Psalm 54

“Save me, O God, by Your name, and vindicate me by Your strength. Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers have risen up against me, and oppressors have sought after my life; they have not set God before them.  Selah   Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is with those who uphold my life. He will repay my enemies for their evil. Cut them off in Your truth. I will freely sacrifice to You; I will praise Your name, O Lord, for it is good. For He has delivered me out of all trouble; and my eye has seen its desire upon my enemies.”  Psalm 54:1-7 (NKJV)

We could easily weigh the value of David’s psalm solely by virtue of its declarations about God and David’s faithfulness in the midst of trouble.  We could also focus on God’s judgment of David’s enemies.  But today’s psalm has a header that tells us David wrote the song in response to a specific instance or instances, as the case may be.  The header in my Bible reads:  “To the Chief Musician. With stringed instruments. A Contemplation of David when the Ziphites went and said to Saul, ‘Is David not hiding with us?’”  We find those instances in 1 Samuel 23 and 26. (NKJV)

“And David stayed in strongholds in the wilderness, and remained in the mountains in the Wilderness of Ziph. Saul sought him every day, but God did not deliver him into his hand. So David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life. And David was in the Wilderness of Ziph in a forest. Then Jonathan, Saul’s son, arose and went to David in the woods and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, ‘Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Even my father Saul knows that.’  So the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. And David stayed in the woods, and Jonathan went to his own house. Then the Ziphites came up to Saul at Gibeah, saying, ‘Is David not hiding with us in strongholds in the woods, in the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon? Now therefore, O king, come down according to all the desire of your soul to come down; and our part shall be to deliver him into the king’s hand.’”  1 Samuel 23:14-19 (NKJV)

“Now the Ziphites came to Saul at Gibeah, saying, ‘Is David not hiding in the hill of Hachilah, opposite Jeshimon?’” 1 Samuel 26:1 (NKJV)

There are two profoundly interesting things about both Biblical instances, where the Ziphites attempted to rat out David. 1) God allowed David to escape and foiled the plans of His enemies, and 2) God’s deliverance of David set up situations where David spared Saul’s life.  In both instances where the Ziphites sought to aid Saul in killing David, God used that situation to spare both David’s and Saul’s lives.  BOTH of His anointed kings were in His sovereign grasp, even while one was trying to kill the other.  David’s psalm, then, takes on a different meaning thru the filter of these 1 Samuel accounts.  If God is preserving His anointed (David) from Saul, surely He will protect His anointed (Saul) from David were David to "go rogue."  David declares God is the Judge, and His Word (Truth) will be the scale by which both of His anointed are weighed.  It was by the Word that David prevailed.