Many Are the Afflictions

Before we get to the verse, read the heading.

Psalm 34 carries one, and it is not decorative. A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed.

That is a polite description of one of the worst afternoons of David's life. The story is in 1 Samuel 21. He is running from Saul, he has no army and no supplies, and he goes to Gath, which is a Philistine city, and Gath is the town Goliath came from. They recognize him. He realizes he has walked into the last place on earth he should be, and so, to get out alive, he pretends to be insane. He scrabbles at the doors of the gate and lets spit run down his beard until the king throws him out as a nuisance.

That is the day. That is when this psalm was written.

And Psalm 34 is the psalm that says O taste and see that the LORD is good, and the angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him. All of it comes out of a man who had just saved his own life by drooling in a gateway.

Now, with that in your hand, look at what verse nineteen actually says.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.Psalm 34:19, King James Version

Many.

The verse assumes the number is high

I want to stay on that one word, because it takes apart something people carry for decades.

The psalm does not say the righteous have few afflictions. It does not say if you walk with God your troubles will be small. It does not say the number goes down as your faith goes up.

It says many. It puts a large number right there in the sentence and it attaches that number to the righteous, which is to say the people who are in good standing with God.

Which means the count was never the measurement.

You are not far off, you are close in. Psalm 34:19 attaches many to the righteous in the same clause, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that from being an idea and makes it a reading of your actual week.

I know the arithmetic you have been doing, because I have done it too and it is nearly universal.

It goes: if I were in the right place with God, there would not be this much. And it does not usually announce itself. It shows up as a quiet reluctance to bring anything to Him, because the size of the list has started to feel like evidence in a case that is being lost.

And then somebody says something meant kindly about how God does not give you more than you can handle, and now the pile is a compliment you did not want and cannot put down.

You have been running a count that this psalm refuses to score, and it refuses in the same line where it names the number. The written word says many are the afflictions of the righteous, and the same Spirit who put those two words in one clause is the reason nobody can read a long list as a verdict.

Now verse eighteen, and this is where the psalm gets close.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.Psalm 34:18, King James Version

Nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.

Look at the direction. The nearness is attached to the brokenness. Not withheld until the brokenness is fixed. Not offered on condition that the person pull themselves together first. The broken heart is the address He is described as being near to.

That is the exact opposite of how most of us assume it works. We assume proximity to God is a reward for being in decent shape, and this verse locates Him at the other end.

You have nearness stated over the condition you thought had pushed Him back. Psalm 34:18 puts nigh and broken heart in one line, and it is His Spirit who makes that a location rather than a lovely thought.

And then look back at verse seventeen, at what the righteous are actually doing.

The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Psalm 34:17, King James Version

The righteous cry.

Not the righteous cope. Not the righteous stand firm. The righteous cry, and that is the verb the psalm chooses for people it has already called righteous. Crying out is not a lapse in this psalm. It is what the righteous do.

You were doing the thing the righteous are described as doing on the night you were most ashamed of it. Psalm 34:17 makes crying the action of the righteous, and the same Spirit who chose that verb is the reason a hard night is not a fall.

I do want to be honest about verse nineteen's second half, because it should not be flattened. But the LORD delivereth him out of them all. The psalm makes a claim, and it is a real one, and I am not going to attach a timetable to it that the psalm does not give. David wrote it on a day when nothing had been resolved and he was still a fugitive with years of running in front of him. He was not describing a finished rescue. He was standing on the character of the One doing the delivering.