1 (א) I will thank Jehovah with my whole heart;
I will recount all Thy wonders.
2 I will be glad and exult in Thee;
I will sing Thy name, Most High,
3 (ב) Because mine enemies turn back;
They stumble and perish at Thy presence.
4 For Thou hast upheld my right and my suit;
Thou didst seat Thyself on Thy throne, judging righteously.
5 (ג) Thou hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the wicked;
Thou hast blotted out their name for ever and aye.
6 The enemy--they are ended, [they are] desolations for ever,
And [their] cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory.
7 (ה) They [are perished], but Jehovah shall sit throned for ever;
He hath prepared His throne for judgment.
8 And He--He shall judge the world in righteousness;
He shall deal judgment to the peoples in equity.
9 (ו) And Jehovah shall be a lofty stronghold for the crushed,
A lofty stronghold in times of extremity.
10 And they who know Thy name will put trust in Thee,
For Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee, Jehovah.
11 (ז) Sing with the harp to Jehovah, sitting throned in Zion;
Declare among the peoples His doings.
12 For He that makes inquisition for blood has remembered them;
He has not forgotten the cry of the humble.
13 (ח) Have mercy on me, Jehovah;
Look on my affliction from my haters,
Thou who liftest me up from the gates of death
14 To the end that I may recount all Thy praises.
In the gates of the daughter of Zion,
I will rejoice in Thy salvation.
15 (ט) The nations are sunk in the pit they made;
In the net which they spread their foot is caught.
16 Jehovah makes Himself known; judgment hath He done,
Snaring the wicked by the work of his own hands. Higgaion; Selah.
17 (י) The wicked shall return to Sheol,
All the nations who forget God
18 For not for ever shall the needy be forgotten,
Nor the expectation of the afflicted perish for aye.
19 (ק) Arise, Jehovah: let not man grow strong;
Let the nations be judged before Thy presence.
20 Appoint, Jehovah, terrors for them;
Let the nations come to know that they are men.
Psalms vii. and ix. are connected by the recurrence of the two thoughts
of God as the Judge of nations and the wicked falling into the pit which
he digged. Probably the original arrangement of the Psalter put these
two next each other, and Psalm viii. was inserted later.
Psalm ix. is imperfectly acrostic. It falls into strains of two verses
each, which are marked by sequence of thought as well as by the acrostic
arrangement. The first begins with Aleph, the second with Beth, and so
on, the second verse of each pair not being counted in the scheme. The
fourth letter is missing, and ver. 7, which should begin with it, begins
with the sixth. But a textual correction, which is desirable on other
grounds, makes the fifth letter (He) the initial of ver. 7, and then the
regular sequence is kept up till ver. 19, which should begin with the
soft K, but takes instead the guttural Q. What has become of the rest of
the alphabet? Part of it is found in Psalm x., where the first verse
begins with the L, which should follow the regular K for ver. 19. But
there is no more trace of acrostic structure in x. till ver. 12, which
resumes it with the Q which has already appeared out of place in ix.
19; and it goes on to the end of the alphabet, with only the
irregularity that the R strain (x. 14) has but one verse. Verses with
the missing letters would just about occupy the space of the
non-acrostic verses in Psalm x., and the suggestion is obvious that the
latter are part of some other psalm which has been substituted for the
original; but there are links of connection between the non-acrostic and
acrostic portions of Psalm x., which make that hypothesis difficult. The
resemblances between the two psalms as they stand are close, and the
dissimilarities not less obvious. The psalmist's enemies are different.
In the former they are foreign, in the latter domestic. Psalm ix. rings
with triumph; Psalm x. is in a minor key. The former celebrates a
judgment as accomplished which the latter almost despairingly longs to
see begun. On the whole, the two were most probably never formally one,
but are a closely connected pair.
There is nothing to discredit the Davidic authorship. The singer's
enemies are "nations," and the destruction of these foreign foes is
equivalent to "maintaining his cause." That would be language natural
in the mouth of a king, and there were foreign wars enough in David's
reign to supply appropriate occasions for such a song. The psalm falls
into two parts, vv. 1-12 and 13 to end, of which the second
substantially repeats the main thoughts of the first, but with a
significant difference. In the first part the sequence is praise and
its occasion (Aleph and Beth verses, 1-4), triumphant recounting of
accomplished judgment (Gimel verses, 5, 6), confident expectation of
future wider judgment (amended He and Vav pairs, vv. 7-10), and a
final call to praise (vii. 12). Thus set, as it were, in a circlet of
praise, are experience of past and consequent confidence of future
deliverance. The second part gives the same order, only, instead of
praise, it has prayer for its beginning and end, the two central
portions remaining the same as in part I. The Cheth pair (vv. 13, 14)
is prayer, the deliverance not being perfected, though some foes have
fallen; the past act of accomplished judgment is again celebrated in
the Teth pair (vv. 15, 16), followed, as before, by the triumphant
confidence of future complete crushing of enemies (Yod strain, vv. 17,
18); and all closes with prayer (Qoph pair, vv. 19, 20). Thus the same
thoughts are twice dwelt on; and the different use made of them is the
explanation of the repetition, which strikes a cursory reader as
needless. The diamond is turned a little in the hand, and a
differently tinted beam flashes from its facet.
