1 Jehovah, my God, in Thee I take refuge;
Save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
2 Lest like a lion he tear my soul, breaking it while there is no
deliverer.
3 Jehovah, my God, if I have done this,
If there is iniquity in my hands,
4 If I have repaid evil to him who was at peace with me--
Nay, I have delivered him that was my enemy causelessly--
5 May the enemy chase my soul and overtake it, and trample my life
to the ground!
And may he lay my honour in the dust! Selah.
6 Arise, Jehovah, in Thine anger;
Lift up Thyself against the ragings of my adversaries,
And awake for me: judgment Thou hast appointed.
7 And let a gathering of peoples stand round Thee,
And above it sit Thou on high.
8 Jehovah will judge the peoples;
Do me right, Jehovah, according to my righteousness and according
to my innocence [that is] upon me.
9 Let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and establish Thou the
righteous,
For a Trier of hearts and reins is God the righteous.
10 My shield is upon God,
The Saviour of the upright-hearted.
11 God is a righteous Judge,
And a God who is angry every day.
12 If [a man] turn not, He will sharpen His sword;
His bow He has bent, and made it ready.
13 And at him He has aimed deadly weapons;
His arrows He will kindle into flaming darts.
14 See! he is in labour with wickedness;
Yea, he is pregnant with mischief, and gives birth to a lie.
15 A pit has he sunk, and dug it out;
And he will fall into the hole he is making.
16 His mischief shall come back on his own head,
And upon his own skull shall his violence come down.
17 I will thank Jehovah according to His righteousness,
And sing with the harp to the name of Jehovah most high.
This is the only psalm with the title "Shiggaion." The word occurs
only here and in Hab. iii. 1, where it stands in the plural, and with
the preposition "upon," as if it designated instruments. The meaning
is unknown, and commentators, who do not like to say so, have much ado
to find one. The root is a verb, "to wander," and the explanation is
common that the word describes the disconnected character of the
psalm, which is full of swiftly succeeding emotions rather than of
sequent thoughts. But there is no such exceptional discontinuity as to
explain the title. It may refer to the character of the musical
accompaniment rather than to that of the words. The authorities are
all at sea, the LXX. shirking the difficulty by rendering "psalm,"
others giving "error" or "ignorance," with allusion to David's
repentance after cutting off Saul's skirt or to Saul's repentance of
his persecuting David. The later Jewish writers quoted by Neubauer
("Studia Biblic.," ii. 36, _sq._) guess at most various meanings, such
as "love and pleasure," "occupation with music," "affliction,"
"humility," while others, again, explain it as the name of a musical
instrument. Clearly the antiquity of the title is proved by this
unintelligibility. If we turn to the other part of it, we find further
evidence of age and of independence. Who was "Cush, a Benjamite"? He
is not mentioned elsewhere. The author of the title, then, had access
to some sources for David's life other than the Biblical records; and,
as Hupfeld acknowledges, we have here evidence of ancient ascription
of authorship which "has more weight than most of the others." Cush
has been supposed to be Shimei or Saul himself, and to have been so
called because of his swarthy complexion (Cush meaning an African) or
as a jest, because of his personal beauty. Cheyne, following Krochmal,
would correct into "because of [Mordecai] the son of Kish, a
Benjamite," and finds in this entirely conjectural and violent
emendation an "attestation that the psalm was very early regarded as a
work of the Persian age" ("Orig. of Psalt.," p. 229). But there is
really no reason of weight for denying the Davidic authorship, as
Ewald, Hitzig, Hupfeld, and Riehm allow; and there is much in 1 Sam.
xxiv.-xxvi. correspondent with the situation and emotions of the
psalmist here, such as, _e.g._, the protestations of innocence, the
calumnies launched at him, and the call on God to judge. The tone of
the psalm is high and courageous, in remarkable contrast to the
depression of spirit in the former psalm, up out of which the singer
had to pray himself. Here, on the contrary, he fronts the enemy,
lion-like though he be, without a quiver. It is the courage of
innocence and of trust. Psalm vi. wailed like some soft flute; Psalm
vii. peals like the trumpet of judgment, and there is triumph in the
note. The whole may be divided into three parts, of which the close of
the first is marked by the Selah at the end of ver. 5; and the second
includes vv. 6-10. Thus we have the appeal of innocence for help (vv.
