The Man Who Ran Out of Metaphors

In the Judean foothills southwest of Bethlehem, you can still find the caves where David hid from Saul — deep limestone shelves carved by centuries of rain, cool even in the August heat. David knew those walls. He pressed his back against them and listened for soldiers on the ridge above.

That is why his final song reads the way it does. Rock. Fortress. Deliverer. Shield. Stronghold. Refuge. Savior. Seven words piled into two verses, each drawn from a night David could name.

The rock was the limestone of Adullam, where four hundred desperate men gathered around him. The fortress was the cliff face at Ein Gedi, where he cut Saul's robe instead of his throat. The deliverer was the God who walked him out of enemy Gath alive. Each metaphor carried a scar, a season when the Almighty was the only thing standing between David and the grave.

There is a kind of faith that comes only from accumulation — years of finding God faithful in the cave, on the battlefield, in the palace, and in the wreckage of your own making. David did not write these words as a young shepherd with a sling. He wrote them as an old king who had run through every metaphor he knew and still had more to say about the faithfulness of God.