“He brought me out into a spacious place he rescued me because he delighted in me,” declares David in Psalm 18:19.
“You brought me up from the grave, O LORD,” utters David in Psalm 30:3, “You kept me from falling into the pit of death” (NLT). The Lord delivers him by pulling him up and out of his horrible ordeal. “He brought me out of the miry clay,” testifies David. As he trusts in the Lord and calls on God for help, David’s Redeemer hears and answers (Psalm 56:9–11 121:1–2). Let me be rescued from those who hate me and from the deep water” (Psalm 69:14, CSB). Whatever the pit may have been, David has learned in times of trouble to cry out to the Lord: “Rescue me from the miry mud don’t let me sink. It might have been the pit David dug for himself through his sinful affair with Bethsheba and then the slaying of her husband (2 Samuel 11:1–27). Maybe it was the time his son Absolom led a conspiracy and rebellion against him (2 Samuel 15:1-18:33). Perhaps it was the crater of depression and rejection he experienced due to King Saul’s murderous jealously and hatred (1 Samuel 18:10–17 23:15–29). I am in deep water, and the floods overwhelm me” (NLT).ĭavid’s pit of miry clay could be symbolic of any number of distressing times he endured. David may have been speaking of the same excruciating episode in Psalm 69:2: “Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire I can’t find a foothold. The only thing he can do is wait patiently for the Lord to rescue him. On his own, David is powerless to escape. David’s metaphor reminds us of Jeremiah’s actual imprisonment in a muddy cistern (Jeremiah 38:7–13) and Joseph’s entrapment by his brothers in a pit (Genesis 37:18–22). The Hebrew term in Psalm 40:2 is translated as “miry bog” (ESV), “mud and mire” (NIV), and “muddy clay” (CSB).ĭavid wants to convey the idea of being desperately trapped in abysmally dark circumstances. Mire is deep, soft mud in water or slush, like wet loam or potter’s clay. If you’ve ever been stuck in quicksand or stood on the soft ocean shore as your feet sank deeper into the sand with each wave, you know the feeling of being caught in the staggering helplessness of miry clay. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,Īnd established my steps” (Psalm 40:1–2, NKJV). We don’t know the exact details of David’s ordeal in Psalm 40, but he compares it to being stuck in a horrifying pit filled with mud and mire: King David discovered a key to experiencing joy amid the most challenging times of life by remembering God’s past deliverance from trouble.
0 kommentar(er)
