A Study of Psalm 16 (verse 2, Lordship)

¹ Preserve me, God, because I take refuge in you.

² I say to Yahweh, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have nothing good.”

When you pray to God for something specific, is your prayer simply, “Lord, give me…”? It can be, and that is fine. But David makes his ask (“Preserve me, God”) and then makes a confession of faith in four parts, the first part being a confession of his absolute submission to Yahweh’s lordship. David is inducing God, persuading Him, we might say, to answer his prayer because of his absolute devotion to his Savior.

David signals his confession of faith with the words, “I say to Yahweh.” David is speaking this out. It is an uttered confession. “You are my Lord.” You are the one to whom I owe total submission and adherence. There are many who might be addressed as Lord, even David himself as king, but no one is Lord in the absolute sense that Yahweh is.

There is some disagreement about what David is saying next. Some translate the Hebrew, “my goodness does not extend to You,” the idea being that our moral good does not move God to bless us. But the Hebrew word for good, tov, does not usually mean moral good (Proverbs 12:2 would be an exception), but rather welfare. David is saying, “apart from you I have nothing good,” I have no welfare apart from You, Lord, no provision, no preservation like what I am asking You for.  As one older commentator has paraphrased it, “Thou alone, without exception, art my good.”[1]

Yahweh’s lordship in David’s life means Yahweh alone is the source of all blessing that comes to David. This is David’s confession. He is asking for preservation from a life-threatening ordeal, coming to God for refuge and protection from death, and confessing that his only source of such good, such welfare, such protection and preservation, is Yahweh alone. That’s why God should answer his prayer, because it is He alone who can. There is no one else who can help me, give me what I need, but You alone, O Lord of my life.

[1] https://biblehub.com/commentaries/kad/psalms/16.htm, Keil and Delitzsch