1-5), the cry for more than help--namely, definite judgment (vv.
6-10)--and the vision of judgment (vv. 11-17).
The first section has two main thoughts: the cry for help and the
protestation of innocence. It is in accordance with the bold
triumphant tone of the psalm that its first words are a profession of
faith in Jehovah. It is well to look _to_ God before looking _at_
dangers and foes. He who begins with trust can go on to think of the
fiercest antagonism without dismay. Many of the psalms ascribed to
David begin thus, but it is no mere stereotyped formula. Each
represents a new act of faith, in the presence of a new danger. The
word for "put trust" here is very illuminative and graphic, meaning
properly the act of fleeing to a refuge. It is sometimes blended with
the image of a sheltering rock, sometimes with the still tenderer one
of a mother-bird, as when Ruth "came to trust under the wings of
Jehovah," and in many other places. The very essence of the act of
faith is better expressed by that metaphor than by much subtle
exposition. Its blessedness as bringing security and warm shelter and
tenderness more than maternal is wrapped up in the sweet and
instructive figure. The many enemies are, as it were, embodied in one,
on whom the psalmist concentrates his thoughts as the most formidable
and fierce. The metaphor of the lion is common in the psalms
attributed to David, and is, at all events, natural in the mouth of a
shepherd king, who had taken a lion by the beard. He is quite aware of
his peril, if God does not help him, but he is so sure of his safety,
since he trusts, that he can contemplate the enemy's power unmoved,
like a man standing within arm's length of the lion's open jaws, but
with a strong grating between. This is the blessing of true faith, not
the oblivion of dangers, but the calm fronting of them because our
refuge is in God.
Indignant repelling of slander follows the first burst of triumphant
trust (vv. 3-5). Apparently "the words of Cush" were calumnies
poisoning Saul's suspicious nature, such as David refers to in 1 Sam.
xxiv. 9: "Wherefore hearkenest thou to men's words, saying, Behold,
David seeketh thy hurt?" The emphatic and enigmatic _This_ in ver. 3
is unintelligible, unless it refers to some slander freshly coined,
the base malice of which stirs its object into flashing anger and
vehement self-vindication. The special point of the falsehood is plain
from the repudiation. He had been charged with attempting to injure
one who was at peace with him. That is exactly what "men's words"
charged on David, "saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt" (1 Samuel,
as above). "If there be iniquity in my hands" is very like "See that
there is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand, and I have not
sinned against thee"; "Thou huntest after my soul to take it" (1
Samuel) is also like our ver. 1: "them that pursue me," and ver. 5:
"let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it." The specific form of
this protestation of innocence finds no explanation in the now
favourite view of the sufferer in the psalm as being the righteous
nation. The clause which is usually treated as a parenthesis in ver.
4, and translated, as in the R.V., "I have delivered him that without
cause was mine adversary," is needlessly taken by Delitzsch and others
as a continuation of the hypothetical clauses, and rendered, with a
change in the meaning of the verb, "And if I have despoiled him,"
etc.; but it is better taken as above and referred to the incident in
the cave when David spared Saul's life. What meaning would that clause
have with the national reference? The metaphor of a wild beast in
chase of its prey colours the vehement declaration in ver. 5 of
readiness to suffer if guilty. We see the swift pursuit, the victim
overtaken and trampled to death. There may also be an echo of the
Song of Miriam (Exod. xv. 9): "The enemy said, I will pursue; I will
overtake." To "lay my glory in the dust" is equivalent to "bring down
my soul to the dust of death." Man's glory is his "soul." Thus, nobly
throbbing with conscious innocence and fronting unmerited hate, the
rush of words stops, to let the musical accompaniment blare on, for a
while, as if defiant and confident.
