hy face far from me. Put not Thy servant away in anger; Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.” Although God never leaves us or forsakes us, Satan can trick us into thinking He has at times. David felt like he had been rejected by God (Phillips). It is easy once we start to be forsaken by God to give up, and many of us do, but David didn’t.David then goes to talk about his parents forsaking him. “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” What he meant by this statement was that his mother and father abandoned him, but the Lord had taken him in as a servant and made him more capable than them (Makrakis, 164). We don’t know much about David’s parents. What we do know is that during Saul’s persecutions David took his parents from the farm and brought them to the cave of Adullam for safety. Then the cave became unsafe so David asked the king of Moab to allow them political asylum down there. After that there is no more historical reference of his parents, so it is assumed that they died there. We don’t know exactly what happened with him and his parents, but we do know that David felt forsaken by his family.When Israel marched through the desert, during the exodus, God told the strong to pick up the stragglers, the weak, the children, and the elderly, and carry them forward with the rest of the people. At this point in his life, David felt like one of the stragglers. He prayed that God would lovingly and tenderly pick him up. God delights in picking us up when we feel forsaken, and gathering us in His arms (Phillips, 205, 206).In the eleventh verse, David is praying for God’s guidance. He says, “Teach me thy way O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.” Hebrew scholars say that the translation of the word plain in the way David meant it was even or level. David wants Go...
