Psalm 52: Why Boast In Evil, Mighty Man

The story behind Psalm 52 is one of the bloodiest in 1 Samuel. Fleeing Saul, David came to the priestly town of Nob and was helped by Ahimelech the priest, who gave him bread and Goliath's old sword (1 Samuel 21:1-9). Doeg the Edomite, Saul's chief shepherd, was there that day. Doeg reported the meeting to Saul, and when Saul ordered his guards to kill the priests, only Doeg was willing. He killed eighty-five priests and put the entire town of Nob to the sword (1 Samuel 22:9-23). Only one priest, Abiathar, escaped to David. This psalm is David's response to that carnage. To hear it rightly is to hear a young fugitive king grieving a massacre done in his name.

The opening line is dripping with sarcasm: "Why do you boast in evil, mighty man?" The Hebrew word "gibbor" usually means a warrior or hero. David wields it like a knife. Doeg is no "gibbor." He is a man who killed unarmed priests and now plumes himself for it. The image of his tongue as a "sharp razor working deceit" (verse 2) reflects the daily life of the iron age, when razors were tools of preparation and ritual cleansing, not violence. Doeg has perverted an ordinary instrument into a weapon, just as he perverted his role as a servant of the king into the role of an executioner of priests.

The center of the psalm holds out a pair of contrasting tree images that any Israelite farmer would have understood at once. The wicked man will be "uprooted from the land of the living" (verse 5), the way a violent storm tears an olive tree out by its taproot. By contrast, David sees himself as "a green olive tree in the house of God" (verse 8). Olive trees are slow-growing, deep-rooted, and absurdly long-lived. Some in Israel today are over two thousand years old. The image is patient. David is not promising quick vindication. He is saying that what is rooted in the temple courts will outlast every Doeg who ever lived.