Psalm Chapter 17

Psalm 17: Keep Me as the Apple of the Eye

Of all the tender names by which the Psalter asks to be held, this one is the tenderest. "Keep me as the apple of the eye." The Hebrew is even more intimate than the English — literally, "the little man of the eye," the tiny reflection you see of yourself when someone looks at you close enough to catch their own image in your pupil. It is the part of the body we defend most instinctively; the eyelid closes before we even know the threat is there. And David asks to be held like that — not at arm's length, not in the cupped hand, but in the most reflexively guarded place a body has. Then he doubles the request: "Hide me under the shadow of thy wings." Two images in one breath, the eye and the wing, precision and enclosure, the watchful and the warm. And at the end, as if tenderness alone were too small a thing to rest a whole soul on, he reaches further still: "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." The prayer that began in the eye ends in the morning after a very long sleep.

00:00 Hear the Right, O Lord
00:15 Thou Hast Proved Mine Heart
00:30 Hold Up My Goings in Thy Paths
00:45 Keep Me as the Apple of the Eye
01:00 Hide Me Under the Shadow of Thy Wings
01:15 From the Wicked Who Compass Me
01:30 Like a Lion Lurking in Secret Places
01:45 Arise, O Lord, Deliver My Soul
02:00 I Shall Be Satisfied When I Awake