Psalm Chapter 34 - A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed

Psalm 34: The Taste of God

The superscription tells us David wrote this psalm after pretending to be mad before Abimelech — after drooling into his beard and scratching at the gate like a lunatic to save his own skin. It is, in other words, a psalm born from humiliation. And yet what pours out is not shame but gratitude so fierce it becomes an invitation: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." That word "taste" is doing something no abstract theological statement could do. It is asking us not to believe a proposition but to put something on our tongues. David is not arguing for God; he is recommending him, the way one recommends a meal. "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him." The emphasis is on the poverty — not despite it but because of it. The Lord is nigh, we are told, not to the impressive or the composed but "unto them that are of a broken heart." And then that astonishing promise at the end: "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken." A line that would echo, centuries later, in a very different room, over a very different body. The man who pretended to be broken discovers that God keeps the truly broken whole.

00:00 I Will Bless the Lord at All Times
00:30 O Magnify the Lord with Me
01:00 O Taste and See
01:30 The Fear of the Lord
02:00 Nigh unto the Brokenhearted
02:15 Not One Bone Broken