NOTES for Psa 3

The prayer that King David offers to God in distress is instructive in many respects. The first thing that draws our attention is how David sees those who are hostile to him. Many, the king laments, say: "There is no salvation for him in God." This is what makes our human hostility so terrible: we turn our malice against another person's very life. Like Cain, we kill because we do not want the other person to encounter God. And in his prayer David defends precisely this, the most precious thing of all. Not the kingdom, not wealth, not earthly greatness, but salvation in God.

No matter what the king's enemies may desire, the Lord hears him. God, whose throne is above the heavens, hears the human cry, as He revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. The words of the third psalm, which forms part of the Six Psalms, are of course much more familiar in Church Slavonic: "With my voice I cried to the Lord, and He heard me from His holy mountain." David states a fact that will continue to fill us with wonder and joy for as long as this world endures. God hears the voice of a person who calls to Him. Can any human hostility compare with such happiness? And is it possible to live without relying on it?

When David says that God hears and protects, he both knows and believes. For historical and cultural reasons, we often separate and even oppose experience and faith. For David, as for all biblical authors, the two are, on the contrary, most closely bound together. Faith in God's help, expressed in prayer, leads David to know that his trust is not in vain. The experience of placing his hope in God enables him to go on trusting. Thus a person's path becomes like the apostle Peter's walk upon the water, where each successive step is possible only on the basis of faith that has proved true. This is the source of the apostle Paul's words that faith is the realization of what is hoped for. Yet how little this biblical faith has in common with a hypothesis about God's existence, which we call faith.

David ends his prayer with a plea for help, for the defeat of his enemies. "Arise, O Lord!" he cries to the Almighty. This is a fundamentally important point in Christian prayer: according to Christ's word, the heavenly Father knows all our needs, and yet we ask Him for them. Apart from our will, expressed in prayer, God will not intervene in our life or violate our freedom. Therefore David asks for what God already knows, asks for help. It is also important in this plea that David does not attribute his salvation to himself. "Salvation belongs to the Lord," and to Him alone.