“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”
The affirmation that when the psalmist is afraid, they trust in God articulates the peculiar paradox that underlies Israel's penitential theology: fear and trust coexist, and the proper response to fear is not the absence of fear but the orientation of fear toward God. The emphasis on trusting when afraid suggests that trust is not the elimination of anxiety but the redirection of anxiety toward God rather than toward enemies. The reference to fearing God rather than fearing enemies indicates a reorientation of what is ultimately worthy of fear: the divine judge rather than human persecutors. This verse articulates the movement from justified fear of enemies to a higher fear that displaces it.
Church Fathers on Psalms 56:3
1. Just as when we are going to enter into any house, we look on the title to see whose it is and to whom it belongs, lest perchance inopportunely we burst into a place whereunto we ought not; and again, in order that we may not through timidity withdraw from that which we ought to enter: as if in a word we were to read, These estates belong to such an one or to such an one: so on the lintel of this Psalm we have inscribed, “At the end, for the people that from holy men were…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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