of David
1. Yahweh is my light and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear?
Yahweh is the strength of my life.
Whom shall I dread?
2. When the evil ones come upon me,
To eat my flesh,
My adversaries and enemies to me,
They stumble and fall.
3. If a camp would encamp against me,
My heart will not fear.
If battle would rise against me,
In this I am trusting.
4. One thing I ask from Yahweh--
It I will seek--
To dwell in the house of Yahweh
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of Yahweh,
And to enquire in His temple.
5. For He will hide me in His covert
In the day of evil.
He will conceal me
In the shelter of His tabernacle.
On a rock He will exalt me.
6. And now my head He will exalt above my enemies around me.
and I will offer in His tabernacle offerings of joyful shouting.
I will sing and I will make music to Yahweh.
7. Hear, O Yahweh, my voice-- I will call--
And be gracious to me and answer me.
8. To You my heart says,
"When You say, 'Seek my face,'
Your face, O Yahweh, I will seek."
9. Do not conceal Your face from me.
Do not turn away in anger Your servant.
My help You are.
Do not leave me and do not forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
10. When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then Yahweh will gather me in.
11. Cause me to learn, O Yahweh, Your way,
And guide me in a path of uprightness because of my adversaries.
12. Do not give me to the soul of my adversaries,
Because witnesses of falsehood rise against me,
And breathers of violence.
13. I would not have believed that I would see
The goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living.
14. Wait on Yahweh.
Be strong,
And He will confirm your heart.
Wait on Yahweh.
Psalm 27 is, in a number of ways, an unusual psalm. 1) It reverses the usual order of the psalms. Most psalms start with trouble and end with praise. This one starts with praise and ends with trouble, 2) The lines vary significantly in length, 3) the parallelisms are irregular and sometimes can hardly be called parallelisms, and 4) there are a couple of verses where the thought is not clear unless we add words to the original. I have indicated these spots with italics (v. 8 and 13).
Let’s go back for a closer look at the parallelisms of the psalm. They are so varied that it would not be far from the truth to say that this psalm really does not follow the usual paralleling pattern of the psalms.
Verses 1 and 3 are carefully constructed double parallelisms. Lines 1 and 2 are parallel to lines 3 and 4, but within that broader structure lines 1 and 3 are parallel, and lines 2 and 4 are also strictly parallel.
Verse 2 follows the same pattern but in a looser way. Lines 1 and 2 form a thought parallel to lines 3 and 4, but lines 1 and 3 are also parallel, while line 4 builds on line 2.
Verses 4, 5 and 9 are extraordinarily long: six lines, five lines, and five lines respectively. Verse 4 is one sentence constructed of three pairs of lines. Verse 5 is similar in structure to verses 1 and 3, but adds an extra line which is itself parallel to the two pairs of the first four lines. However, line 5 may also be seen as more or less parallel with line 1 of verse 6, so that we might want to divide two verses into three: lines 1-4, lines 5-6, and lines 7-8. In verse 9 lines 1, 2 and 4 are parallel, and lines 3 and 5 also.
Verses 7, 10 and 11 are pretty standard Hebrew parallelisms of different types. The second lines of verses 7 and 10 build on the first lines. The thoughts of the two lines of verse 11 are close to synonymous.
The first line of verse 12 has no parallel to match it but is introductory to the parallelism of the last two lines. Verse 13 is one continuous sentence, really not a parallelism at all. Verse 14 consists of 4 very short lines, the first and last precisely the same, and the middle two parallel.
What then about the Christology of the psalm? We may look at it in two ways. First, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself would have confessed this psalm during his earthly life. Though His enemies abounded, though false witnesses and breathers of cruelty rose against Him, He was not afraid of them. He knew that they would stumble and fall. He loved the temple where He could behold the face of His Father, inquire of Him and find a refuge. He was strong, waited on the Lord, and received daily from Him a confirming of His heart.
But our Lord Jesus Christ is also Yahweh, He whom we seek in this psalm. Because he commands it, we seek His face. Because He has promised to be with us to the end of the world, we confess, “Though my father and mother forsake me, Yahweh will gather me in.” He is our light and salvation, the strength of our life, and He whose face we will see in the land of the living.