# Psalms 34.18 **Book:** [Psalms](/codex/psalms/) · NASB95 ## Verse > The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalms 34:18, NASB95) ## Immediate context (±2 verses) **NASB95** ([NASB95](/codex/nasb95/)) > 16. The face of the LORD is against evildoers, To cut off the memory of them from the earth. 17. The righteous cry, and the LORD hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. > > **18. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.** > > 19. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all. 20. He keeps all his bones, Not one of them is broken. (Psalms 34:16-20, NASB95) ## Setting - **Speaker:** David, in a wisdom-thanksgiving psalm. The superscription (Ps 34:1) attributes the psalm to David's escape from Abimelech (= Achish, king of Gath, per 1 Sam 21:10-15), David feigned madness to escape the Philistine king. - **Audience:** Israel's worshipping community; specifically the *anawim*, the poor / afflicted / lowly who form the recurring addressees of the Psalter's wisdom-comfort psalms. - **Location:** Composed retrospectively after David's escape from Gath; geographically displaced from the immediate threat-event but recalling its providential deliverance. - **Time period:** During David's wilderness-fugitive period from Saul (c. 1015-1010 BC); composition somewhat later in David's reign as a thanksgiving-instruction psalm. The psalm's acrostic structure (each verse beginning with successive Hebrew alphabet letters) is a sapiential / pedagogical literary feature. ## Theological reading ### 1. Divine nearness in suffering The verse's claim is **specific and counterintuitive**: God is *qarov* ("near") not at the moments of human strength or success, but at the moments of brokenness, the *nishbar-lev* ("broken-of-heart") and the *daka-ruach* ("crushed-of-spirit"). The directional grammar inverts a natural human assumption that God would be *most* present when humans are *most* vital and *least* present when they are *most* diminished. The Psalter explicitly reverses this: the diminished state is the place of divine nearness. This is not generic-theistic comfort; it is **covenantal-particular comfort**. YHWH is the God who *hears the cry* of the afflicted (Exod 2:23-25; Ps 22:24; 116:1-2), the God whose *hesed* (covenant-loyalty-love) directs Him toward the broken rather than the secure. The structural inversion is not pastoral sentiment but theological substance: the God of Israel is not analogous to the gods of the ANE who attend to the powerful and the cult-faithful but are absent from the afflicted. ### 2. The "broken-and-contrite heart" tradition Ps 34:18 is one of three paradigm-texts in the OT establishing the **broken-and-contrite-heart tradition**: - **Psalms 51:17**, *"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."* David's penitential anthem: God's preferred sacrifice is the broken spirit, not the burnt offering. - **Isaiah 57:15**, *"For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, 'I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.'"* The exalted-yet-near divine paradox: God's transcendent holiness is paired with His indwelling-of-the-broken. - **Psalms 34:18** itself, completes the triad with the *near + saves* assertion. The three texts together define the OT's anti-prosperity-theology corrective: the brokenhearted are NOT the cursed-and-distant; they are the divinely-attended-and-rescued. This tradition is structurally embedded in the Psalter and Prophets, against any reading of OT religion as transactional-prosperity-cult. ### 3. NT echoes and Christological deepening The verse threads forward into NT teaching: - **Matthew 5:3-4**, *"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."* The Beatitudes' opening pair are the NT extension of Ps 34:18's broken-and-contrite tradition. Jesus's first beatitudes vindicate the *anawim*-tradition explicitly. - **Luke 4:18**, Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1: *"He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed."* The Lukan-inaugural-sermon defines Jesus's mission as the explicit fulfillment of the broken-comfort tradition. - **2 Corinthians 1:3-5**, Paul's "Father of mercies and God of all comfort" passage: God comforts in affliction so that the comforted may comfort others. - **Hebrews 4:15-16**, the high-priest who *sympathizes* with our weaknesses, having been tempted in all things; Christ's incarnate solidarity with the broken extends Ps 34:18's nearness through the hypostatic union. The Christological deepening: God's nearness to the broken is not merely external attention but, in Christ, **God's becoming the broken one Himself**, the Suffering Servant of Isa 53 + the crucified Christ who cries *"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"* (Mt 27:46 = Ps 22:1). The