Psalms

Chapter 60

Victory with God

This psalm speaks from the disorientation of military defeat, acknowledging that God has shaken and torn open the land and given his people bitter hardship. Yet it refuses to end there: David sees that God has raised a banner for those who fear him, prays for salvation by God's right hand, then rehearses God's sovereign claim over Israel's territories and neighboring nations before admitting again the ache of divine rejection and asking for renewed help, confident that with God his people will act valiantly and their enemies will be trampled.

Psalm 60 is a communal war prayer that binds national crisis to covenant dependence. It teaches that military success or failure is never autonomous from God's rule, that divine promises over land and peoples create hope in the middle of defeat, and that human help is empty apart from the God who alone grants valor and victory.

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Psalms 60

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vv. 1-12

Victory with God

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F¹or the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Lily of the Covenant.” A Miktam of David for instruction. When he fought Aram-naharaim and Aram-zobah, and Joab returned and struck down 12,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. ²You have shaken the land ³You have shown Your people hardship; ⁴You have raised a banner for those who fear You, ⁵Respond and save us with Your right hand,

⁶God has spoken from His sanctuary: ⁷Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine; ⁸Moab is My washbasin;

⁹Who will bring me to the fortified city? ¹⁰Have You not rejected us, O God? ¹¹Give us aid against the enemy, ¹²With God we will perform with valor,

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01vv. 1-12Victory with GodDavid laments that God has rejected and broken his people, shaking the land and making them drink the wine of staggering, yet he also recognizes that God has raised a banner for those who fear him and therefore pleads for salvation by God's right hand. He then cites God's declaration from the sanctuary, where the Lord claims Gilead, Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah, Moab, Edom, and Philistia under his sovereign dominion. From that divine word David asks who will lead the people into the fortified city, admits that God had seemed to reject their armies, rejects human help as vain, and ends with confidence that through God they will perform valiantly and he himself will tread down their foes.