Psalms 63

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

No psalm in the Psalter is more divinely sweet and spiritual than this, or awakens a deeper response in the soul that thirsts after God. As such it is the common property of the devout in all ages, and in the so-called Apostolic Constitutions was ordered to he sung every morning in the Church. Taking the verbs as futures and not optatives, the psalm contains no prayer, but abounds in praise, thanksgiving, inward longing after God, and joyful trust. As to its occasion, modern criticism, against the older interpreters, inclines to David’s flight from Absalom, 2 Samuel 15:13, etc., making large reliance upon Psalms 63:11, (where see note,) and upon the supposed allusion of Psalms 63:1, “a land dry and עי Š, ( weary,)” to 2 Samuel 16:14, “and the king and all the people came עיפים , ( weary,)”

etc., compared with 2Sa 16:2 ; 2 Samuel 17:2. But though the coincidence agrees well enough with the hypothesis, it has no necessary force of proof that the occasions were the same; for the same person passing through different parts of the same desert at different times might describe his sufferings in similar terms simply from the uniformity of effect from the same physical conditions. Against this hypothesis it may be further urged that the psalm is admitted on all hands to be a morning hymn; (Psalms 63:1;) but in David’s flight from Absalom he passed no morning in the “wilderness of Judah.” On the night of the same day that he left Jerusalem he crossed the Jordan. He had purposed to pass the night west of the Jordan, (2 Samuel 15:28,) but tidings from the capital compelled him to pass over without delay, (2 Samuel 17:16; 2 Samuel 17:22,) and the first morning was, therefore, passed on the “plains of Moab,” east of Jordan, not in the “wilderness of Judah.” Not less forcible is the internal evidence of the psalm itself. It contains no prayer or confession, but abounds in thanksgiving, praise, and holy confidence, everywhere bearing the marks of a tranquil mind and a recent night of calm meditation, Psalms 63:6. Contrast with this the elegiac tone of his psalms written the first day and night of his compulsory abdication, as Psalms 3:4, Psalms 3:7, 42, 43, 55. In addition we must cite the Septuagint, followed by the Vulgate, which gives in the title “the wilderness of Idumea,” instead of Judah. Now it is well known that after the Chaldean invasion, the Idumeans (Edomites) advanced their northwest border upon the desolated territory of Judah as far as the parallel of Hebron. (See 1Ma 5:65 ; Ezekiel 36:5; Prideaux, part i, book 1.) So that by foreigners the southern part of Judah was called Idumea. This would leave Engedi, where we suppose the psalm to have been written, fully within the so-called Idumean territory, in the desert which might indifferently be called wilderness of Judah, or of Idumea. The authors of the Septuagint Version, themselves Alexandrian Jews, would naturally (as foreigners actually did) call that Idumean which a Palestine Jew would call Judean territory. This would harmonize the apparent difference between the Hebrew and Greek titles, and fully corroborate the assignment of our psalm to David’s sojourn in the vicinity of Engedi. 1 Samuel 24:0. But the section of the wilderness of Judah farther north, embracing the route from Jerusalem to the mouth of the Jordan, which David took in his flight from Absalom, was never called Idumea either by Palestine or foreign Jews. Our psalm belongs, with Psalms 57:0, to the period of Saul’s persecution, only a little later than the latter, when the crisis of danger had passed and a calmer scene had succeeded. See introduction to Psalms 57:0. Psalms 63:1-8 describe his thirsting after God; Psalms 63:9-11, the sure and certain overthrow of his enemies.

TITLE:

Wilderness of Judah Extending on the east of Judah, over all the territory between the central mountains and the Dead Sea, east and west, from the mouth of Jordan on the north to the desert of Arabia on the south. Localities were often called after the nearest city, as wilderness of Engedi, of Maon, of Ziph, of Tekoa.