Three Thousand Years Later, I Borrow His Words

Three thousand years later, millions of people, including me, still turn to King David’s words for comfort, prayer and hope. Tehillim (Psalms) are genuinely timeless. This morning, I needed his words to carry me through a particularly rough patch.

I began this weekly series because I wanted to think about people I genuinely admire.

Not celebrities. Not influencers. Not people with carefully managed public images.

People whose lives contain lessons worth carrying forward.

This week I chose King David.

There are obvious reasons. I could write about the shepherd boy who confronted Goliath, the king who established Jerusalem as the centre of Jewish national life and Judea’s capital, or the deeply complicated man at the centre of the episode involving Bathsheba and Uriah.

But that is not the article I want to write.

The longer I live with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, the more I find myself returning not to David the warrior or David the king, but to David the writer.

Of everything he achieved and left behind, it is his words that have helped me most.

The Blogger of His Time

Calling King David a blogger is clearly inappropriate and crass. Tehillim (aka: Psalms) is sacred poetry, not a website.

Yet in some ways, David did what bloggers at their best try to do.

He documented the journey.

He wrote from inside fear, danger, guilt, loneliness, gratitude and faith. He did not wait until everything had been resolved and then present a polished version of events.

He wrote when enemies surrounded him. He wrote when he felt abandoned. He wrote after failure. He wrote when he was grateful simply to be alive.

Jewish tradition places David at the centre of Tehillim, although the Gemara teaches that his composition included the work of ten earlier figures.
(Bava Batra 14b)

The result is an extraordinary range of human experience. Triumph and humiliation. Faith and doubt. Loyalty and betrayal. Fear, rage, remorse and hope.

Perhaps that is why almost everybody eventually finds themselves somewhere in his words.

The Most Widely Borrowed Words

It is impossible to calculate how many people have read, recited or sung Tehillim over three thousand years.

The number must run into the billions.

Psalms is one of the Bible’s most widely read, memorised, quoted and sung books, and one of the most familiar books of the Hebrew Bible. It is woven into Jewish daily prayer and has also become central to Christian worship across the world.

Its reach is almost impossible to comprehend.

Kings have recited it. Soldiers have carried it. Mourners have whispered it. Patients have reached for it from hospital beds. Families have said it while waiting for medical news.

At this very moment, across the world, people are using King David’s words because they cannot find their own.

I understand that better now than I once did.

A Song That Outlived Its Singer

Ha’azinu is not a chapter of law or conventional narrative.

It is a song.

Its regular haftarah is also a song, this time sung by King David. This year Ha’azinu falls on Shabbat Shuvah, so that regular haftarah is replaced by Hoshea’s call to repentance.

Yet the usual pairing remains striking as does David’s place in the journey of repentence,

Moshe sings at the end of his journey. David sings after a life of danger, war, triumph, failure and rescue.

Neither completes everything he dreamed of completing. Moshe does not enter the land. David does not build the Temple.

Instead, each leaves behind words.

The song outlives the singer.

That thought has become increasingly important to me.

Since my diagnosis, I have written extensively about living with PSP. I have written about medicine, disability, faith, fear, family, hope and the sometimes absurd practicalities of life in a wheelchair.

Only days ago, I also led the Rosh Hashanah prayers from that wheelchair.

Writing and singing have become two of the principal ways in which I process what is happening to me.

I do not know how long my eyes, speech and physical independence will allow me to continue.

But I can write now. So I do.

My Guide to Tehillim

I began to understand the power of David’s words while writing my Guide to the Book of Psalms, a personal companion to all 150 psalms.

In its introduction, I wrote that there are moments in life when people reach instinctively for Tehillim:

Illness. Fear. Grief. Hope. Confusion. Relief. Loneliness.

For many years, I said the words without fully appreciating their emotional depth. Then I began slowing down and discovered something extraordinary.

David did not write from comfort. He wrote from caves, betrayal, illness, exhaustion, danger, guilt, gratitude and longing for G-d.

That discovery became the foundation of my guide. Written from a traditional Orthodox Jewish perspective, it explores the context, key phrases and personal meaning of every psalm. My hope was simple: to help these ancient words feel more alive, personal and comforting to those saying them today.

The guide is dedicated to the recovery of body and soul of those who are suffering, and to the comfort of their caregivers and families.

I did not appreciate when I wrote those words how frequently I would need that companionship myself.

Read or download my Guide to the Book of Psalms

Restore the Light to My Eyes

This week, David’s words became intensely personal. Twice within approximately twelve hours, my eyelids clamped shut and would not reopen.

The first episode lasted around twenty-five minutes. During the second, I eventually fell asleep without knowing when my eyes would open again.

For those periods, I was effectively blind.

