Psalm 55:17-19

"To God I call and God saves me, evening, morning and at noon. God's peace delivers my soul...."

This psalm is an appeal for deliverance from personal enemies. The psalmist begins, "Give ear to my prayer, O God . . . Attend to me, and answer me." (vs. 1-2) He says, "Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me." (v. 5) He would like to fly away like a dove to find refuge in the wilderness, but there is no escape. So, he asks God to destroy the plans of his enemy, who the psalmist says is a former friend. Then he begs God to send his enemy to Sheol alive and to "go away in terror" into the grave. (vs. 9, 13-15)

The psalmist's affirmation that "God's peace delivers my soul" follows an appeal for God's help in destroying his enemy. That is the literal reading of this psalm. Read allegorically or figuratively the psalm might be taken to refer to a spiritual struggle between temptation and our good inclinations. The enemy, in this reading, is the one who causes temptation and threatens to turn the soul away from God. Punishing this spiritual enemy is thus a way of protecting the soul, rather than the material body and possessions of the psalmist. This way of reading the psalms, which literally are filled with appeals for God to destroy enemies, has been very common in the life of the church.

Grace and peace...Bob