In the first pair of verses, the song rushes out like some river
breaking through a dam and flashing as it hurries on its course. Each
short clause begins with Aleph; each makes the same fervid resolve.
Wholehearted praise is sincere, and all the singer's being is fused
into it. "All Thy marvellous works" include the great deliverances of
the past, with which a living sense of God's working associates those
of the present, as one in character and source. To-day is as full of
God to this man as the sacred yesterdays of national history, and his
deliverances as wonderful as those of old. But high above the joy in
God's work is the joy in Himself to which it leads, and "Thy name, O
thou Most High," is the ground of all pure delight and the theme of
all worthy praise.
The second stanza (Beth, vv. 3, 4) is best taken as giving the ground of
praise. Render in close connection with preceding "_because_ mine
enemies turn back; they stumble and perish at [or from] Thy presence."
God's face blazes out on the foe, and they turn and flee from the field,
but in their flight they stumble, and, like fugitives, once fallen can
rise no more. The underlying picture is of a battle-field and a
disastrous rout. It is God's coming into action that scatters the enemy,
as ver. 4 tells by its "for." When He took His seat on the throne (of
judgment rather than of royalty), they fled; and that act of assuming
judicial activity was the maintaining of the psalmist's cause.
The third pair of verses (Gimel, 5, 6) dwells on the grand picture of
judgment, and specifies for the first time the enemies as "the
nations" or "heathen," thus showing that the psalmist is not a private
individual, and probably implying that the whole psalm is a hymn of
victory, in which the heat of battle still glows, but which writes no
name on the trophy but that of God. The metaphor of a judgment-seat is
exchanged for a triumphant description of the destructions fallen on
the land of the enemy, in all which God alone is recognised as the
actor. "Thou hast rebuked"; and just as His creative word was
all-powerful, so His destructive word sweeps its objects into
nothingness. There is a grand and solemn sequence in that "Thou hast
rebuked; ... Thou hast destroyed." His breath has made; His breath can
unmake. In ver. 6 the rendering to be preferred is substantially that
of the R.V.: "The enemy are ended, [they are] ruins for ever, and
cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory." To take
"enemy" as a vocative breaks the continuity of the address to God, and
brings in an irrelevant reference to the former conquests of the foe
("Thou hast destroyed cities") which is much more forcible if
regarded as descriptive of God's destruction of his cities. "Their
memory" refers to the enemy, not to the cities. Utter, perpetual ruin,
so complete that the very name is forgotten, has fallen on the foe.
In the fourth pair of verses a slight emendation of the text is
approved of by most critics. The last word of ver. 6 is the pronoun
"they," which, though possible in such a position, is awkward. If it
is transferred to the beginning of ver. 7, and it is further supposed
that "are perished" has dropped out, as might easily be the case, from
the verb having just occurred in the singular, a staking antithesis is
gained: "They perish, but Jehovah shall sit," etc. Further, the pair
of verses then begins with the fifth letter; and the only irregularity
in the acrostic arrangement till ver. 19 is the omission of the fourth
letter: Daleth. A very significant change in tenses takes place at
this point. Hitherto the verbs have been perfects, implying a finished
act; that is to say, hitherto the psalm has been dealing with facts of
recent but completed experience. Now the verbs change to imperfects or
futures, and continue so till ver. 12; that is to say, "experience
doth attain to something of prophetic strain," and passes into
confidence for the future. That confidence is cast in the mould
supplied by the deliverance on which it is founded. The smaller act of
judgment, which maintained the psalmist's cause, expands into a
world-wide judgment in righteousness, for which the preparations are
already made. "He hath prepared His throne for judgment" is the only
perfect in the series. This is the true point of view from which to
regard the less comprehensive acts of judgment thinly sown through
history, when God has arisen to smite some hoary iniquity or some
godless conqueror. Such acts are premonitions of the future, and every
"day of the Lord" is a miniature of that final _dies iræ_. The
psalmist probably was rather thinking of other acts of judgment which
would free him and his people from hostile nations, but his hope was
built on the great truth that all such acts are prophecies of others
like them, and it is a legitimate extension of the same principle to
view them all in relation to the last and greatest of the series.
