“THE Lord is a high tower in times of trouble” (Ps. 9, 10, Rev. Ver.). What throughout the Psalms does this ever-recurring word “tower” mean?
“Tower” has also the meaning of a room, of a hall, so that “high tower” taken in that sense, would mean a room in one of the stories of the house.
But the word “room” is not bound to that narrow interpretation of the present. In general it means: a place within which one withdraws himself, in which one can dwell, in which one can bear to stay. And if we consult the language in which David sang his psalms, and ask, what the sense was in that language of the word, which our translators have used for the “high tower,” it appears in every sense to indicate a place so far in the height, that there one could no more be assaulted.
“High tower” (room) is the highest place above the breastworks of a fortress. It is the highest place of the house, to which there is no stairs, and where no one can pursue you any more. It is, and that was its original sense, what the Transvaalers would call, a high, unapproachable top, high up on a rock, or mountain-ridge.
That here we refer to the Transvaalian use of language, is natural.
Theirs have been experiences, like those of David, when for years he waged war against the troops of Saul.
He maintained the struggle through a series of years, with a small band of followers over against an over-bold and over-powerful enemy. But he waged that war in the rocky part of Judah’s mountainous country. And he maintained the unequal combat for so long a time, because he had accurate knowledge of the high rocky parts of Judah’s mountains, and the passes, which led to them.
When he was unable to hold out in the low places, he quickly withdrew to one of the steep tops, where Saul’s warriors could not follow him. And there in the high regions, in those high places, on those high points of rocks he enjoyed again the restful and glorious feeling of safety.
There no one could come near him. There no one could follow him. There he was safeguarded against every attack. That then was his “high tower.”
And now to express that the strength of his soul’s confidence taken in its deepest sense was never in a creature, but always in his God, David referred to it again and again, that his “high tower” in the end always was in the Lord his God.
IT also occurs differently in the Psalms. Not that God Himself is the “high tower,” but that “the God of Jacob might put you into a high tower”; or as prayer: “Let thy salvation, O God, set me in a high tower” (Ps. 69, 29, Dutch version); or the statement: “The Righteous shall be set in a high tower.”
But the thought goes deepest when the believer no more rejoices in a “high tower,” in which God puts him, but when he has found his high tower in God Himself, and now, resting in that glorious safety, out from His God he looks down quietly and solemnly, on what at first threatened to take his soul by storm.
The first, when God sets you in a high tower, but means, that the restlessness of the heart gave way to the restfulness of safety, and that gratefully you attribute this to God.
But when God Himself has become a high tower to you, you have withdrawn yourself from the turbulence and struggle in the tent, and as under the wings of the Lord, and there is blessed enjoyment again of fellowship with the Eternal Being Himself.
You have then come to realize, that the help of God and the upholding of your God, is still but a small part of the matter, and that the fullness only comes, when from the help of God you come up to God Himself, and feel yourself hidden in Him.
In two ways it is then come with you to inward deepening.
From the outward side of your grief you have gone down into the depth of your soul to the root of your grief. And in the same way from the outward side of God’s help you have come up to the Fountain of your comforting in the Almighty Himself.
And that in no false mystical sense, as though our soul could perforce penetrate into the Being of God. No creature can ever do this. And still to imagine oneself capable of this is sinful daring.
No, to be hidden in God, is being hidden in the revelation of God’s Being, in what Scripture calls His Name. As when it says: “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower.”
Hence it is a withdrawing of oneself in the virtues, in the compassions, in the outbeamings of God.
Even as we say, that a lily of the field blossoms in the sun, not as though thereby it is set in the substance of the sun, but in the fostering outshining of the sun.
And in this sense has found in God his high tower, not he who has entered into the Being Himself of the Eternal, what no creature either can or may, but he who has altogether been taken up into the glorious fullness of the outshinings of God’s virtues and comfortings.
BUT the image retains its full rich significance.
“In times of trouble” the soul feels herself attacked. She is painfully and anxiously aware of being persecuted and pursued. She stands exposed to continuous assaults. She feels she is being haunted, and that the purpose is, to render her powerless, to unnerve and to disjoint her. She totters. She is exhausted. Darkness darkens her sight.
This is no ordinary anxiety, which she can face with courage, no ordinary fear over against which she can set undauntedness.
This is still possible, when she comes in conflict with people, with persons, with enemies of flesh and blood. But it becomes altogether different, when anxiety of soul arises from trouble of soul, from bitter grief of soul, from a wound in the heart that continues bleeding, from what inwardly shocks our whole being and robs it of its steadfastness.
Then one feels himself attacked as by a hidden power. By a power of homesickness and sadness. It becomes an inward pining. And when one then observes that he is no more able, and that it overwhelms him, and that in that battle there is no defense, it seems as though hellish powers, or demoniac assailants pursue our soul. And that makes her stumble, and fills her with deadly anxiety.
And do not say, that these are mystical imaginations.
God Himself in His Word calls “Death” an enemy. Jesus rebukes disease. And the apostle testifies, that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, i.e., with what people do to us, but with the mysterious perverting power, which comes to us from spiritual wickednesses in the air.
THIS would not be so, if you stood outside of sin, and thus could lift up an impenetrable shield against such demoniacal assaults.
But this is not so. This is not so with any one. And when in times of epidemic or bloodshedding by war, every one goes to church again, who never came at other times, it is only, because real anxiety of soul always awakens our sins again, makes the deep sorrowful experience and acknowledgment of our sins at once cry out again in our heart, and thereby makes the tie vibrate, which in our past and in our consciousness appears still so bitterly to bind us to demoniac power.
And along that way of our own self-reproach the anxiety then obtains its demoniac character.
Therein then roots that oppressed, anxious feeling of being secretly pursued, sought, and assailed.
Of course this differs in degree with one and with another. Also, while one is able to give himself an account of it, the other does not understand, what goes on within him.
Then the grief becomes, what is called, lyrical. That is to say, one’s own trouble or grief or accident solves itself in the feeling, that the suffering of the world, that the misery arising from the curse, that the storm of human wretchedness now also breaks over our head, and tries to undo also our soul.
This accounts in such days for that feeling of dread and of faintness, for which we have no name, and which comes upon us as a flood, lifts us up from the ground of our life, and surrenders us as a playball to the most cutting apperceptions. Feelings which you can not set aside, over which you are no master, and which every time surprise you, do what you may to escape them.
And over against those waves of sorrow and over against those billows of grief, which then go over the soul, there comes from the heart comforted of God the glorious confession, that “in such times of trouble God is a high tower.”
Surely, the Lord also upholds, and He softens the grief, in, oh, so tender a manner and with such deep compassionate Divine devotion. Unexpectedly a rose blossoms for you in the wilderness, a lily in barren places.
But that is help regarding the outward side of the trouble, and in behalf of your immediate personal grief.
But what is here meant is still something altogether different.
It masters you at the moment, when that mysterious wave of the demoniac of the universal misery breaks against your wearied breast, and when in the broken wave your own personal sin rolls in upon you.
Then no comfort avails, then no help saves, then no support can uphold you.
Then there is but one way out.
Over against that wavebeat of curse and death, God Himself as the Fountain of life and the Source of everlasting rejoicings must take your soul up into Himself.
And this is what David experienced, and what every one experiences when he can say: In God is my high tower.
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