Psalms 34:1-5

Context

Psalm 34¹

Written by David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, causing the king to send him away.²

34:1 I will praise³ the Lord at all times;

my mouth will continually praise him.⁴

34:2 I will boast⁵ in the Lord;

let the oppressed hear and rejoice!⁶

34:3 Magnify the Lord with me!

Let’s praise⁷ his name together!

34:4 I sought the Lord’s help⁸ and he answered me;

he delivered me from all my fears.

34:5 Those who look to him for help are happy;

their faces are not ashamed.⁹

[34:1] ¹sn Psalm 34. In this song of thanksgiving the psalmist praises God for delivering him from distress. He encourages others to be loyal to the Lord, tells them how to please God, and assures them that the Lord protects his servants. The psalm is an acrostic; vv. 1-21 begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (Verse 6 begins with the letter he (ה) and v. 7 with the letter zayin (ז). The letter vav (ו), which comes between ה and ז, seems to be omitted, although it does appear at the beginning of v. 6b. The final verse of the psalm, which begins with the letter pe (פ), is outside the acrostic scheme.

[34:1] ²tn Heb “By David, when he changed his sense before Abimelech and he drove him away and he went.”

[34:1] ³tn Heb “bless.”

[34:1] ⁴tn Heb “continually [will] his praise [be] in my mouth.”

[34:2] ⁵tn Heb “my soul will boast”; or better, “let my soul boast.” Following the cohortative form in v. 1, it is likely that the prefixed verbal form here is jussive.

[34:2] ⁶tn The two prefixed verbal forms in this verse are best taken as jussives, for the psalmist is calling his audience to worship (see v. 3).

[34:3] ⁷tn Or “exalt.”

[34:4] ⁸tn Heb “I sought the Lord.”

[34:5] ⁹tc Heb “they look to him and are radiant and their faces are not ashamed.” The third person plural subject (“they”) is unidentified; there is no antecedent in the Hebrew text. For this reason some prefer to take the perfect verbal forms in the first line as imperatives, “look to him and be radiant” (cf. NEB, NRSV). Some medieval Hebrew mss and other ancient witnesses (Aquila, the Syriac, and Jerome) support an imperatival reading for the first verb. In the second line some (with support from the LXX and Syriac) change “their faces” to “your faces,” which allows one to retain more easily the jussive force of the verb (suggested by the preceding אַל [’al]): “do not let your faces be ashamed.” It is probable that the verbal construction in the second line is rhetorical, expressing the conviction that the action in view cannot or should not happen. See GKC 322 §109.e.