Psalms 27:1
“Yahweh is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Yahweh is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”
Where this sits
David opens this psalm in complete confidence. By verse seven he is pleading not to be abandoned — the two halves are usually read as one honest piece.
Reflection
Both halves of this verse are questions, and that is unusual for a statement of confidence.
Whom shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? David does not say I am not afraid. He asks who is left to be afraid of, which is a different move. It is the reasoning of someone working through a list rather than reporting a feeling. Given light, given salvation, given strength — who remains on the list?
The three images are chosen well. Light deals with what you cannot see; most fear is a problem of visibility, not of danger, and darkness does most of the work of making a room frightening. Salvation deals with what has already got hold of you. Strength deals with what you have to face and cannot avoid. Between them they cover the not-yet-known, the already-happened, and the still-to-come.
And it is worth reading on. This is the man who by verse seven is asking God not to hide his face, and by verse nine is pleading not to be forsaken. The psalm does not stay at the altitude of verse one.
That is not a contradiction; it is the design. Confidence and pleading sit in the same psalm, under the same name, without either being marked as the failure of the other. Anyone who has had a strong morning and a frightened evening is reading a text that already knows about it.
- Theme:
- Fear
- Book:
- Psalms