Five-minute study · Day 231 · Psalms 34
Psalm 34:8
A word worth stopping on: good טוֹב tov
'O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.' The word translated 'good' is tov. It means pleasing, beautiful, excellent, functioning as it should. Tov is the word God uses seven times in Genesis 1 to evaluate creation: 'and God saw that it was tov.' When David invites you to taste and see that the Lord is tov, he is asking you to verify with your own senses what God declared about himself from the beginning. The psalm's superscription places its composition after David escaped from Abimelech by pretending to be insane (1 Samuel 21:10-15). He was a fugitive, drooling into his beard, scratching at a gate like a madman. And from that humiliation he writes a psalm about tasting the goodness of God.
Word study: good
- Hebrew
- טוֹב
- Pronounced
- tov
- Strong's
- H2896
- Definition
- Good, pleasing, beautiful, excellent, functioning well, agreeable to the senses. Covers aesthetic beauty, moral goodness, practical fitness, and sensory delight. The most common evaluative adjective in the Hebrew Bible.
Tov appears over 500 times in the Hebrew Bible. BDB defines it across a wide range: 'good, pleasant, agreeable' (to the senses), 'good, excellent' (of quality), 'good, right' (ethically), 'good, fruitful' (of land), 'good, kind, gracious' (of persons). The word resists reduction to a single English equivalent because it covers what English splits into separate domains: moral goodness, sensory pleasure, aesthetic beauty, and practical fitness.
The word's first and most foundational appearance is Genesis 1. God creates light and sees that it is tov (1:4). He evaluates the dry land and seas as tov (1:10), vegetation as tov (1:12), the luminaries as tov (1:18), sea creatures and birds as tov (1:21), land animals as tov (1:25), and the completed creation as tov me'od, very good (1:31). Tov in Genesis 1 means functioning according to design, fulfilling its purpose, beautiful in its intended operation. When David applies this same word to God himself, the theological claim is immense: God is what his creation points to. The goodness embedded in every created thing is a reflection of the tov that characterizes the Creator.
Craigie's commentary on Psalms 1-50 in the Word Biblical Commentary series notes that Psalm 34 is an acrostic, each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The acrostic form is a literary device that imposes order on the material, carrying the content from aleph to tav, from beginning to end. Craigie observes that the acrostic structure gives Psalm 34 the feel of a comprehensive statement: the goodness of God explored from A to Z.
The verb 'taste' (ta'am) in verse 8 is significant. Ta'am means to taste, to perceive by the palate, to discern. It is the same word used in 1 Samuel 14:29 when Jonathan tastes honey and his eyes brighten. David is using gustatory language for theological knowledge. You can hear about honey. You can read about honey. You can believe that honey is sweet. Tasting is something else entirely. David's invitation is experiential: stop hearing about God secondhand and put his goodness on your tongue.
Historical context · Approximately 1015-1010 BC, during David's flight from Saul
A Fugitive's Praise: David at the Court of Achish
The superscription of Psalm 34 reads 'A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed.' The narrative behind this psalm is found in 1 Samuel 21:10-15. David, fleeing from King Saul, arrived at the Philistine city of Gath. This was a desperate move. Gath was the hometown of Goliath, the giant David had killed (1 Samuel 17:4). The servants of Achish, king of Gath, recognized David: 'Is not this David the king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?' (1 Samuel 21:11).
David was terrified. He was alone, unarmed (he had only Goliath's sword, retrieved from the priest at Nob), and surrounded by Philistines who knew his reputation as their enemy. His response was to feign madness: 'he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard' (1 Samuel 21:13). Achish was disgusted: 'Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men?' David was expelled from Gath and escaped with his life.
The superscription calls the Philistine king 'Abimelech,' while 1 Samuel calls him 'Achish.' Abimelech appears to be a throne name or dynastic title for Philistine rulers, similar to 'Pharaoh' for Egyptian kings. Genesis 20 and 26 refer to a Philistine king of Gerar as Abimelech, suggesting the title was used across generations.
The historical weight of Psalm 34:8 lies in its source. This is praise from a man who had just been reduced to his lowest point. David, the anointed future king of Israel, had survived by acting insane, drooling on himself, clawing at a gate. The psalm is written from the far side of that degradation. 'I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears' (34:4). 'This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles' (34:6). The 'taste and see' invitation comes from someone who has tasted despair and found God present in it. The tov of God is spoken by a man who had every reason to doubt it.
For reflection
David wrote about the goodness of God from the worst week of his life. He was on the run, alone, faking madness to survive. The psalm does not minimize what happened. It does not skip the fear or the humiliation. It just places them inside a larger frame. Think about the last time you were genuinely afraid. The kind of afraid where your options have run out. Where was God's goodness in that moment? You may not have seen it then. Can you taste it now, looking back?
Tov: good, pleasing, beautiful, functioning as designed. The word God used to evaluate his own creation. David applied it to God after escaping Gath with spit in his beard.
Sources: BDB; Craigie, 'Psalms 1-50' (WBC); Goldingay, 'Psalms 1-41'