Then, while thinking about this article, I returned to Psalm 13:

“עַד־אָנָה אָשִׁית עֵצוֹת בְּנַפְשִׁי יָגוֹן בִּלְבָבִי יוֹמָם עַד־אָנָה יָרוּם אֹיְבִי עָלָי׃ הַבִּיטָה עֲנֵנִי ה׳ אֱלֹהָי הָאִירָה עֵינַי פֶּן־אִישַׁן הַמָּוֶת”

“How long will I have cares on my mind, grief in my heart all day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Look at me, answer me, O Lord my G-d! Restore the light to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”
(Tehillim 13:3–4)

“Restore the light to my eyes.”

Of all the verses to encounter on that particular day, it felt almost spooky. David’s enemy was not PSP. Mine is.

The next verse reads:

“פֶּן־יֹאמַר אֹיְבִי יְכָלְתִּיו צָרַי יָגִילוּ כִּי אֶמּוֹט”

“Lest my enemy say, ‘I have overcome him,’ my foes exult when I totter.”
(Tehillim 13:5)

David tottered. So do I.

Yet the psalm ends:

“וַאֲנִי בְּחַסְדְּךָ בָטַחְתִּי יָגֵל לִבִּי בִּישׁוּעָתֶךָ אָשִׁירָה לַה׳ כִּי גָמַל עָלָי”

“But I trust in Your kindness; my heart will rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for He has dealt kindly with me.”
(Tehillim 13:6)

What changes is not David’s situation. The enemy remains. The fear remains. The silence remains.

What changes is his posture towards them. The psalm does not move from suffering to solution. It moves from suffering to relationship. That distinction matters enormously when living with a progressive illness.

Modern culture loves stories with neat endings. We want the diagnosis reversed, the treatment discovered and the final chapter redeemed. Life does not always cooperate.

Some things cannot be fixed. Some dreams remain unfinished. Some prayers are answered differently from how we hoped.

Faith does not require me to pretend that losing control of my eyelids was not terrifying. It does not require me to pretend that I am happy about PSP advancing.

David did not pretend either. He complained. He questioned. He asked G-d how long the suffering would continue.

And then he sang. Not instead of fear. After fear.

Despair and gratitude can occupy the same prayer. The same day. Perhaps even the same moment.

Three thousand years later, the words of a shepherd boy can help a man sitting in a wheelchair confront a disease David could never have imagined.

That is the power of writing.

The Power of an Imperfect Voice

David’s words are powerful partly because he was not perfect.

Tanakh does not give us an airbrushed hero. It gives us a recognisably human being who displayed remarkable courage, exercised enormous power, committed serious wrongs and lived with their consequences.

The episode involving Bathsheba and Uriah remains one of the most difficult in Tanakh. The Gemara explains that it is legally more complicated than a simple reading suggests. Yet Nathan still condemns David, and David still suffers consequences.
(Shabbat 56a)

When confronted, David responds:

“חָטָאתִי לַה׳”

“I have sinned against the Lord.”
(II Samuel 12:13)

No defence. No attempt to shift responsibility.

Psalm 51, identified with Nathan’s confrontation after Bathsheba, contains David’s plea:

“לֵב טָהוֹר בְּרָא־לִי אֱלֹהִים וְרוּחַ נָכוֹן חַדֵּשׁ בְּקִרְבִּי”

“Create for me a pure heart, O G-d, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
(Tehillim 51:12)

Repentance in Judaism is not self-hatred. It is moral honesty.

David could not undo what had happened. Repentance did not remove the consequences. But failure did not become the final chapter of his life.

If David had been perfect, Tehillim might have been less powerful. Perfection is difficult to relate to.

Fear is not. Failure is not. Regret is not. Hope is not.

David transformed them all into words.

What I Am Learning From Him

I am not King David. I am not writing Tehillim.

I am one man with a terminal illness, a laptop, voice-dictation software and an apparently unstoppable urge to tell people what is happening.

But I am learning something from him.

Write the whole journey.

Do not record only the victories. Do not record only the fear. Do not pretend that faith eliminates doubt or that gratitude eliminates pain.

Only days ago, I wrote about achieving something extraordinary for me. I led the Rosh Hashanah prayers from my wheelchair.

Then I wrote about my eyes clamping shut.

Both articles were true. The joy did not make the fear false. The fear did not erase the joy.

David’s psalms can begin in abandonment and end in song without pretending that everything in between has been repaired.

That is the honesty I want in my own writing.

Three Thousand Years Later

I think about legacy more than I once did. David left Jerusalem at the centre of the Jewish kingdom. He prepared for a Temple that somebody else would build. He established a dynasty and changed Jewish history.

But perhaps his most universal legacy is his words.

Words people use when they are frightened.

Words they use when they are guilty.

Words they use when they are grateful.

Words they use when their own words fail them.

Real legacy is not the perfectly managed version of ourselves that we would choose to leave behind.

It is what remains when the whole story has been told. David did not leave us a spotless life. He left us an honest voice.

That is why I chose him this week. Not because he defeated a giant. Not because he established Jerusalem as a capital. Not even because he became a king.

I chose him because, when my own words sometimes fail me, his are still there.

Three thousand years later, we are still singing and praying with his songs.