What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
David pours out complaint and prayer together, his mind caught between distress and confidence in God's mercy. Whether he wrote this during his desperate flight to Gath or after deliverance, the psalm shows him clinging to faith even when fear drove him to feign madness, a weakness of the flesh that did not extinguish the exercise of prayer.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 56:1-13
What time I am afraid. David was no braggart, he does not claim never to be afraid, and he was no brutish Stoic free from fear because of the lack of tenderness. David's intelligence deprived him of the stupid heedlessness of ignorance, he saw the imminence of his peril, and was afraid.
David threw himself into God's hands even though fear and folly had thrown him into the Philistines'. He was like a silent dove, driven from his nest, mourning and melancholy yet patient, murmuring neither against God nor against those who troubled him, a pattern for all the afflicted.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 56:1-7