Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 61: The Rock That Is Higher Than I
There is a particular kind of prayer that begins not in the temple but at the edge of the map. "From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed." David has run out of geography. He has run out of strategies. And the petition that follows is one of the strangest and truest in all the Psalter: "lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Notice he does not ask for a different rock, or a stronger rock, or a more comfortable rock. He asks for higher ground than his own — ground he could not climb to alone. It is the prayer of a man who has finally understood that what he needs is not improvement but elevation. And then, with the candor of someone who has been answered before, he names what God has been all along: shelter, strong tower, the covert of wings. The end of the earth, it turns out, is not the end of God.
00:00 Hear My Cry, O God
00:15 From the End of the Earth
00:30 The Rock That Is Higher
00:45 The Covert of Thy Wings
01:00 The Heritage of Those That Fear
01:15 So Will I Sing Forever

Psalm 60: When the Ground Shakes
This is a psalm for after the battle has gone badly. The armies have returned, some of them without half their number, and David writes not to complain but to plead. "Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh." It is one of the few psalms where the ground itself becomes a character — an old, cracked thing needing repair. And then, halfway through, the tone shifts. God speaks. And when he speaks, he does not soothe; he claims. Shechem. Succoth. Gilead. Manasseh. Ephraim. Judah. Moab. Edom. He counts the territories like a man listing his tools. The defeat, we begin to see, has not canceled the covenant. And David lands where every honest soldier eventually lands: "Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man." The ground shakes. The enemies advance. And still — and here is the astonishment — "through God we shall do valiantly."
00:00 Thou Hast Cast Us Off
00:20 The Earth Made to Tremble
00:40 The Wine of Astonishment
01:00 A Banner for Those Who Fear Thee
01:20 Shechem and Succoth, Gilead and Judah
01:40 Moab Is My Washpot
02:00 Through God We Shall Do Valiantly

Psalm 59: The Dogs at Evening
They are outside the house. Saul's men. And David, trapped inside, gives them the most precise and devastating description in the Psalter: "they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city." He says it once, and then — astonishing — he says it again at the end. Twice he calls them dogs. Twice he notes the aimless circling, the empty barking, the hunger that never quite becomes a meal. It is the literary equivalent of drawing your enemy in miniature until he is no longer frightening. And then the morning comes. "But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning." The dogs howl at evening; the songbird answers at dawn. One gets the distinct impression that David had decided, somewhere in the night, which of those sounds carries further.
00:00 Deliver Me From Mine Enemies
00:20 They Lie in Wait, Not For My Sin
00:40 Awake to Help Me
01:00 A Noise Like a Dog
01:20 The Lord Shall Laugh
01:40 God Is My Defense
02:00 At Evening Let Them Return
02:20 But I Will Sing in the Morning

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