Psalm Chapter 5

Psalm 5: The Morning Voice

If Psalm 4 is an evening prayer, Psalm 5 is its dawn counterpart — the first words of a soul that has learned where to turn before turning anywhere else. "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." That final phrase is everything: "and will look up." Not merely speaking words into the dark, but lifting the eyes in expectation, like a watchman scanning the horizon for the first streak of light. The psalm is bracingly honest about the world David wakes into — a world of flattery and open graves, of tongues as smooth as oil and hearts full of destruction. And yet the response is not despair but worship. "I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy." David does not wait until the world improves to pray; he prays because the world is precisely as broken as it is. The psalm ends with a promise that feels like sunrise itself: God will bless the righteous and surround them with favour as with a shield. The morning belongs to those who look up.

00:00 Give Ear to My Words
00:12 The Morning Prayer
00:25 No Pleasure in Wickedness
00:38 Into Thy House in Mercy
00:50 The Open Sepulchre
00:58 Joy for Those Who Trust