2 Samuel 22:47: praise with nothing asked for
47The Lord lives, and my God is blessed. And the strong God of my salvation shall be exalted.
Two statements of fact and one thing still ahead. This edition reports rather than acclaims, and leaves only the exalting in the future.
Short answer
2 Samuel 22:47 comes near the end of the song David sings after being delivered from all his enemies. It reports that the Lord lives and that his God is blessed, and then says the strong God of his salvation shall be exalted. Nothing at all is requested.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 3 min read
Chapter 22 is the one sustained poem in 2 Samuel, a book that is otherwise almost entirely narrative. The same song turns up again, nearly word for word, in the book of Psalms, which gives a fair idea of how often it was sung.
After forty-odd verses of dangers and rescues, the poem reaches this line and stops recounting. Here it only names.
Where this verse appears
The opening of the chapter places the song: David speaks it to the Lord on the day he was freed from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. It is a song sung afterwards, not during.
The rock image that most readers associate with this poem belongs to its opening, in verses 2 and 3, alongside strength, shield and refuge. What comes back in this line is not the rock but the word for strength, now attached directly to the name of God.
What follows are the closing verses, where David promises to sing among the nations and the poem ends on the king and his offspring. Verse 47 is the summit before that descent.
What it says
The first clause is not a wish. This edition states it: the Lord lives. It reads as a report rather than a toast, which is a different act from the one most translations perform here, and it puts the listener in the position of being told something rather than joining in.
The second clause carries the only possessive in the verse. Between two clauses that name God in the widest terms, a small word slips in and makes the claim personal. The poem earns that possessive over the preceding forty verses.
Only the third clause looks forward. His life and his blessedness are given as already the case; the exalting is the part not yet finished. What is future here is not God becoming anything, but the recognition catching up.
And then the absence that defines the line. There is no request, not even the polite one that the protection continue. Praise that does not attach a petition at the end is rare, and it is what lets this sentence stand on its own.
What to do with it today
It works as an end-of-day exercise: say one thing about God that does not finish in a request. It is harder than it sounds, and the difficulty itself says something about how we usually pray.
If you are on the far side of something — the surgery went well, the bill got paid, the crisis passed — this verse is exactly the size of the moment. The whole song is somebody looking back.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, today I am not going to ask you for anything. I only want to say that you are the one who did not move while everything around me did, and that this is enough for today. Amen.