I’ve found great benefit in memorizing a few of the Psalms. They bring comfort and calm, but also often challenge and courage. Psalm 2 is not Psalm 23.
I preached recently on Psalm 16. I’d like to share some of those thoughts here.
The folks at Logos have put together a nice interactive module on the Psalms, which, among other things, organizes them into seven genres: praise, thanksgiving, hymn, lament, wisdom, royal, and trust. Psalm 16 they categorize as a psalm of trust. This is the least populated genre, but it does also include, among others, Psalms 11, 23, and 91, which is a pretty good neighborhood.
Its superscription calls it a “Mikhtam” of, or to, David. A few people think they know what a Mikhtam is. I’d suggest that they don’t; it’s an unknown term, like “Selah.” There are five other Mikhtams (technically, mikhtamim) in the Psalms, and oddly enough, they’re consecutive, in a separate section of the book: Psalms 56-60.
I see five stanzas in the psalm, each two verses, except for the last, which is three. Maybe a post apiece.
David begins by calling out to the Lord:
Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You. I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good besides You” (Ps 16.1-2 NASB).
The first verse sounds like this is going to be a lament psalm (compare Ps 15.1 and Ps 17.1), but this is the last we hear about anything potentially threatening. There’s not even any more prayer of any kind in the rest of the psalm.
He asks the Lord to “preserve” him—that is, to keep watch over, guard him. This is what God told Adam to do to the Garden (Ge 2.15); it’s what Cain asked if he was supposed to do for his now-slain brother (Ge 4.9); it’s what God promised to do for Jacob at Bethel (Ge 28.15). Commentator Charles Pfeiffer writes, “This prayer is not for deliverance from an enemy but for the continuance of the happiness he has already found.”
And so begins the rejoicing that will constitute the rest of the psalm.
Note that David uses two names for God in verse 2: “I said to YHWH [God’s personal name], You are my Master.” David begins by saying that God is both his covenant-keeping, loving ally and his lord/master. And he builds that on verse 1, which states that he is his refuge.
Do we see God in that way?
One more thought. The Hebrew of verse 2a is difficult; different English translations vary somewhat. I think the context of the psalm favors how the Good News Bible puts it: “All the good things I have come from you.” David will spend the rest of the psalm enumerating those that come to his mind.
A member of my extended family, who is with Lord now, had a particular fondness for a restaurant up across the state line in North Carolina. Our two families would enjoy driving up the mountain to eat the brunch buffet there. It was out of the way, surrounded by scenery (not far from Connemara, the Carl Sandburg home). I recall clearly one such meal, all of us seated around the table, stuffed to the gills, and him with his cup of tea, looking out the surrounding picture windows at the greenery.
“This is my happy place,” he said.
And we sat, just soaking it all in.
Well, I’m confident he has an even happier happy place now. But his words that day reflect, I think, the joy that David found in his God, the specifics of which he’s about to lay before us.
RIP, Steve.
Next time.
Photo by Hari Perisetla on Unsplash
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