David was a man of God’s Word. The verbs used to describe his relationship to the Torah reveal his devotion: love, delight, seek, listen, meditate, long for, learn, keep, store up, rejoice at, cling, observe, seek, sing about, hope in, teach, do not stray from, stand in awe, remember, and praise.[1] The divine summation of David’s life affirmed his passion for the Word of God (2 Chron 6:16). In contrast to Saul, David embodied the Mosaic expectation that the Warrior-King of Israel would read the law “all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them” (Deut 17:19; 1 Sam 15:1).
The Psalms are filled with expressions of David’s commitment to God’s Word. As the preeminent psalmist, David is credited with authoring around half of the 150 Psalms.[2] Many scholars also affirm the Davidic architecture and ordering of the entire book.[3] This is an essential point for warfighter theology. Why? Read through a certain lens, the Psalms are a warfighter’s handbook. Many, if not most, psalms were written by a warrior in the context of war.[4] In the stories of David, he seems to be holding either a sword or a lyre, waging war or writing psalms (1 Sam 19:8-9).
The warrior has much to glean from the Psalms, not least, the fact that the godly warrior lives by and operates from the Word of God. Many scholars have noted the programmatic function of Psalms 1, 19, and 119.[5] These psalms provide a “hermeneutical lens” through which to read the entire book.[6] Of note, these three psalms all have the Word of God as their main theme. If the psalms are a warfighting manual, then the Word of God forms the center of soul training for the warfighter.
In David, the reader sees a warrior grounded in God’s Word. His practice of interior discipline included meditating, studying, memorizing, and applying Scripture. He drew hope, perspective, joy, and life from his study. He opened himself to the convicting, reproving, and correcting function of Scripture. He allowed God’s Word to shape his moral code, inform his leadership, and drive his warfighting.[7]
David’s legendary moral failure with a deployed spouse and a faithful troop inverted his positive relationship to God’s Word. When the time came for kings to go to war, David remained at home (2 Sam 11:1), thus situating the Bathsheba/Uriah narrative as a war story. By remaining home, David was susceptible to the sinful attraction of another man’s wife. He pursued the vulnerable Bathsheba, who was the wife of one of his most faithful warriors Uriah (2 Sam 23:39), and had sexual intercourse with her. In so doing, he betrayed his God, violated a warrior’s bride, decimated his conscience, robbed a brother in arms, and killed a loyal soldier: in sum, he “despised the word of the Lord” (2 Sam 12:9). Straying from God’s Word has dire consequences for all, the warfighter included.
In short, the holy text is foundational to warrior health. The warrior must be more than a warrior; he must be a scholar. Steady footing comes from consistent study, attuning one’s moral compass requires regular meditation, protecting the conscience demands careful application of scriptural principles, navigating combat challenges and pitfalls necessitates walking by the light of God’s Word. The spiritual health of the warfighter is grounded in the Word of God.
[1]Psalm 16:7, 17:4-5, 18:21-22, 27:11, 19:7-11, 25:4-5, 33:4-6, 40:8, 56:4,10, 119:1-176.
[2]James H. Fraser, “The Authenticity of the Psalm Titles,” a paper presented for the degree of Master of theology, Grace Theological Seminary, 1984, 87-88; Jerome L. Skinner, “The Historical Superscriptions of Davidic Psalms: An Exegetical, Intertextual, and Methodological Analysis” (PhD diss., Andrews University, 2016). According to James Mays, “David appears in the psalter in three important ways: in the ascription of some psalms to settings in his story, in the simple attribution of many psalms to David, and in what is said about David in the text of a few psalms.” James Luther Mays, “The David of the Psalms,” Interpretation 40 (1986): 151. Contra this position, see Tod Linafelt, Timothy Beal, and Claudia V. Camp, The Fate of King David: The Past and Present of a Biblical Icon (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2010), 153-154.
[3]“That the Psalms were the prayer book of David is a very ancient exegetical opinion.” Gary A. Anderson, “King David and the Psalms of Imprecation,” Pro Ecclesia 15, no. 3 (2006): 271. Tremper Longman affirms Davidic authorship of the majority of the Psalms. He also argues that David played a key role in structuring the book of Psalms. Tremper Longman III, How to Read the Psalms (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 38-39. Daly-Denton argues for Davidic authorship based upon the New Testament’s unquestioning affirmation of this reality. Margaret Daly-Denton, “David the Psalmist, Inspired Prophet: Jewish Antecedents of a New Testament Datum,” Australian Biblical Review 52 (2004): 198. Kaiser shows the centrality of David in the structure of the Psalms. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., “The Structure of the Book of Psalms,” Bibliotheca Sacra 174 (2017): 3-12. See also, Norman Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 22;
[4]Mays, “David of the Psalms,” 145. “The songs that came out of his life as shepherd and warrior, as refugee and ruler, were the inspired expression of a life devoted to God in bad times and good, and therefore the guiding language for all who undertook lives of devotion…Music had a role and function in relation to the needs and important occasions of social life. Its four primary settings in early Israel seem to have been social celebration, warfare, incantation, and cultic rituals.” Vivian Johnson explores Psalm 18 as a standard example of a thanksgiving song to Yahweh “for military success.” Vivian L. Johnson, David in Distress: His Portrait through the Historical Psalms (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009), 112. Whybray suggests that scholars read the Psalter through three grids: 1) spiritual guide or handbook; 2) public recitation by the community; 3) manual of instruction. Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book, 31-32. Arguing for psalms as a warfighter guide/manual would lean heavily on 1 and 3 while including elements of 2.
[5]“They were not psalms in the strict sense but were intended to constitute a framework to the whole body of psalms, giving it the character of a manual of piety based on the central concept of the Law.” Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book, 18. According to Nancy Jeung-Yeoul Bang states, “Psalms 19 and 119 form a ‘macro-torah frame’ to support the whole Psalter where I call both ‘torah pillars’…the centers of the first and last Books of the Psalter—seems very intentional in that they encourage readers to read the whole Psalter through the lens of the torah motif.” Jeung-Yeoul Bang, “The Canonical Function of Psalms 19 and 119 as Macro-Torah Frame,” The Korean Journal of Old Testament Studies 66 (2017): 279. See also, Nancy L. DeClaisse-Walford, The Shape and Shaping of the Book of Psalms: The Current State of Scholarship (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), 1-85; Kent Aaron Reynolds, Torah as Teacher: The Exemplary Torah Student in Psalm 119 (Boston: Brill, 2010), 140-183.
[6]Psalm 1 provides the readers “with ‘hermeneutical spectacles’ through which to view the Psalter as a whole and meditate on it, seeking for themselves the will of God as expressed in the Torah…it points forward to the Psalter as the medium through which Israel now responds to that word.” Whybray, Reading the Psalms as a Book, 21. See also, Kaiser Jr., “Structure of the Book of Psalms,” 6.
[7]Psalm 1, 19, and 119 bear out these affirmations. David’s intimate knowledge of God’s law would have included Mosaic warfighting guidance, pre- and post-war rituals, godly warrior models, and other essential reading for the warfighting vocation.