The fifth pair (Vav stanza, vv. 9, 10) turns to the glad contemplation
of the purpose of all the pomp and terror of the judgment thus hoped
for. The Judge is seated on high, and His elevation makes a "lofty
stronghold" for the crushed or downtrodden.
The rare word rendered "extremity" in ver. 9 occurs only here and in
x. 1. It means a cutting off, _i.e._, of hope of deliverance. The
notion of distress intensified to despair is conveyed. God's judgments
show that even in such extremity He is an inexpugnable defence, like
some hill fortress, inaccessible to any foe. A further result of
judgment is the (growing) trust of devout souls (ver. 10). To "know
Thy name" is here equivalent to learning God's character as made known
by His acts, especially by the judgments anticipated. For such
knowledge some measure of devout trust is required, but further
knowledge deepens trust. The best teacher of faith is experience; and,
on the other hand, the condition of such experience is faith. The
action of knowledge and of trust is reciprocal. That trust is
reinforced by the renewed evidence, afforded by the judgments, that
Jehovah does not desert them that seek Him. To "seek Him" is to long
for Him, to look for His help in trouble, to turn with desire and
obedience to Him in daily life; and anything is possible rather than
that He should not disclose and give Himself to such search. Trust and
seeking, fruition and desire, the repose of the soul on God and its
longing after God, are inseparable. They are but varying aspects of
the one thing. When a finite spirit cleaves to the infinite God, there
must be longing as an element in all possession and possession as an
element in all longing; and both will be fed by contemplation of the
self-revealing acts which are the syllables of His name.
Section 6, the last of the first part (Zayin, vv. 11, 12), circles
round to section 1, and calls on all trusters and seekers to be a
chorus to the solo of praise therein. The ground of the praise is the
same past act which has been already set forth as that of the
psalmist's thanksgiving, as is shown by the recurrence here of perfect
tenses (_hath remembered_; _hath not forgotten_). The designation of
God as "dwelling" in Zion is perhaps better rendered, with allusion to
the same word in ver. 7, "sitteth." His seat had been there from the
time that the Ark was brought thither. That earthly throne was the
type of His heavenly seat, and from Zion He is conceived as executing
judgment. The world-wide destination of Israel's knowledge of God
inspires the call to "show forth His doings" to "the peoples." The
"nations" are not merely the objects of destructive wrath, but are to
be summoned to share in the blessing of knowing His mighty acts. The
psalmist may not have been able to harmonise these two points of view
as to Israel's relation to the Gentile world, but both thoughts
vibrate in his song. The designation of God as "making inquisition for
blood" thinks of Him as the Goel, or Avenger. To seek means here to
demand back as one who had entrusted property to another who had
destroyed it would do, thence to demand compensation or satisfaction,
and thus finally comes to mean to avenge or punish (so Hupfeld,
Delitzsch, etc.). "The poor" or "meek" (R.V. and margin) whose cry is
heard are the devout portion of the Jewish people, who are often
spoken of in the Psalms and elsewhere as a class.
The second part of the psalm begins with ver. 13. The prayer in that
verse is the only trace of trouble in the psalm. The rest is triumph and
exultation. This, at first sight discordant, note has sorely exercised
commentators; and the violent solution that the whole Cheth stanza (vv.
13, 14) should be regarded as "the cry of the meek," quoted by the
psalmist, and therefore be put in inverted commas (though adopted by
Delitzsch and Cheyne), is artificial and cold. If the view of the
structure of the psalm given above is adopted, there is little
difficulty in the connection. The victory has been completed over
certain enemies, but there remain others; and the time for praise
unmingled with petition has not yet come for the psalmist, as it never
comes for any of us in this life. Quatre Bras is won, but Waterloo has
to be fought to-morrow. The prayer takes account of the dangers still
threatening, but it only glances at these, and then once more turns to
look with hope on the accomplished deliverance. The thought of how God
had lifted the suppliant up from the very gates of death heartens him to
pray for all further mercy needed. Death is the lord of a gloomy
prison-house, the gates of which open inwards only and permit no egress.