The second section of the psalm (vv. 6-10) is a cry for the coming of
the Divine Judge. The previous prayer was content with deliverance,
but this takes a bolder flight, and asks for the manifestation of the
punitive activity of God on the enemies, who, as usually, are
identified with "evil-doers." The grand metaphors in "Arise," "Lift up
Thyself," "Awake," mean substantially the same thing. The long periods
during which evil works and flaunts with impunity are the times when
God sits as if passive and, in a figure still more daring, as if
asleep. When His destructive power flashed into act, and some
long-tolerated iniquity was smitten at a blow, the Hebrew singers saw
therein God springing to His feet or awaking to judgment. Such long
stretches of patient permission of evil and of swift punishment are
repeated through the ages, and individual lives have them in
miniature. The great judgments of nations and the small ones of single
men embody the same principles, just as the tiniest crystal has the
same angles and lines of cleavage as the greatest of its kind. So this
psalmist has penetrated to a true discernment of the relations of the
small and the great, when he links his own vindication by the judicial
act of God with the pomp and splendour of a world-wide judgment, and
bases his prayer for the former on the Divine purpose to effect the
latter. The sequence, "The Lord ministereth judgment to the
peoples"--therefore--"judge me, O Lord," does not imply that the "me"
is the nation, but simply indicates as the ground of the individual
hope of a vindicating judgment the Divine fact, of which history had
given him ample proof and faith gave him still fuller evidence, that
God, though He sometimes seemed to sleep, did indeed judge the
nations. The prerogative of the poet, and still more, the instinct of
the inspired spirit, is to see the law of the greatest exemplified in
the small and to bring every triviality of personal life into contact
with God and His government. The somewhat harsh construction of the
last clause of ver. 6 begins the transition from the prayer for the
smaller to the assurance of the greater judgment which is its basis,
and similarly the first clause of ver. 8 closes the picture of that
wider act, and the next clause returns to the prayer. This picture,
thus embedded in the heart of the supplication, is majestic in its few
broad strokes. First comes the appointment of judgment, then the
assembling of the "peoples," which here may, perhaps, have the
narrower meaning of the "tribes," since "congregation" is the word
used for them in their national assembly, and would scarcely be
employed for the collection of Gentile nations. But whether the
concourse be all Israel or all nations, they are gathered in silent
expectance as in a great judgment-hall. Then enters the Judge. If we
retain the usual reading and rendering of ver. 7 _b_, the act of
judgment is passed over in silence, and the poet beholds God, the
judgment finished, soaring above the awe-struck multitudes, in
triumphant return to the repose of His heavenly throne. But the slight
emendation of the text, needed to yield the meaning "Sit Thou above
it," is worthy of consideration. In either case, the picture closes
with the repeated assurance of the Divine judgment of the peoples, and
(ver. 8) the prayer begins again. The emphatic assertion of innocence
must be taken in connection with the slanders already repudiated. The
matter in hand is the evils charged on the psalmist, for which he was
being chased as if by lions, the judgment craved is the chastisement
of his persecutors, and the innocence professed is simply the
innocence which they calumniated. The words have no bearing at all on
the psalmist's general relation to the Divine law, nor is there any
need to have recourse to the hypothesis that the speaker is the
"righteous nation." It is much more difficult to vindicate a member of
that remnant from the charge of overestimating the extent and quality
of even the righteous nation's obedience, if he meant to allege, as
that interpretation would make him do, that the nation was pure in
life and heart, than it is to vindicate the single psalmist vehemently
protesting his innocence of the charges for which he was hunted.
Cheyne confesses (Commentary _in loc._) that the "psalmist's view may
seem too rose-coloured," which is another way of acknowledging that
the interpretation of the protestation as the voice of the nation is
at variance with the facts of its condition.
The accents require ver. 9 _a_ to be rendered "Let wickedness make an
end of the wicked," but that introduces an irrelevant thought of the
suicidal nature of evil. It may be significant that the psalmist's
prayer is not for the destruction of the wicked, but of their
wickedness. Such annihilation of evil is the great end of God's
judgment, and its consequence will be the establishment of the
righteous. Again the prayer strengthens itself by the thought of God
as righteous and as trying the hearts and reins (the seat of feeling).
In the presence of rampant and all but triumphant evil, a man needs to
feed hopes of its overthrow that would else seem vainest dreams, by
gazing on the righteousness and searching power of God. Very
beautifully does the order of the words in ver. 9 suggest the kindred
of the good man with God by closing each division of the verse with
"righteous." A righteous man has a claim on a righteous God. Most
naturally then the prayer ends with the calm confidence of ver. 10:
"My shield is upon God." He Himself bears the defence of the psalmist.