God who is near to the brokenhearted has Himself entered brokenheartedness. This is the structural deepening Ps 34:18 anticipates: divine-nearness becomes divine-co-suffering. ### 4. Patristic and Reformation reception Augustine (*Enarr. in Psalmos* 34) reads the verse as applying to the post-baptismal Christian whose ongoing brokenness is met by Christ's continual presence; *humilitas* as normal Christian condition between conversion and glorification. Chrysostom (*Hom. on Psalms*) pastoral-encouragement reading. Aquinas (*Catena Aurea* on Mt 5:3-4 + *In Psalmos* on Ps 34), links to the first Beatitudes as NT extension of OT *anawim* tradition. **Calvin** (*Comm. on Psalms* 34:18): *"By the broken in heart, and the contrite in spirit, are meant those who are humbled by the consciousness of their sins, and so cast down as to despair of all help. To such as these, oppressed with sorrow, the kindness and mercy of God is most signally and graciously displayed."* Luther (psalm-lectures), broken-spirit IS the precondition of receiving the gospel (cf. *theologia crucis* + *simul iustus et peccator*). **Bonhoeffer** (*Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible* 1940), Ps 34:18 prayed *in Christ* who absorbed the brokenness on the cross. ## Key words (Hebrew) - **קָרוֹב / *qarov* (H7138, "near, close, at hand")**, etymologically from *qarav* (to come near, approach); used relationally for both spatial and covenantal nearness. In Ps 34:18 it names the divine-attendance to the afflicted as a structural feature of YHWH's character, not occasional providence. - **שָׁבַר / *shabar* (H7665, "to break, shatter, smash")**, niphal participle *nishbar* ("broken"), used physically (broken bones, shattered vessels) and metaphorically (broken heart, broken spirit). Combined with [H3820 - lev](/codex/h3820-lev/) (heart) → *nishbar-lev* = "the broken-hearted." The lexical force is destructive-rupture, not gentle-sadness. - **דָּכָא / *daka* (H1792, "to crush, oppress, beat to pieces")**, piel passive *dakka'* / *m'dakkei* + ruach → "crushed-of-spirit." Etymologically: pulverized, ground-to-powder; far stronger than English "downcast." Combined with [H7307 - ruach](/codex/h7307-ruach/) (spirit / breath) → naming the deepest-interior-faculty crushed-state. - ***yasha* (H3467, "to save, deliver, rescue")**, hiphil imperfect *yoshia* ("He saves"), the same Hebrew root behind the name *Yeshua* (Joshua / Jesus = *YHWH-saves*). The verse names YHWH's salvific-act toward the *daka-ruach* using the verb that anchors the divine-Name + Christological-name etymological chain. The *yasha* root is one of the most-load-bearing salvation-vocabulary words in the OT. ## Cross-references - **Psalms 51:17**, *"a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise"*, paradigm-text-2 of the broken-and-contrite tradition (David's *Miserere*) - **Isaiah 57:15**, *"I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit"*, paradigm-text-3 (the exalted-yet-near divine paradox) - **Psalms 22:24**, *"He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him for help, He heard"*, companion suffering-attended psalm; quoted on the cross by Christ (Mt 27:46) - **Matthew 5:3-4**, Beatitudes' opening pair: NT extension of the *anawim*-tradition - **Luke 4:18**, Jesus's inaugural-sermon programmatic quotation of Isa 61:1, broken-comfort as messianic mission - **2 Corinthians 1:3-5**, Paul's "Father of mercies and God of all comfort" passage - **Hebrews 4:15-16**, Christ as sympathizing high-priest; incarnate solidarity with the broken ## See also - [Biblical Hope](/codex/biblical-hope/), concept hub anchored in the OT-NT comfort-tradition - [Spiritual Warfare](/codex/spiritual-warfare/), adjacent pastoral-theology hub (the verse is invoked in deliverance + depression contexts) - [Penal Substitutionary Atonement](/codex/penal-substitutionary-atonement/), Christological deepening; God's nearness culminates in incarnate co-suffering on the cross - [Problem of Evil](/codex/problem-of-evil/), theodicy connection: divine-nearness-in-suffering as a constitutive Christian response to the affliction-question - [Argument from Purpose Meaning and Hope](/codex/argument-from-purpose-meaning-and-hope/), existential-apologetic pairing; the broken-comfort tradition uniquely available within Christian theism ## Quoted in **Concepts:** - [100 Verses of Compassion and God's Goodness](/codex/100-verses-of-compassion-and-gods-goodness/) - [Feeling Distant from God](/codex/feeling-distant-from-god/) - [Spiritual Warfare](/codex/spiritual-warfare/) --- _Scripture quotations taken from the **New American Standard Bible®** (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by **The Lockman Foundation**. Used by permission. All rights reserved. [www.lockman.org](https://www.lockman.org)_