These are amongst the troubles--political, domestic, and spiritual--which God permitted to fall upon David; and yet this very David has courage amid the havoc of holiness, the misery of exile, the torture of outraged parental affection, and political insurrection. That courageous confidence is in a person: he realises God. This conviction is unshaken amid his chequered life and history; indeed, all through the din of revolution, the grief of a homeless and worse than childless existence, there is one ever-recurring belief: "God my help," "God my refuge," "God my shield." In this belief he brings back to God every trouble God sent to him. Hence we have these psalms, written by David, as agony after agony swept in upon his soul. Nor did it seem to signify how different one sorrow might be from another. The old cry, the same cry, is raised to a personal God. When Saul sought his life through jealousy; when Jonathan was slain in battle; when he himself had fallen into sin, and then was aroused--now by the whisperings of reclaiming grace, now by the booming billows of divine justice; when he bowed his head in shame, and the fierce light that beat about his court gleamed on his dark soul; when he tottered up the heights of Olivet, an impotent outcast, betrayed by his courtiers, deserted by his troops, and exiled by the unnatural rebellion and heartless perfidy of his son--in these experiences, so fearful, overwhelming, and varied, he saw God showing him the trouble. As the hand that sent it was ever the same, so from the heart that received it there arose ever and anon the same plea--"Have mercy upon me, O Lord"; "Make haste to help me"; "O Lord, make no long tarrying"; "I am poor and needy"; "O be not Thou far from me, for trouble is near at hand." And then, as if realising the apostasy, desertion, and faithlessness of his friends and forces, he adds, "There is none to help."