Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 58: The Snail and the Judge
This is one of the hard psalms, the kind we tend to flinch from at polite dinner parties. David prays that wicked judges — the very men charged with upholding justice — would melt like snails and vanish like untimely births. It is not comfortable, and it is not meant to be. But notice what the psalm is actually insisting on: that somewhere, finally, there is a Judge who is not corrupt. The wickedness of those who weigh violence in their hands does not get the last word. "Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." That double "verily" is the sound of a man who has watched injustice for too long and needs to say it twice just to believe it. The snail imagery shocks us, but perhaps that is because we have made peace with the snail-men in our own time. David has not.
00:00 Do Ye Indeed Speak Righteousness
00:20 The Poison of the Deaf Adder
00:40 Break Their Teeth, O God
01:00 Melt Away as Waters
01:20 The Snail That Vanishes
01:40 A God That Judgeth in the Earth

Psalm 57: The Cave and the Chorus
David is hiding in a cave. Saul is somewhere outside with an army. And what does he do? He calls for his instruments. "Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early." The man in the cave wants a concert. It is the sort of thing that sounds like madness until you realize it is the opposite — it is the most sane thing anyone has ever done in a cave. For what David knows, even surrounded by lions whose teeth are spears, is that praise is not a response to good circumstances but an act of defiance against bad ones. "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed" — he says it twice, as if pinning it down with nails. The cave became, that day, something no cave had been before: a cathedral. And the roof of stone, one imagines, found itself, quite against its will, echoing a song.
00:00 Be Merciful, Be Merciful
00:20 Among Lions with Teeth Like Spears
00:40 Let Thy Glory Be Above All
01:00 The Pit They Dug Themselves
01:20 My Heart Is Fixed
01:40 Awake, Psaltery and Harp
02:00 Thy Mercy Unto the Heavens

Psalm 56: The Bottle of Tears
David writes this under the worst kind of pressure — the Philistines have him, the very men who have made their living by destroying him. And yet the middle of the psalm gives us one of the strangest, most tender images in all of Scripture. "Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" The God of the universe, we are told, keeps a bottle. He collects tears. He writes them down. It is the sort of thing a child might dream up — the Almighty with his little apothecary's vial, his meticulous ledger, treasuring what the world dismisses as weakness. But this is what the psalmist knows, and what David, trembling in Gath, clings to: nothing is wasted. Every tear is counted. And so he repeats, almost as a refrain: "In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me." It is not bravado. It is the quiet arithmetic of one who knows his grief is being archived in heaven.
00:00 Be Merciful Unto Me
00:20 The Daily Swallowing
00:40 When I Am Afraid, I Will Trust
01:00 My Wanderings Numbered
01:15 Tears in the Bottle
01:30 Walking in the Light of the Living

Psalm 55: The Friend Who Became a Stranger
Most psalms about enemies are about enemies — foreign armies, wicked rulers, faceless oppressors. This one is about a friend. "It was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company." There it is: the wound that does not come from a sword but from a supper table. David knows what it is to be hunted by Saul, but this betrayal cuts deeper, because it comes from someone who knew the sound of his prayers. The psalm gives us one of the most human cries in all of Scripture — "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." Who has not wanted exactly that? To simply leave, to be done with the whole complicated mess of trusting people who can hurt you. But the dove never comes. Instead, something better arrives: "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." Not remove the burden — sustain you under it. Evening, morning, and noon, David prays, and the God who hears does not give him wings but something sturdier — ground to stand on.
00:00 Give Ear to My Prayer
00:20 The Terrors of Death
00:40 Wings Like a Dove
01:00 Violence and Strife in the City
01:20 The Betrayal of a Friend
01:40 Sweet Counsel Together
02:00 Evening, Morning, and Noon
02:30 Cast Thy Burden Upon the Lord
03:00 I Will Trust in Thee

Psalm 54: Saved by a Name
This is a psalm born from betrayal — the Ziphites, David's own countrymen, went to Saul and told him exactly where David was hiding. You can almost hear the breathlessness of the prayer: "Save me, O God, by thy name." Not by thy army, not by thy angel, but by thy name. There is something beautifully primitive about the request, as though the mere speaking of who God is were itself a kind of rescue. And indeed the psalm is so short it barely gives fear time to settle before confidence arrives. "Behold, God is mine helper." The strangers who rose up against him have not set God before them — and that, it turns out, is all that matters. By the final verse David is already speaking in the past tense, as though the deliverance were already accomplished: "He hath delivered me out of all trouble." The prayer and the answer are practically the same breath. Sometimes faith is not a long journey but a single step from panic into the presence of the one whose name is enough.
00:00 Save Me, O God, by Thy Name
00:10 Strangers Are Risen Against Me
00:20 God Is Mine Helper
00:30 I Will Freely Sacrifice
00:40 Delivered Out of All Trouble