Psalms 28:8: “The LORD [is] their strength, and he [is] the saving strength of his anointed.”
Stop and mediate on this verse for a moment, what do you see? I see that the Lord is the strength of the people who trust him (see verse 7) but He is the saving strength of His anointed. Does this mean that only His anointed gets saving strength but we poor slobs who are not anointed end up with just strength. I mean what does one have to do to get this anointing so he can get in on this saving strength. At this point I don’t know what the difference between strength and saving strength is all I know is that the anointed gets an adverb that I don’t because I am not anointed and just who is the anointed anyways?
The word anointed in Hebrew is mashichu where we get the word Messiah. The context indicates that David is the anointed as a king. We hear in the presidential elections a common phrase when the discussion of national security comes up. The candidates all say, “It is the primary job of the president to protect the people. “ Indeed we are electing a leader who will protect us. Ultimately when we go in to that booth to vote we are going to cast our vote for the candidate that we feel can do the best job to protect us and our families. That includes not only national defense but economic defense as well. That is and has always been the primary role of a national leader, be it president or king. Thus, David’s primary role as a king was to be a protector or savior to his people. To make sure they were protected from foreign invaders and that they had enough to eat.
I believe this verse has a double meaning here because it also can be a reference to Jesus who is the Messiah the mashichu, the anointed one whose primary role is to save us from our sins. Every translation I look at over looks that final word in the verse which is a pronoun. It is overlooked because it just does not grammatically fit but it does in the Hebrew. It is the pronoun He. Thus this should be rendered as: “He is a stronghold of salvation to His anointed is He. That pronoun creates a complex understanding of this passage which is difficult to put into English, yet what it does is basically say that this anointed does not get any special advantage in strength, as with David the anointed or the one chosen to protect the people will be given special strength to protect his people. If we just call this a Messianic passage and the anointed refers only to Jesus as the Messiah, we are not incorrect we are just limiting the broad scope of this passage. For one thing the context indicates that his anointed is David so if we say it only refers to Jesus then we are ignoring the context which is bad. Now David did get a literal anointing of oil from the prophet Samuel but Jesus never received a literal anointing with oil to be a Messiah, it is only a figurative anointing. I believe most of us Evangelicals accept this as the case. If that is so then this verse extends beyond David and Jesus and to anyone in a leadership role charged with protecting God’s people, not only from physical harm but spiritual harm. David took care of the physical salvation of his people through the strength of God, the Messiah takes care of the spiritual salvation of His people through the salvation of God and todays Christian’s leaders are strengthened to protect the salvation of their people.
I believe this verse has a practical, 21st Century application. Any believer who assumes a role of leadership among believers whether through ordination or election or any other way they find themselves as the leader over a body of believers, even a father who is the head of his household or a single parent mother charged with protecting her children physical and spiritually, God gives that figuratively anointed person saving strength, and those under your care strength. Those under your care received strength, ‘azaz which is a strength of boldness and might to carry out a task. Yet the anointed or the leader is given saving strength which in the Hebrew is yeshu’oh meshichu which is a strength to deliver, to bring prosperity, health and victory to those he is protecting.
Oh yeah, one other thing the words for saving strength yeshu’oh meshichu sounds an awful lot like Yeshua Ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah) that is because they are the same words. “We could correctly translate this as “And He is a stronghold Jesus the Messiah is He.” Not only does this have a context for David as the anointed to lead Israel and for any Christian leader today, but ultimately whatever strength David and our Christian leaders have it is ultimately the strength of Yeshua Ha Mashiach Jesus the Messiah.
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