Psalms 63: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In this psalm the writer, far from the sanctuary in a dry land without water, says he searches for God the way a thirsty person searches for water. He remembers seeing God's power in the holy place, promises to praise and bless God as long as he lives, and thinks about God through the night. He ends by saying that those trying to kill him will die and be left for foxes, while the king will rejoice in God and liars will be silenced.

Claim by Claim

1. 63:1
   • The speaker addresses God.
   • The speaker says God is his God.
   • The speaker says he will seek God early.
   • The speaker's soul thirsts for God.
   • The speaker's flesh longs for God.
   • The speaker is in a dry and thirsty land.
   • There is no water in that land.
2. 63:2
   • The speaker seeks God in order to see God's power.
   • The speaker seeks God in order to see God's glory.
   • The speaker has seen God in the sanctuary.
3. 63:3
   • God's lovingkindness is better than life.
   • Because of this, the speaker's lips will praise God.
4. 63:4
   • The speaker will bless God as long as he lives.
   • The speaker will lift up his hands in God's name.
5. 63:5
   • The speaker's soul will be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.
   • The speaker's mouth will praise God with joyful lips.
6. 63:6
   • The speaker remembers God upon his bed.
   • The speaker meditates on God during the night watches.
7. 63:7
   • God has been the speaker's help.
   • Therefore the speaker will rejoice in the shadow of God's wings.
8. 63:8
   • The speaker's soul follows hard after God.
   • God's right hand upholds the speaker.
9. 63:9
   • There are those who seek the speaker's life in order to destroy it.
   • Those who seek the speaker's life will go into the lower parts of the earth.
10. 63:10
    • They will fall by the sword.
    • They will become a portion for foxes.
11. 63:11
    • The king will rejoice in God.
    • Everyone who swears by God will glory.
    • The mouth of those who speak lies will be stopped.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

63:1

"Early will I seek thee" translates a Hebrew verb built on the word for dawn; it carries both the sense of rising early to look for someone and of searching hard. The King James pairs "soul" and "flesh," but the Hebrew words behind them mean roughly "my whole living self" and "my body", not a spiritual part set against a physical one. The "dry and thirsty land" is real desert: the psalm's ancient heading places David in the wilderness of Judah, a rocky, waterless region south and east of Jerusalem.

63:2

The sanctuary was the building set apart for the worship of Israel's God, the tent-shrine of earlier times, later the temple in Jerusalem. To "see" God there meant taking part in worship at the place where he was understood to be present, not seeing him with the eyes.

63:3

"Lovingkindness" is the King James word for Hebrew *hesed*: the loyal, committed care that someone owes within a binding relationship. It is closer to "faithful devotion" than to warm feeling, and it is the word most often used for God's steady commitment to Israel.

63:4

Lifting the hands, palms open and raised, was the ordinary bodily posture for prayer in the ancient Near East, the way kneeling or folding hands is in some cultures today. To do something "in your name" means to do it while calling on that person and appealing to their authority.

63:5

"Marrow and fatness" names the richest parts of an animal, the fat and the marrow inside the bones. In a society where meat was rare and fat was prized, this was the image of the best food imaginable, and it carries an echo of the shared meals eaten at the sanctuary after a sacrifice.

63:6

The night was divided into "watches," fixed shifts during which sentries kept guard. Ancient Israel counted three watches between sunset and sunrise; the phrase means the long stretches of the night, hour after hour.

63:7

"The shadow of thy wings" draws on the image of a bird sheltering its young under its outstretched wings. It may also evoke the winged figures whose wings overshadowed the chest holding the covenant in the sanctuary. Either way, the point is shelter and protection, not flight.

63:8

The verb behind "followeth hard after" means to cling or stick fast, the same word used of a man holding fast to his wife. "Right hand" was the standard way of speaking of a person's strong hand, so God's right hand stands for his active strength.

63:9

"The lower parts of the earth" refers to Sheol, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead as going. To be sent down there is to die and be cut off from the land of the living.

63:10

The Hebrew word covers both foxes and jackals, scavengers that fed on corpses left in the open. For a body to go unburied and be eaten by animals was among the worst disgraces imaginable in that culture, the fate of an enemy defeated and abandoned on the battlefield.

63:11

"The king" appears suddenly in the third person; the speaker may be the king referring to himself, or the community praying for their king. To "swear by him" means to take an oath calling on God as witness, which was a public declaration of loyalty to him, the opposite of the liars whose mouths are stopped.