What did young David mean when he said, “I lie among the sons of men / Who are set on fire, / Whose teeth are spears and arrows, / And their tongue a sharp sword”? Are we to interpret that literally? Or was David — unlike his contemporaries — given to abstract thought? Why was he lying with other men? And why was he thinking about their teeth and tongues? Was he awake?
Well, actually he did say, “Awake, my glory! / Awake, lute and harp!” Whatever was going on, he felt like singing. Does that mean David was woke? No, this short psalm is like so many others — not in length, but in subject matter — in which the singer obsesses over his enemies, and David prays that YHWH will trap them as they try to trap him with their Jungian nets and Freudian pits.