If you are hiding from someone, the last thing you want is for someone to find your hiding place, and especially not to reveal it to the one you’re hiding from. It’s not such a big deal if it is just a game of hide and seek, though you still don’t want to be found. However, if you’re hiding to save your life, you certainly don’t want your hiding place revealed to your enemy. There are a number of cases throughout history of someone who was hiding for their life, and then the wrong person discovered their place and told the enemy, often with disastrous results for the person Anne Frank would be one famous example. Our psalm for this week is an example from the Bible of a group of people revealing the hiding place of someone to their sworn enemy. Let’s take a look.
Psalm 54 was one of many psalms written by King David. This psalm, like a few others, has a descriptive heading, explaining the background of the psalm. After David’s great victory over the Philistine army champion Goliath, the young man came to the royal court of King Saul where he served as a personal musician to the king and also fought in the army, gaining more victories over the Philistines. Rather than being glad over this, these victories stirred the emotionally unstable and insecure king into a rage, and he frequently made attempts to harm or kill David. The young man had to spend many years on the run for his life. It was during one of those times that David went to the small village of Ziph in the territory of Judah, and hid from Saul in that area. However, despite their both being from the tribe of Judah, the residents of Ziph treacherously told King Saul where David was hiding out (I Samuel 23:14-29).
Imagine how David felt when he heard that the residents of the area turned their back against him and told the king where he was hiding! These were his people, members of the tribe of Judah. Tribal loyalty meant a lot back then, yet they betrayed him! David wasn’t a weak man, and he had a number of well trained men who followed with him, so if he wanted to, he was well-equipped to take his revenge on the townsfolk. What would David do?
If any of us have ever been wrongfully betrayed by another we can imagine how David felt, and known the desire to seek revenge on these enemies. Instead of gathering his warriors around him, and going back to Ziph and razing it to the ground, David instead turned to the Lord in prayer. He was hurt. He was angry. After all, he nearly lost his life due to their treachery! However, that is not what David did. Instead, he went to the Lord in prayer, knowing that vengeance belongs to Him (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19). He prayed to the Lord that He will help him, and that He will repay his enemies for the evil they have done to him (vs. 4-5).
The word “helper” in Hebrew (vs 4) is “ezer”, which gives the idea of rescuing, one who rescues or helps when someone is doomed. This helper supplies what one lacks when the enemy attacks. David knew God was his “ezer”. He knew that the Lord would uphold him in his time of need, that He would sustain and support him like the beams support a building so that it does not fall or collapse.
Because David had a relationship with God, he felt comfortable to be bold and specific in his requests to Him. Though there is nothing wrong with a general prayer of “Help!”, David knew he could be specific with God. He knew that as His child, he could ask God to rightly judge them and take care of them according to His righteousness. David prayed that the evil planned against him would come back on their own head. David concentrated on doing right rather than in plotting his own revenge. He surrendered that right to God. This is something that we should learn, as well, when someone does something unjustly against us. Rather than coming up with some equally harmful plot, we should leave the vengeance to God as David did.
Jesus also experienced something similar to what David did when He was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, someone who was one of the twelve disciples. And then strangers arose against Him (vs. 3). Ruthless men sought to take His life. They thought that they were serving God, but really they had not set the Lord before them. If they had they would never have killed the Son of God, their own Messiah.
When we feel the treachery of an enemy, or even from someone we thought we could trust, instead of plotting our own revenge, instead, let’s go to the Lord in prayer, and then leave the matter in His hand. Let’s trust in the Lord to be our helper, and to uphold us with His love.
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