Psalm 3: My Glory and the Lifter of My Head

🌿 The Psalm Journey — Week 3

My Glory and the Lifter of My Head

Introduction

Last week, Psalm 2 showed us the nations raging — and God laughing.

It showed us a world in upheaval, rulers in rebellion, and a King already seated on His throne.

This week, Psalm 3 brings us somewhere far more personal.

We are no longer looking at nations. We are looking at one man. One night. One storm.

And what David does in the middle of that storm is what this psalm is teaching us to do.

Life is hard, but God is good — and He is the lifter of my head.

A Note on the Title

Psalm 3 is the first psalm in the entire book that carries a title.

A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

James Montgomery Boice points out that since these titles appear in the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible, *“they are to be taken with absolute seriousness throughout.”*¹

This is not decoration. This is context. And the context changes everything.

David — the king, the giant-slayer, the man after God’s own heart — is fleeing. Not from an enemy army. Not from a foreign nation.

From his own son.

The Storm

Before we enter the psalm itself, it is worth pausing at the storm.

Every storm has a before, a middle, and an after. And David writes this psalm from inside one of the most devastating storms a person can experience.

As David fled Jerusalem, he climbed the Mount of Olives with his head covered, weeping, walking barefoot. His closest advisors had defected. His own son had turned the people against him. And as he walked through the village of Bahurim, a man named Shimei — a relative of Saul — ran alongside him, throwing stones and dirt and shouting curses:

“Get out, get out, you man of blood, you scoundrel! The LORD has repaid you for all the blood you shed in the household of Saul… You have come to ruin because you are a man of blood!” (2 Samuel 16:7–8)

This is the backdrop of Psalm 3.

Not a theoretical storm. A real one.

Maybe as you read this, you find yourself in one of these places:

In the middle of a storm — where the waves are high and destabilising, where the sound of it is frightening, where the darkness makes it hard to see clearly, and your heart is starting to faint.

Just out of a storm — exhausted, overwhelmed, burned out, your ship wrecked, your energy gone, still unsteady on your feet.

In a quiet season — where life feels peaceful right now. Praise God for that season. And let David’s psalm prepare you, because no one is exempt from the storm.

No matter where you are — this psalm is for you.

1. The Cry: O Lord, How Many Are My Foes! (Psalm 3:1–2)

“O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’ Selah”

David looks around — and all he sees is the storm rising from the least expected place. His own son. His dear friends. People he trusted. They are rising against him, and their numbers seem to keep growing.

He may have thought: I am done. They are too many.

And then he looked again — and there were even more.

What makes this harder is that the betrayal came from the inside. The people who forsook him and joined Absalom were not strangers. They were his team. His companions. People he had walked with for years.

He did not see that coming. And that troubled him perhaps more than anything else.

Maybe those who are rising against you are not people at all.

Maybe it is thoughts. Past experiences. Repetitive patterns of thinking that always seem to end the same way. Past failures. Voices of shame. The memory of people who betrayed your trust when you believed they were safe.

And all of these things shout loudly in your face:

God is not going to help you. Where is your God now?

That is exactly what David records in verse 2:

“Many are saying of my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’”

Notice something important here. When David cries out in verse 1, he uses a very specific name — LORD, written in capital letters in most of our English Bibles. This is not a generic title. This is YAHWEH — the covenant name of God. The personal name.

The name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush when He said “I AM WHO I AM.”

YAHWEH is not a distant deity. He is the God who enters into covenant with His people. He binds Himself to them. He makes promises and He keeps them. He is not a God who watches from afar — He is a God who has committed Himself to David personally.

So even in the opening cry of this psalm — even in the rawness of “how many are my foes” — David is not screaming into the void. He is crying out to the One who made him a promise. The One who anointed him. The One who had never once broken His word.

That changes everything about how we read this prayer.

People around David told him plainly — you are done. You are beyond God’s help. You got what you deserve.

They were not saying God is not able. They were saying God is not willing. Not for David. Not anymore.

And there was some logic to their cruelty. David had sinned gravely — he knew it. The consequences of his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah had followed him. Shimei’s curses were not entirely without reason in the eyes of onlookers.

But here is where David does something remarkable.

He pauses.

Selah.

That word appears 74 times in the Old Testament. Most scholars understand it as a reflective pause — a moment to stop, to breathe, to meditate on what has just been said before moving on.

David pauses in the middle of the storm.

And then he turns his eyes.

2. The Turn: But You, O Lord (Psalm 3:3–4)

“But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah”

But.

That single word changes everything. We must never rush past it.

David’s eyes had been wide open, staring at the crisis. His ears had been full of the threats, the accusations, the voices of his enemies. The storm had his full attention.

