Psalm 27: An exuberant declaration of faith

Psalm 27 is a psalm full of exuberant confidence about the Lord’s presence in our lives. It describes various troubles and conflicts throughout, but the speaker understands that the Lord will always protect him and lift him up, just as He has in the past. At the same time, the speaker declares his commitment to be confident in the Lord, to seek the Lord’s way, to sing praises, to believe faithfully, and most of all, to wait upon the Lord.

This psalm also tells us about the inner life of the Lord during His time in this world. The Lord knew the attacks that came upon Him from hell, and He also knew the temptations that came up from within His human self. These hellish influences find echoes in many places throughout the psalm, such as in verses 2 and 3, where the wicked come up against him and an army encamps about him. Juxtaposed with these struggles is a sense of determination to resist and overcome them, as in the words: “my heart shall not fear” (see Swedenborg’s work, Arcana Caelestia 1444).

We also hear about the growing union between the divinity and humanity in the Lord, something that grew stronger over the course of His life. Verses 4 to 10 emphasize this point in words such as, “…that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” (v. 4), and "When You said, ‘Seek my face’, my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, shall I seek’" (v. 8).

This psalm applies to our regeneration in the same way. It is true, of course, that we won’t face anywhere near the same extent of attacks and temptations that the Lord endured and overcame. However, our regeneration works along similar lines to the Lord’s "glorification", or the way He gradually made His human life divine (Arcana Caelestia 3138).

There are several images offered in this psalm that are worth further spiritual explanation:

In verse 2, it says “the wicked… came up against me to eat my flesh”. This means the evils that tempt us aim to destroy our love of what is good, which is the very fabric of our spiritual life (see Swedenborg’s work, Apocalypse Explained 391[11]).

Verse 3 speaks of an encamping army and “war rising up”. Where we would expect to see a fearful reaction, the speaker shows nothing but confidence. The idea here is that our own human - often selfish - thoughts, alongside evil spirits which attack our minds to bolster such thinking, can seem like an army that makes war against our trust in the Lord.

Verse 5 describes the Lord hiding us away in His pavilion and in His tabernacle when we face times of trouble. This means that the Lord protects what we understand (represented by the pavilion) and what we hold dear about doing good (the tabernacle) when we experience periods of temptation. Being “set high upon a rock” represents the way the Lord teaches us, and gives us a firm foundation (Apocalypse Explained 799).

This psalm bears an important message for us to hear whenever we are in conflict or doubt. As with many other psalms, it tells us about the fears we experience, the attacks on our intention to follow the Lord, and our determination to devote ourselves to the Lord’s ways. It is this which joins us with the Lord, and the Lord with us (see Swedenborg’s work, Divine Providence 324 326).

3138. These three verses deal with the preparation and enlightenment of the natural man so that the truth which was to be joined to good in the Rational might be summoned from there. With regard to that preparation and enlightenment the position is that there are two kinds of light which shape man's intellectual concepts - the light of heaven, and the light of the world. The light of heaven comes from the Lord who to angels in the next life is the Sun and Moon, see 1053, 1521, 1529, 1530. The light of the world comes from the sun and moon which a person sees with his physical eyes. The internal man receives his sight and understanding from the light of heaven whereas the external man receives his sight and understanding from the light of the world. The influx of the light of heaven into ideas formed in the light of the world produces enlightenment and at the same time recognition - the recognition of truth if a correspondence exists, the recognition of falsity instead of truth if that correspondence does not exist. But enlightenment and recognition are not possible unless affection or love is present, which is spiritual warmth and imparts life to the things illumined by the light. This may be compared to the light of the sun. It is not the light of the sun but the warmth within the light that imparts life to plants, as is evident from the seasons of the year.

[2] The verses which follow immediately after this describe the preparation further - the light of heaven, which is the Lord's Divine light, flowed into the ideas formed in the light of the world in His natural man so that He might bring forth from there the truth that was to be joined to good in the Rational. Thus it was to be brought forth in what is the ordinary way. Therefore to make His Human Divine the Lord came into the world in the ordinary way, that is, He was willing to be born as any other person is born, to receive instruction as any other does, and to be born again as any other, but with this difference: Man is born again from the Lord, whereas the Lord not only regenerated Himself from Himself, but also glorified Himself, that is, made Himself Divine; also man is made new through the influx of charity and faith, whereas the Lord was made so through the influx of Divine Love that was within Him and that was His own. From this it may be seen that man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, or what amounts to the same, that in the process of man's regeneration as the image one can envisage, though remotely, the process of the Lord's glorification.