Father Boylan’s Introduction to Psalm 30

A SONG OF THANKS FOR RESCUE

THE singer was at the point of death when he was rescued. In his great need he prayed, and his prayer was heard. For this he thanks, and will always thank, his Helper, God. There is nothing in the psalm to exclude Davidic origin. It may be a song of thanksgiving arising out of some situation of David’s career. Possibly it deals with the deadly peril which over shadowed Israel in the pestilence by which David’s overweening pride (cf. verses 7-8) was punished (2 Sam 24). During the pestilence David and his household wore the garment of mourning of which verse 12 speaks ( 1 Chron 21:16). The psalm would, in this view,
deal rather with the griefs of the nation Israel, than with the personal
experience of the poet. The words of the title: Canticum (more correct than Cantici: see note 1.) in dedicatione domus are a late addition, due, probably, to the circumstance that this psalm was sung at the Feast of Dedication established by Judas Maccabeus in 165 B.C. (1 Macc 4:48-59; cf. John 10:22). There is nothing in the psalm to show that it was written for that Feast.