And then he makes a decision.

He turns.

He does not fight with the people. He does not argue with the accusers. He does not try to defend himself against Shimei’s curses. He closes his eyes to the storm, empties his ears of the noise — and turns his face toward God.

Pope Shenouda III captured this beautifully in his poem:²

“Here is my eye, and I have closed it — from the visions of things, perhaps I will see You. And my ear, too, I have emptied it — from the words of people, perhaps I will hear You.”

That is what David does here. The storm did not shake his confidence in God’s love, help, mercy, and faithfulness. And so he turns — and he states facts.

Not requests. Facts.

“You are a shield about me.”

He is not praying God, please be my shield. He is declaring you are my shield. There is a difference. One is asking from a place of uncertainty. The other is trusting from a place of knowing. The shield is already there, already surrounding him completely, already absorbing the attacks of his enemies.

“My glory.”

This is deeply personal. In the ancient Near East — and especially in Middle Eastern culture today — glory, honour, and dignity are not small things. They are everything.

And David had just lost his publicly.

As he climbed the Mount of Olives barefoot, head covered, weeping — that is the posture of absolute public humiliation. Broken pride. Visible defeat. In that culture, a lowered head communicates one thing: I have lost. I am finished. I have no honour left.

Where do we usually go to rebuild our sense of glory when it is stripped away? We reach for our positions, our achievements, our reputation, our wealth. We look for something — anything — to restore what we have lost.

David goes somewhere else entirely.

Meyer put it this way: *“Men find glory in all sorts of things — fame, power, prestige, or possessions. David found his glory in the LORD. Oh, my soul, hast thou made God thy glory? Others boast in their wealth, beauty, position, achievements: dost thou find in God what they find in these?”*³

David does not need the throne to have glory. He has God.

This is the same freedom I wrote about in Those Who Have No Name — the liberation of a heart that no longer needs to make a name for itself, because it has already found its glory in the One who has the greatest Name.

“The lifter of my head.”

In Arabic and Middle Eastern culture, رافع رأسي — the lifter of my head — is one of the most profound expressions of honour that exists.

It shows up in four layers of life:

A person who overcomes hardship with strength — they are the lifter of their own head.

A child who succeeds and brings honour to the family — they are the lifter of their family’s head.

A person of moral integrity and generosity — they lift the head of their community.

A nation that stands with dignity under pressure — that is the lifter of a people’s head.

And the highest compliment a father can give his child, even today, is this:

“You have whitened my face. You have been the lifter of my head.”

David is saying: despite the shame I am carrying right now, despite the public humiliation, despite the covered head and bare feet and the curses being thrown at me — You are the one who lifts my head.

Not Absalom. Not public opinion. Not the throne.

You, Lord.

“I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill.”

David took everything — his agony, his fear, the words of his accusers — and turned it into fuel for prayer. He cried out. Loudly.

Crying out to God is an admission that we have come to the end of ourselves. It is placing all remaining hope in Him alone.

Spurgeon wrote: *“Surely, silent prayers are heard. Yes, but good men often find that, even in secret, they pray better aloud than they do when they utter no vocal sound.”*⁴

And God answered. From His holy hill. From His throne.

People said God had forsaken David. David said: He heard me and He answered me.

But there is something deeper happening in those words — “he answered me from his holy hill.”

David is not just reporting a present experience. He is remembering.

Think about what David had lived through by this point. He had stood before Goliath as a teenager with nothing but a sling and a stone — and God had delivered him. He had been hunted by Saul through the wilderness for years — and God had preserved him. He had fought battles that should have destroyed him — and God had brought him through every single one. He had known moments of deep sin and deep shame — and still God had not abandoned him.

David had a history with YAHWEH. And in the middle of this storm, he reaches back into that history.

This is one of the most practical things a believer can do in the storm: stop and count. Count what God has done. Count the prayers He has answered. Count the times He showed up when you were certain He would not. Count the deliverances you almost forgot. Count the mornings that followed nights you thought would never end.

In the middle of a storm, your memory is a weapon.

David does not simply hope that God will answer — he knows God answers, because God has answered him before. The holy hill has not moved. The throne has not shifted. The covenant has not changed. And the God who heard him then is the same God hearing him now.

What is your list? What has God done in your past that you have stopped counting?

Take a moment — even now — and count His faithfulness. Not as a spiritual exercise, but as an act of warfare against the voices that say He has forgotten you.

He has not forgotten you.

He answered then. He is answering now.

3. The Rest: I Lay Down and Slept (Psalm 3:5–6)

“I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.”

If I could add a word before verse 5, it would be this: therefore.

Therefore — because God is my shield, my glory, the lifter of my head, the One who hears and answers —

I lay down and slept.