On its very threshold the psalmist had stood. But God had lifted him
thence, and the remembrance wings his prayer. "The gates of the
daughter of Zion" are in sharp, happy contrast with the frowning portals
of death. A city's gates are the place of cheery life, stir, gossip,
business. Anything proclaimed there flies far. There the psalmist
resolves that he will tell his story of rescue, which he believes was
granted that it might be told. God's purpose in blessing men is that
they may open their lips to proclaim the blessings and so bring others
to share in them. God's end is the spread of His name, not for any good
to Him, but because to know it is life to us.
The Teth pair (vv. 15, 16) repeats the thoughts of the Gimel stanza (5,
6), recurring to the same significant perfects and dwelling on the new
thought that the destruction of the enemy was self-caused. As in Psalm
vii., the familiar figure of the pitfall catching the hunter expresses
the truth that all evil, and especially malice, recoils on its
contriver. A companion illustration is added of the fowler's (or
hunter's) foot being caught in his own snare. Ver. 16 presents the other
view of retribution, which was the only one in vv. 5, 6, namely that it
is a Divine act. It is God who executes judgment, and who "snareth the
wicked," though it be "the work of his own hands" which weaves the
snare. Both views are needed for the complete truth. This close of the
retrospect of deliverance which is the main motive of the psalm is
appropriately marked by the musical direction "Higgaion. Selah," which
calls for a strain of instrumental music to fill the pause of the song
and to mark the rapture of triumph in accomplished deliverance.
The Yod stanza (vv. 17, 18), like the He and Vav stanzas (vv. 7-10),
passes to confidence for the future. The correspondence is very close,
but the two verses of this stanza represent the four of the earlier
ones; thus ver. 17 answers to vv. 7 and 8, while ver. 18 is the
representative of vv. 9 and 10. In ver. 17 the "return to Sheol" is
equivalent to destruction. In one view, men who cease to be may be
regarded as going back to original nothingness, as in Psalm xc. 3.
Sheol is not here a place of punishment, but is the dreary dwelling of
the dead, from the gates of which the psalmist had been brought up.
Reduction to nothingness and yet a shadowy, dim life or death-in-life
will certainly be the end of the wicked. The psalmist's experience in
his past deliverance entitles him to generalise thus. To forget God is
the sure way to be forgotten. The reason for the certain destruction
of the nations who forget God and for the psalmist's assurance of it
is (ver. 18) the confidence he has that "the needy shall not always be
forgotten." That confidence corresponds precisely to vv. 9, 10, and
also looks back to the "hath remembered" and "not forgotten" of ver.
12. They who remember God are remembered by Him; and their being
remembered--_i.e._, by deliverance--necessitates the wicked's being
forgotten, and those who are forgotten by God perish. The second
clause of ver. 18 echoes the other solemn word of doom from vv. 3-6.
There the fate of the evil-doers was set forth as "perishing"; their
very memory was to "perish." But the "expectation of the poor shall
not perish." Apparently fragile and to the eye of sense unsubstantial
as a soap-bubble, the devout man's hope is more solid than the most
solid-seeming realities, and will outlast them all.
The final stanza (vv. 19, 20) does not take Kaph as it should do, but
Qoph. Hence some critics suspect that this pair of verses has been
added by another hand, but the continuity of sense is plain, and is
against this supposition. The psalmist was not so bound to his form
but that he could vary it, as here. The prayer of this concluding
stanza circles round to the prayer in ver. 13, as has been noticed,
and so completes the whole psalm symmetrically. The personal element
in ver. 13 has passed away; and the prayer is general, just as the
solo of praise in ver. 1 broadened into the call for a chorus of
voices in ver. 12. The scope of the prayer is the very judgment which
the previous stanza has contemplated as certain. The devout man's
desires are moulded on God's promises, and his prayers echo these.
"Let not mortal man grow strong," or rather "vaunt his strength." The
word for _man_ here connotes weakness. How ridiculous for him, being
such as he is, to swell and swagger as if strong, and how certain his
boasted strength is to shrivel like a leaf in the fire, if God should
come forth, roused to action by his boasting! Ver. 20 closes the
prayer with the cry that some awe-inspiring act of Divine justice may
be flashed before the "nations," in order to force the conviction of
their own weakness home to them. "Set terror for them," the word
_terror_ meaning not the emotion, but the object which produces it,
namely an act of judgment such as the whole psalm has had in view. Its
purpose is not destruction, but conviction, the wholesome
consciousness of weakness, out of which may spring the recognition of
their own folly and of God's strength to bless. So the two parts of
the psalm end with the thought that the "nations" may yet come to know
the name of God, the one calling upon those who have experienced His
deliverance to "declare among the peoples His doings," the other
praying God to teach by chastisement what nations who forget Him have
failed to learn from mercies.