Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Samuel 20-22.

Today’s passage contains a psalm of David which has some great imagery.  First David describes God as his rock, his fortress, and his deliverer.  He extends that description by saying that God is the one in whom he takes refuge.  The way David words this makes clear that each of these is intended to be an alternative description of the same characteristic, where each word is incomplete.  A rock is solid and impenetrable, but enemies can go around it and get at you from behind.  You can go inside a fortress, so your enemies cannot come at you from any direction, but a fortress has weak points which an enemy can exploit.  By combining the idea of rock and fortress, David communicates that God is an impenetrable fortress with no weaknesses for an enemy to exploit.  Then there is the word, deliverer.  Deliverer indicates that God comes to us when we are in danger and delivers us from our enemies, or whatever danger threatens us.  So, God is an impenetrable safe haven which will come to us and protect us from danger of any sort.  There is one final point to this word picture David draws.  He says that he takes refuge in God.  That means that he actively seeks God’s protection.  That indicates that sometimes we need to actively seek God’s protection.  While God will come to where we are in danger, we must seek his protection.  Just as we can choose to leave a physical fortress, we can choose to leave God’s protection.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.