267 – Psalm 6 – Introduction

I’m interested in one sentence in a particular verse in the New Testament. But in the interest of context, we must consider at least two verses together.

Acts 13:21-22 (NKJV)

21 And afterward they asked for a king; so God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. 

22 And when He had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.’ 

I wanted to point out what Yahweh said about David, but I noticed God is not explicitly named in Acts 13:22. In order to prove the pronoun “my” indicates God, we need to consider verse 21. “God gave them Saul…”, is the proof we are looking for. It isn’t difficult to conclude all subsequence pronouns are talking about God.

I must admit I have read this verse and the one it is quoted from (1 Samuel 13:14) many times. I always wonder what the word “after” means here but have never taken the time to look it up until today. One might be tempted to insert the word chasing in front of the word after while reading. So that it is understood as “…a man chasing after My own heart”. But that is not how the word “after” is to be understood. 

Does “after” then indicate ordinal position? Is it suggesting something like, “first David’s heart, then Yahweh’s heart”, as if to establish how David prioritized God in his life? No, that’s not it either.

Consider the following from Logos Bible Software.

כְּ k – like, as; as many as, about, in the same way as, according to

When Yahweh says, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will”, He is saying that David’s heart is like God’s heart. Or maybe a simply way to understand this is David has lined up his own heart according to God’s heart. When Yahweh selected David as King it’s because He knew David would do all His will.

If you are at all familiar with the life of David the shepherd boy who became king, you know he had both huge successes (killed a giant, won wars) and huge failures (committed adultery and murder), yet Yahweh amazingly saw David as one whose heart lined up with His own.

Can we discover why Yahweh had such a powerful testimony concerning David? If we can, it will be by examining what the scriptures reveal to us about David. 

We know without a doubt that David did not pen all of the Psalms, but he did write many of them. I’m not sure I would want all of human history after my departure from this earth to know the deepest, darkest issues of my heart, but that’s exactly what many of the Psalms reveal about David. In them, we can see David bringing his heart back into alignment with Yahweh’s. It is my belief this was David’s lifelong practice.

Look at the superscription of Psalm 6. 

“To the Chief Musician. With Stringed Instruments. On An Eight-Stringed Harp. A Psalm of David.” (NKJV)

We will explore this powerful Psalm next time. We would do well to keep in the forefront of our minds that this was a Psalm, literally a song.

God is absolutely awesome! God is Yahweh! Yahweh’s word is powerful and true. Worship Him with me, won’t you?