David is not describing something he hopes to do. He is describing something he already did. In the middle of his army being chased, in the middle of Absalom’s coup, in the middle of the greatest political and personal crisis of his life — David laid down and slept.

Not anxious. Not awake with racing thoughts. Not rehearsing the worst-case scenarios.

He slept.

There are thousands of people right now who go to bed and cannot sleep.

The moment their head touches the pillow, the floods come — worries, fears, shame, guilt, replaying conversations, imagining outcomes. Sleep becomes the enemy because it requires letting go of control.

David let go. And he slept well.

And then he counts another blessing: I woke again.

He is still alive. His enemy did not overcome him in the night. And David knows this is not luck. It is not coincidence. The reason for his sleep and for his waking is the second half of verse 5:

“For the LORD sustained me.”

God is the one who sustains me.

What a simple, beautiful, unshakeable trust.

And because God sustains him — because He is sovereign over the night, over the army, over everything — David reaches the declaration of verse 6:

“I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.”

He looks at the thousands surrounding him — and he is not afraid. Perhaps in that moment he remembered Goliath. That giant who seemed impossible. And yet one stone, in the hand of a shepherd boy who trusted God, was enough.

David may have felt that morning like the stronger one.

4. The Cry for Victory: Arise, O Lord! (Psalm 3:7–8)

“Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people! Selah”

Arise, O LORD! — this is a military phrase. It is the language of a soldier calling his commander into battle.

David is not passive. He is not sitting quietly waiting for something to happen. He calls on God to move.

And he prays from memory.

“For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.”

He is saying: Do again what you have done before. Remembering what God has done in the past is the fuel of faith in the present. David has seen God act. He has seen enemies fall. And that history gives him confidence to ask again.

Then comes the declaration that anchors everything:

“Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

Not to the army. Not to political strategy. Not to whoever sits on the throne in Jerusalem tonight. Salvation — rescue, deliverance, vindication — belongs to God. It is His. Whether from present circumstances or for eternity, it is in His hands. We are not left in the hands of our enemies, our accusers, or the storms of this world.

And then David’s heart expands — even in his own crisis, even while fleeing for his life, his final words are not about himself.

“Your blessing be on your people.”

Even in turmoil, David is thinking of others. That is the heart of a shepherd king.

5. Seeing Jesus in Psalm 3

Psalm 3 ultimately points beyond David — to the One greater than David.

Jesus experienced loneliness. He went to desolate places. He was abandoned by those closest to Him.

Many were against Him. The rulers, the religious leaders, the crowd that once cheered His name turned against Him.

They said God would not help Him. On the cross, they mocked: “He trusts in God — let God deliver Him now, if He wants Him.” (Matthew 27:43) The same voice. The same taunt. There is no salvation for him in God.

But God glorified Him. The Father raised Him from the dead and gave Him the name above every name.

Jesus had no fear. He knew the Father was with Him — even in the darkest hour, even when He cried out from the cross.

And through Jesus, God blessed His people. The salvation that belongs to the LORD came to us through the Son.

To read Psalm 3 is to see David — and through David, to see Jesus. The One who went through the storm so that we would never face it alone.

6. A Missional Reflection

What does a storm look like for you today?

Maybe it is a relationship that has collapsed. A betrayal you did not see coming. A diagnosis. A season of failure. Voices — from people or from inside your own head — telling you that God is not coming, that you have gone too far, that you are beyond help.

Psalm 3 does not tell you the storm will end quickly.

It tells you what to do inside the storm.

Turn your face toward God.

Declare what you know to be true about Him — not what you feel, but what you know. Cry out loud if you have to. Then lay down and rest.

Because the One who sustained David through the night is the same One who sustains you.

And if you do not yet know Jesus — this psalm is for you too. Because the same Saviour who cried out on the cross and was raised by the Father is the same One who can lift your head today.

The storm does not have the final word.

God does.

Salvation belongs to the LORD. 🌿

Next week we continue the Psalm Journey — Psalm 4: In Peace I Will Lie Down and Sleep.

Also Read:

Sources

¹ James Montgomery Boice, Psalms: An Expositional Commentary, Vol. 1: Psalms 1–41 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), on Psalm 3.

² Pope Shenouda III, الصلاة — طريق الحياة (Prayer — The Way of Life). The poem quoted here is widely attributed to him in Coptic devotional literature and is recited as part of his spiritual writings on contemplative prayer.

³ F. B. Meyer, Through the Bible Day by Day: A Devotional Commentary, Vol. 3: Job–Ecclesiastes (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1914), on Psalm 3.

⁴ Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Vol. 1: Psalms 1–26 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1870), on Psalm 3:4.