Some days are just pretty awful. The psalmist reflects on days like that: “I lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords” (Psalm 57:4). If the text had just left it at “teeth like spears” and then maybe added “claws like daggers,” we might have thought it was about life in the wilderness: but “tongues” like “sharp swords” tells us it’s about people who cut you with their words. Again, the psalmist uses terms like “destroying storms” to describe the day’s troubles (57:1), but it really is about people: people who “trample on me” (57:3), people who “set a net for my steps … they dug a pit in my path” (57:6) – and of course trampling someone, setting a net, and digging a pit are all just as much metaphors for human scheming and cruelty as lion’s teeth or severe thunderstorms.

The psalm is structured in two stanzas, with a refrain after each one: “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth” (57:5, 57:11). In the first stanza, the psalmist expresses the distress pretty strongly, as we have seen, yet there is a note of hope: God “will send from heaven and save me” (57:3). Confidence in God becomes the major theme of the second stanza (which appears to have been a popular hymn: it also shows up as Psalm 108:1-5): “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations” (57:9).

That is: the psalm acknowledges how hard it is when people are out to get you: trampling you, trapping you, devouring you. When that’s what’s happening, it’s hard to see anything else. But there is something else: there is the steady presence of the Lord: “God will send forth his steadfast love and his faithfulness” (57:3).

And so God’s steadfastness is echoed in the psalmist’s steadfastness: “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody” (57:7). And what will be the content of the song? God’s steadfast love: “your steadfast love is as high as the heavens; your faithfulness extends to the clouds” (57:10).

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Help us, O Lord, in the midst of our distress: we too find ourselves among lions and thunderstorms that seek to destroy us. But we trust in you: your love and care is steadfast over us. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens: let your glory be over all the earth.