2 Samuel 22: The Deliverance and Exaltation of the King

INTRODUCTION:

Imagine for a moment that you are in your old age, in the closing years of your life and you decide to write a song to summarise the Lord’s working in your life.  What would that song look like?  One could divide the verses into the different eras of your life, such as, childhood, teenage years, young adulthood, middle aged, elderly, etc.  Or one could do a before and after song, before and after your conversion, from dark to light.  Psalm 18 is special amongst the Psalms because it is not a situational psalm that reflects just one event in David’s life, but it is a summary psalm of David looking back over his life and putting into song what the Lord has done for him.  The historical note in the introduction to the psalm points us to 2 Sam 22, this is the chapter just before David’s final words in ch23.  The song speaks in terms of a deliverance, in the intro it is mentioned that the deliverance is from Saul and the rest of David’s enemies, these would include Absalom, the surrounding pagan nations, and other renegade Israelites such as Ahithophel, Adonijah and Joab.