“When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.”
The reference to praising God for God's word and promise establishes that the proper response to divine support is thanksgiving and worship. The affirmation that the psalmist trusts in God (again linking trust to the absence of fear) indicates that this trust is not merely intellectual assent but existential orientation and mode of life. The reference to not fearing what flesh can do returns to the earlier theme: human threat is ultimately insignificant because humans cannot harm the soul that is grounded in God. This verse articulates the proper response to divine faithfulness: trust that leads to praise and the negation of fear.
Church Fathers on Psalms 56:9
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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