David uses desperate words; Rescue me, deliver me, turn your ear to me, save me, and a second time save me and deliver me. He tells the Lord he has taken refuge in him, and asks the Lord to be his rock and refuge in verses 1-4. Again he says, you are my rock and my fortress. David is poetically stammering in these four verses. The wicked’s grasp has squeezed words from his conscience thought (4). Cruel hands have stifled his mind and heart.
What can be a pleasant, even a special day can become a day where thoughts are caught in the grasp of evil and cruel people. They can even force us to live in the desert. This is what happened to David.
However, where David was physically and mentally at the hand of even his own son, Absalom, would not have entirely been a surprise to David. Years earlier, the Lord God sent the prophet Nathan to David. He reminded him all that he did for him, then said, “You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.“
Nathan continued, “Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.” Sometimes the rut we live in was dug by our own hands.
However, hope always remains, with a merciful and forgiving God. Being forced out of Jerusalem, far from home, hiding in the Judean Desert, we can ask for mercy in deliverance. Hebrews 4:15-16 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
