The heading of Psalm 3 tells us when it was written: “When he was fleeing from Absalom.” And then it adds two words that, strictly speaking, do no work at all: his son.

The scribes didn’t need them. Absalom is one of the best-known figures in the David story; any ancient reader would have known exactly who he was. “When David was fleeing from Absalom” would have identified the moment perfectly. The phrase “his son” adds no information. It adds something else.

It makes the sentence hurt. This is not a king running from a rival general or a foreign army. He is running from his own child — the son who set out to take his throne and, before the story ends, would die with David crying out that he wished he had died instead. To name Absalom as “his son” in the very first line is to press a thumb directly on the bruise. The threat in this psalm isn’t only military. It’s a father’s.

The two words do a second thing, too. The psalm just before this one, Psalm 2, also hangs on the word “son” — there, the son is the king God installs and defends. Set side by side, the two psalms hold two sons: the one God raises up, and the one rising up against God’s anointed. The link is made with a single repeated word.

The rest of the psalm never mentions Absalom again. It speaks only of “enemies,” “adversaries,” “the wicked.” But the heading has already told us who at least one of them is. Every taunt, every massed thousand, every night spent wondering whether he’ll wake — all of it is colored by those two unnecessary words at the top. The enemy has a face, and it is a face David knows.

Read more on psalms.scriptura.org → https://psalms.scriptura.org/w/Psalm_3/Verse-by-Verse