It is written:
“He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.” (Psalm 91:15)
The Book of Psalms is a treasure trove for God’s people. Found within these songs and prayers of praise to the Lord are truths which guide the Lord’s followers through some of the most difficult and trying times of life.
It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that many of the Psalms are prayers for God’s people to use in spiritual warfare against Satan and his forces.
Scholar Michael Heiser, mentions some of the manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which relate directly with this subject:
““One specific Qumran text that ties the prevalent Solomonic exorcist tradition back to David is 11QPsa a ( 11Q5 ) : 2 [BLANK] And David, son of Jesse, was wise, and a light like the light of the sun, /and/ learned, 3 [BLANK] and perfect in all his paths before God and men. And 4 [BLANK] YHWH gave him a discerning and enlightened spirit. And he wrote psalms: 5 three thousand six hundred; and songs to be sung before the altar over the perpetual […] 9 And all the songs which he spoke were four hundred and forty-six. And songs 10 to perform over the possessed: four. The total was four thousand and fifty. 11 All these he spoke through (the spirit of) prophecy which had been given to him from before the Most High. ( 11Q5 27.2–5 , 9–11 ) 37 Lines 9–10 assert that David wrote psalms for “the possessed.” The Hebrew behind this translation reads hpgwʿym, a Qal passive participle of the lemma pgʿ (literally, “the assaulted”). This terminology was used in the rabbinic community of Psalm 91, considered “a song for the stricken” and “a song for demons.” Interestingly, a version of Psalm 91 curiously appears among the apocryphal psalms of Cave 11, a collection of psalms whose “apparent purpose [is] the exorcism of demons.” 38 This is not an arbitrary judgment, for the rabbis considered Psalm 91 to be a “song referring to evil spirits” and a “song for demons.” 39 This should not be a surprise, given our study of the terminology for evil spirits in chapter 1. The evil spirits deber (“pestilence”) and qeṭeb (“destruction”) are prominent in that psalm.” (Michael S. Heiser, Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness, 3657-3678 (Kindle Edition, emphasis added, M.T.); Bellingham, WA; Lexham Press).
The Jewish people dealt in many ways with the forces of darkness, long before the time of Christ.
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ!
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