Psalms 3:3

The word but at the start is answering something, and what it answers is in the previous verse.

People were saying of David: there is no help for him in God. That is the taunt this verse replies to — not a general anxiety but a specific accusation, made publicly, that his situation proved something about his standing with God.

And he had given them material. He was fleeing Jerusalem barefoot, driven out by his own son, after a family catastrophe that traced directly back to his own conduct years earlier. The accusation was not baseless.

His reply has three parts and the third is the surprising one. A shield around me — the word suggests encirclement rather than a shield carried on one arm, which covers only one direction at a time. My glory — a claim about honour, made by a man who had just lost his throne and his reputation on the same day.

And then: the one who lifts up my head. That is not a military image at all. It is what you do to someone who is looking at the ground — a gesture of restoration to a person in shame.

David was walking uphill weeping with his head covered, according to the account. He knew exactly which of the three he needed most.