"A Song. A Psalm of David.
My heart is steadfast, O God!
I will sing and make melody with all my being!
2 Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn!
3 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to you among the nations.
4 For your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let your glory be over all the earth!
6 That your beloved ones may be delivered,
give salvation by your right hand and answer me!
7 God has promised in his holiness:
“With exultation I will divide up Shechem
and portion out the Valley of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine;
Ephraim is my helmet,
Judah my sceptre.
9 Moab is my washbasin;
upon Edom I cast my shoe;
over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
10 Who will bring me to the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Have you not rejected us, O God?
You do not go out, O God, with our armies.
12 Oh grant us help against the foe,
for vain is the salvation of man!
13 With God we shall do valiantly;
it is he who will tread down our foes."
Psalm 108
This short Psalm is found on examination to be composed of two excerpts from other Psalms - 1-5 come from Psalm 57:7-11, and 6-13 from Psalm 60:5-12. As it stands here the Psalm is a combination of an act of praise and a battle hymn. In the first section, the Psalmist is not cowed by danger but spurred by it; in the second he is not de- moralised by failure, but baffled to fight better! Both the earlier Psalms belong to David's reign, one in his pre-kingship days, when he was still on the run from Saul, the other in his ascendency and at the peak of his power, when an enemy (Edom) discomfited and defeated him unforeseenly. Here, the Psalm belongs clearly to a later period, either of David's reign or some subsequent time (Maclaren thinks it may be post-exilic). It is interesting and significant that the parts of both Psalms are the more encouraging parts, with the emphasis on the Lord's deliverance. One commentator says that 'the recent deliverances suggested to some devout man, whose mind was steeped in the songs of former days, the closeness with which old strains suited new joys'. There is nothing, indeed, very unusual about this combining of two different parts of the Psalter together for a particular purpose - the well-known devotional book 'Daily Light' does this constantly, to great effect. And sometimes we do the same ourselves, as for example combining the words of Psalm 102:13-18 with Psalm 72:17-19, in metrical version for our opening praise. Also, we might often quote an appropriate verse or two of a hymn, for a particular purpose while omitting earlier (or later) verses. All the same, when we do quote thus, it is generally true to say that the other verses which we leave out are very much in our minds. And surely it is so also, with this composite Psalm.