Psalm 63:1-8

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you.” (Psalm 63:1)

Psalm 63 is an individual lament,1 which Kraus puts into his subcategory of “the prayer song of the persecuted and the accused,”2 for which the psalm certainly qualifies in view of “those who want to kill” him (63:9). It also contains elements of thanksgiving (63:3–7) and confidence (63:8–10),3 which is not unusual for lament psalms. The psalmist, in a “parched land where there is no water” (63:1), recounts his previous experience in the sanctuary (63:2), just as the thirsty soul of Psalm 42, isolated in a foreign land, remembers going to the house of God (42:4). In the more immediate context, Psalms 61 and 63, both attributed to David, have affinities that may be more coincidental than intentional, but the similarities are of value in the broad scope of Book 2, especially the prayer for the king (61:6–7; 63:11) and the longing for the sanctuary (61:4; 63:2; see table 1).

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