David's Fierce Joy: The Warrior's Triumph Before Perfect Love

Maclaren forces us to see what we often sanitize: David's exultant delight in his enemies' destruction was literal and visceral. 'I did beat them small as the dust of the earth'—the psalmist describes himself as a pestle crushing substance in a mortar, trampling fugitives into the mire of streets. He revels in knowing their desperate cries to God go unheard. These are not the sentiments of Christian love.

Yet Maclaren will not let us dismiss them as merely primitive. He locates them precisely: they belong to 'the stage of revelation in which [David] lived.' The king felt himself Yahweh's Anointed, so enmity toward him was treason against God Himself. His fierce energy and 'splendid rapidity' kindle an answering fire even in distant readers.

But here is the critical move: these natural, consistent feelings of David's era 'are capable of being purified'—not abandoned, but transformed—'into that triumph in the victory of good and the ruin of evil without which there is no vigorous sympathy with Christ's conflict.' The old warrior's joy in vanquishing evil becomes the Christian's participation in Christ's ultimate conquest of darkness, but purged of all personal vengeance and malice.

David's feelings 'result from a less full revelation than belongs to Christianity.' The light blazing in his battle-hymn is not yet 'the fire which Jesus longed to kindle.' Growth in revelation means our righteous anger at evil's defeat must be refined into Christ's compassion—the same victory, but transfigured.