:9–10). Matthew 5:9 speaks of a blessing on “the peacemakers,” while Psalm 34:14 encourages the righteous to “turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” The Beatitudes encourage the “pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8), while this psalm commends those who “keep [their] tongue from evil and [their] lips from speaking lies” (Ps. 34:13).
The parallels are not all exact, of course, but the tenor of the two passages is remarkably similar. Blessing from God comes to those who eschew the power tactics of the world and rely wholly on God as refuge. Such people suffer persecution and want in worldly measure but are filled with the blessings that come only from God. The conclusions of both passages are telling. For Matthew those who are insulted, persecuted, and falsely accused for the sake of Christ are blessed because their reward is great in heaven. Psalm 34 similarly concludes that although “a righteous [person] may have many troubles . . . the LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him” (34:19, 22).
A RIGHTEOUS MAN MAY HAVE MANY TROUBLES. The psalmist has an intense desire to bless God “at all times” (34:1). That may seem an easy task when all is going well and life is experiencing the abundant blessing of God. But what about when life is full of trouble and pain? Satan makes almost the same point when he says about Job to God: “Does Job fear God for nothing? . . . Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse [bless]13 you to your face” (Job 1:9–11).
The psalmist wants to make it clear that those who are called to bless Yahweh are not those who are beyond suffering and pain. To the contrary, they are described as the “poor” (34:6), those who take “refuge in him” (34:8, 22), who “cry out” under oppression (34:6, 15, 17). They are “brokenhearted” and “crushed in spirit” (34:18), who must rely on God to “redeem” them (34:22) and save them “out of all [their] troubles” (34:6, 17, 19). They are the ones who in the midst of their trouble experience the blessing of Yahweh. Psalm 1 tells us that divine blessing comes to the one who avoids evil associations and delights in God’s torah, receiving nourishment and guidance from that law on the way that leads to life. Here it is the one who “fears the LORD” who experiences blessing.
Once again, to “fear God/Yahweh” is to pare life down to its essential core: acceptance that one is completely dependent on God’s gracious, undeserved mercy. To experience that mercy in the midst of trouble is to know the “blessing” our psalmist describes. To “lack nothing” (34:9) or “no good thing” (34:10) certainly does not mean never to be in want or never to suffer pain and uncertainty. If that were the case, the psalmist would never speak of the blessed ones as the poor who call on Yahweh for deliverance from their troubles. Blessing comes precisely from acknowledging one’s dependence on God—that he alone is the refuge the psalmist seeks.
We too often identify divine blessing with “getting the goods” in one way or another. “How blessed” we think is the one who is financially secure or well respected, or whose family is well balanced and happily trouble free. We thank God for the blessings of health, comfortable living, and even national security. In doing so we rightly acknowledge how much all aspects of our lives depend on God.
The trouble is that we may come to associate divine blessing exclusively with such external evidence. The people of Jesus’ day struggled with this sort of thinking. If a child was born blind, it had to mean that someone had sinned, because certainly God would not visit such pain and suffering on the righteous (John 9:1–12). Jesus’ answer is shocking, both to his hearers and those of us who read the account now: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned . . . but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (9:3). The blind man was not suffering as the consequence of his sin but so that his suffering could serve a deeper divine purpose and significance.
This does not mean that we never suffer as a consequence of our own distorted decisions and sinful actions. Certainly alcoholism, uncontrollable rage, deceit, sexual promiscuity, and dishonesty—to name but a few of our sinful failings—can pay back severe and destructive consequences on us and all those around us. But to equate all suffering with the consequences of sin is to miss the point Jesus made so long ago, both in the account of the blind man and in the Beatitudes: The righteous suffer undeservedly,14 but in their suffering they have opportunity to glorify God and to receive his blessing!