Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 59: The Dogs That Circle the City
The scene is David's own house, surrounded by Saul's assassins in the night. And David gives us an image that once heard cannot be forgotten: his enemies are like stray dogs circling the city after dark, snarling, scavenging, belching out cruelty with their mouths. Twice the image returns — they come at evening, they make a noise like a dog — as if the threat circles back again and again, tireless and feral. But something else circles too, something that meets the dogs' return with a greater return: "But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning." The dogs own the evening; David owns the morning. They have their noise; he has his song. It is not that the danger disappears — the psalm never pretends it does. But between the circling dogs at nightfall and the song at dawn, something has happened. God has been David's defence and refuge, and the man who went to bed besieged wakes up singing.
00:00 Deliver Me From Mine Enemies
01:00 They Return at Evening Like Dogs
02:00 I Will Sing of Thy Mercy in the Morning

Psalm 58: The Deaf Adder and the God Who Judges
This is one of those psalms that makes the modern reader flinch, and perhaps it should. David turns his gaze upon corrupt judges — men entrusted with righteousness who deal out violence instead — and his imagery is ferocious: serpents with stopped ears, lions whose teeth must be broken, snails dissolving in their own slime. We want to look away. But before we do, we might ask why these images disturb us so. Is it not because we have grown comfortable with injustice, provided it does not touch us personally? The psalmist has not. He sees crooked power for what it is and refuses to call it anything else. The deaf adder is a particularly haunting image — a creature so committed to its own venom that it has made itself immune to any voice that might call it back. And the psalm ends not in despair but in a strange, fierce hope: "Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." The world is not, in the end, a place where wickedness has the last word.
00:00 Do Ye Indeed Speak Righteousness?
01:00 Verily There Is a God That Judgeth

Psalm 57: The Song That Wakes the Dawn
David is hiding in a cave — tradition says Adullam or En-gedi — with Saul's men prowling the landscape above. His soul, he says, is among lions. And yet something extraordinary happens in the darkness of that cave. Instead of collapsing into self-pity or hardening into bitterness, David's heart becomes fixed. "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise." The repetition is not accidental; it is the sound of a man planting his feet. And then the most magnificent gesture: "Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early." He does not wait for the dawn to bring him hope — he decides to wake the dawn with his praise. There is a kind of defiance in this that is not rebellion but faith at its most muscular. The lions are still there. The cave is still dark. But David has found something more real than his circumstances, and he means to sing about it until the sun has no choice but to rise.
00:00 My Soul Among Lions
01:00 I Myself Will Awake the Dawn

Psalm 56: The Bottle of Tears
Here is one of the most arresting images in all of Scripture, and it comes in the middle of a hunted man's prayer. David is in Gath, surrounded by Philistines who recognize him and mean him harm, and in his extremity he says to God: "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" Consider what is being claimed. Not merely that God sees our suffering — any distant deity might do that — but that He counts our tossings, collects our tears, records our grief with the attentiveness of a librarian cataloging rare manuscripts. Nothing is wasted. No midnight sob, no bewildered weeping in a foreign land, escapes His notice. And it is precisely from this knowledge — that he is watched over with such tender precision — that David finds the courage for one of the boldest declarations in the Psalter: "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee." Not "I will never be afraid" — that would be bravado, not faith. But when the fear comes, and it will come, I will place it in the hands of the One who keeps my tears in a bottle.
00:00 Be Merciful Unto Me, O God
01:00 My Tears in Thy Bottle

Psalm 55: The Wings of a Dove
There is a moment in this psalm so achingly human that it transcends its ancient setting and lands in every living room where betrayal has done its work. "It was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it... But 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." The wound is not from a stranger but from a friend. The knife came from someone who knew where you kept your trust. David's first response is the most natural one in the world: "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." Who has not wanted to become a bird when the world closes in? But the psalm does not let David fly away. Instead, it takes him through the pain to a harder and better place: "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." Not remove the burden — sustain you under it. The betrayer's words were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. And David's final word, standing in the ruins of a friendship, is not revenge but trust: "I will trust in thee."
00:00 Give Ear to My Prayer
01:00 Violence and Strife in the City
02:00 Evening, Morning, and Noon
03:00 I Will Trust in Thee