David’s Victory Hymn, part 1: The LORD as My Rock and Deliverer (2 Samuel 22.2–51)

The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,

my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,

my shield and the horn of my salvation,

my stronghold and my refuge,

my savior; you save me from violence.

I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,

and I am saved from my enemies.

For the waves of death encompassed me,

the torrents of perdition assailed me;

the cords of Sheol entangled me,

the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the LORD;

to my God I called.

From his temple he heard my voice,

and my cry came to his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked;

the foundations of the heavens trembled

and quaked because he was angry.

Smoke went up from his nostrils,

and devouring fire from his mouth;

glowing coals flamed forth from him.

He bowed the heavens, and came down;

thick darkness was under his feet.

He rode on a cherub, and flew;

he was seen upon the wings of the wind.

He made darkness around him a canopy,

thick clouds, a gathering of water.

Out of the brightness before him

coals of fire flamed forth.

The LORD thundered from heaven;

the Most High uttered his voice.

He sent out arrows, and scattered them

—lightning, and routed them.

Then the channels of the sea were seen,

the foundations of the world were laid bare

at the rebuke of the LORD,

at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

He reached from on high, he took me,

he drew me out of mighty waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy,

from those who hated me;

for they were too mighty for me.

They came upon me in the day of my calamity,

but the LORD was my stay.

He brought me out into a broad place;

he delivered me because he delighted in me.

The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness;

according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me.

For I have kept the ways of the LORD,

and have not wickedly departed from my God.

For all his ordinances were before me,

and from his statutes I did not turn aside.

I was blameless before him,

and I kept myself from guilt.

Therefore, the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness,

according to my cleanness in his sight.

Background

In the last prayer passage, David had dealt with the problem of Saul’s sin against the Gibeonites.¹ The narrator then tells us of how his army defeated the Philistines. David has finally dealt with the major issues that stood as an obstacle to the full unification of Israel. Some were internal crises, some were external, but David, victorious as God promised, reigns supreme over a peaceful and safe Israel. So, the final victory over the Philistines was the end of an era and the beginning of a new age for the nation. In the ancient world, victories were often celebrated by the composition of a song which thanked or praised a god for his or her or help.² Occasionally, these songs (which are prayers) were collected into books.³ The book of Psalms is one such collection (though it contains much more than just victory hymns).

This hymn is one such victory hymn, and was later included in the collection of Psalms with minor changes (see Psalm 18). Though its content is general enough to serve in a collection, it is also included here in 2 Samuel because it serves as the climax to the long struggle to unify Israel under King David. Yet it also shows David’s skill as a composer, and the words show, once again, how David depended on God and gave him the glory for all victories.

It is one of the longest prayers in the Bible (outside the Psalms). As such, we will study it in two parts. The first half has David as the primary subject; the second has God has the primary subject. Because it is a composed hymn, it is poetry rather than prose.

In the first seven verses, David describes God first as his deliverer. He makes use of the conventional imagery of God as a “rock,” a symbol of security and solid defense. I am writing this article a few weeks after the terrible 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck Nepal in May 2015. There was a cell phone footage of two hikers trudging along the steep mountains as the quake hit. They dove beneath a massive rock outcropping as rocks tumbled down over and past them. They knew a rock was a place of safety. So also, David knew God was a secure refuge. Likewise, he uses the image of a shield—an image that would have meant a lot to David as a seasoned soldier. To describe some of the hopeless situations he encountered, he uses the imagery of ocean waves, overwhelming and chaotic. For ancient people, this meant more than just an ocean—it was the chaotic seas that surrounded the entrance to the world of the dead (sheol), the watery grave which threatened order and creation.⁴ “Cords” and “snares” entangled him: these refer to the animal traps that were used at that time, which could catch animals with loops of rope and a tree branch. The first seven verses describe the human condition of being overwhelmed and feeling helpless. What imagery would you use from your world to compose such a prayer?

In verses 8–20, David turns to describe how God heard his cries for help. When God hears and comes forth, powerful things happen! God is angry, and the earth shakes. Smoke, fire, clouds, darkness, water, coals, thunder, and lightening are all part of the imagery of God riding out to right a wrong. God is depicted as a warrior, with a steed and arrows who routs his enemies, reaches down and pulls David out of the swirling waters, and saves him.

The last verses of this section (21-25) close with the reasons why God defended and saved David: because he was a faithful to God. We might wonder at the verse where David writes, “I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt.” What about Bathsheba and the murder of her husband? This statement of faithfulness is not about David’s personal conduct as a human (in which we know he failed many times), but in his faithfulness as the leader of Israel. He strove to put the people first, the unity of the kingdom, and the focus on God. In that way, he was faithful—he insisted that the nation be a nation of God.

Meaning

What can we use from this prayer? The imagery of God works well today: God as a rock or a warrior. David uses imagery common to his world. We could use that, or we could choose imagery from our world, that David would not have known. We could do the same for the description of being overwhelmed and lost. We could also adopt the structure of this prayer for our prayer: the faithfulness of God, our need, our crying out, and God’s response to our call.

Application

Select an event in your life, and compose a prayer for it. Because you are composing it, it can be more poetic, more literary, more structured and flowing than a spontaneous prayer. Composed prayers are useful for those times when we want to pray, but do not have the words, or do not have anything, in particular, to pray about. It is another way of adding richness to our prayer life.

1. See “Choosing the Right Type of Prayer (2 Sam 21.1).” ↩︎
2. An example is a long epic prayer by Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (c. 1244–1208 B.C.) thanking the god Ashur for a victory over Babylon. ↩︎
3. For example, there is an ancient Assyrian collection with 360 thanksgivings. ↩︎
4. See Genesis 1.2 for the earliest biblical reference to this concept: “…the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” ↩︎