This confidence he has won by his prayer, and in it he ceases to be a
suppliant and becomes a seer.
The last section (ver. 11 to end) is a vision of the judgment prayed
for, and may be supposed to be addressed to the enemy. If so, the
hunted man towers above them, and becomes a rebuker. The character of
God underlies the fact of judgment, as it had encouraged the prayer
for it. What he had said to himself when his hope drooped, he now, as
a prophet, peals out to men as making retribution sure: "God is a
righteous Judge, yea a God that hath indignation every day." The
absence of an object specified for the indignation makes its
inevitable flow wherever there is evil the more vividly certain. If He
is such, then of course follows the destruction of every one who
"turns not." Retribution is set forth with solemn vigour under four
figures. First, God is as an armed enemy sharpening His sword in
preparation for action, a work of time which in the Hebrew is
represented as in process, and bending His bow, which is the work of a
moment, and in the Hebrew is represented as a completed act. Another
second, and the arrow will whizz. Not only is the bow bent, but (ver.
11) the deadly arrows are aimed, and not only aimed, but continuously
fed with flame. The Hebrew puts "At him" (the wicked) emphatically at
the beginning of the verse, and uses the form of the verb which
implies completed action for the "aiming" and that which implies
incomplete for "making" the arrows burn. So the stern picture is drawn
of God as in the moment before the outburst of His punitive
energy--the sword sharpened, the bow bent, the arrows fitted, the
burning stuff being smeared on their tips. What will happen when all
this preparation blazes into action?
The next figure in ver. 14 insists on the automatic action of evil in
bringing punishment. It is the Old Testament version of "Sin when it
is finished bringeth forth death." The evil-doer is boldly represented
as "travailing with iniquity," and that metaphor is broken up into the
two parts "He hath conceived mischief" and "He hath brought forth
falsehood." The "falsehood," which is the thing actually produced, is
so called, not because it deceives others, but because it mocks its
producer with false hopes and never fulfils his purposes. This is but
the highly metaphorical way of saying that a sinner never does what he
means to do, but that the end of all his plans is disappointment. The
law of the universe condemns him to feed on ashes and to make and
trust in lies.
A third figure brings out more fully the idea implied in "falsehood,"
namely, the failure of evil to accomplish its doer's purpose. Crafty
attempts to trap others have an ugly habit of snaring their contriver.
The irony of fortune tumbles the hunter into the pitfall dug by him for
his prey. The fourth figure (ver. 16) represents the incidence of his
evil on the evil-doer as being certain as the fall of a stone thrown
straight up, which will infallibly come back in the line of its ascent.
Retribution is as sure as gravitation, especially if there is an Unseen
Hand above, which adds impetus and direction to the falling weight. All
these metaphors, dealing with the "natural" consequences of evil, are
adduced as guarantees of _God's_ judgment, whence it is clear both that
the psalmist is thinking not of some final future judgment, but of the
continuous one of daily providence, and that he made no sharp line of
demarcation between the supernatural and the natural. The qualities of
things and the play of natural events are God's working.
So the end of all is thanksgiving. A stern but not selfish nor
unworthy thankfulness follows judgment, with praise which is not
inconsistent with tears of pity, even as the act of judgment which
calls it forth is not inconsistent with Divine love. The vindication
of God's righteousness is worthily hymned by the choral thanksgivings
of all who love righteousness. By judgment Jehovah makes Himself known
as "most high," supreme over all creatures; and hence the music of
thanksgiving celebrates Him under that name. The title "Elyon" here
employed is regarded by Cheyne and others as a sign of late date, but
the use of it seems rather a matter of poetic style than of
chronology. Melchizedek, Balaam, and the king of Babylon (Isa. xiv.
14) use it; it occurs in Daniel, but, with these exceptions, is
confined to poetical passages, and cannot be made out to be a mark of
late date, except by assuming the point in question--namely, the late
date of the poetry, principally nineteen psalms, in which it occurs.