The Lord Is My Rock and My Fortress, Psalm 18:2 Wall Art

On the heights

Jesus is painted from behind, planted on a jumble of pale boulders with tufts of scrub between them. He wears a cream robe with a slate-blue mantle and a rust-red cloth thrown over his shoulders, and his right hand grips a tall wooden staff with a curved top. He is looking out, not down.

Below him the land opens into layered blue hills, a strip of water catching the light and, on a ridge to the right, a small walled town among dark cypresses. The sun sits low and white in a peach sky. The verse runs across the top: “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer.”

What Psalm 18:2 meant to David

The heading of Psalm 18 says David sang it on the day the LORD delivered him from all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. For years before he became king, David lived as a fugitive in the Judean wilderness, hiding in caves and on cliffs such as the stronghold of En-gedi. When he calls God “my rock” and “my fortress”, he is using the vocabulary of places that literally kept him alive.

The verse piles up images in a single breath. In the King James text it goes on: “my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.” Rock, fortress, shield, tower: it is the language of someone who has been cornered and found a way out.

The same song appears almost word for word in 2 Samuel 22, near the end of David's life, which suggests how central it was to the way Israel remembered him. Christians read it with Jesus in view, which is why the painter set him, and not a warrior, on the rock.

A gift for him

The earthy browns and blues and the solitary, steady figure make this a natural choice for a man's study, office or den. People give it to a father, a husband or a son facing a hard stretch, and to a young man at his baptism, when the promise of a sure footing is worth putting on the wall. The wide sunset view also gives it enough depth to hang over a desk or a fireplace without feeling crowded.