1 Jehovah, I have called on Thee; haste to me,
Give ear to my voice when I call to Thee.
2 Let my prayer appear before Thee [as] incense,
The lifting up of my hands [as] an evening sacrifice.
3 Set a watch, Jehovah, before my mouth,
Keep guard over the door of my lips.
4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing,
To practise wicked practices with men that work iniquity;
And let me not eat of their dainties.
5 Let the righteous smite me in kindness and reprove me,
[Such] oil for the head shall not my head refuse.
For so is it that my prayer shall continue in their
wickednesses. (?)
6 Their judges are thrown down by the sides of the cliff, (?)
And they hear my sayings, that they are sweet. (?)
7 As a man ploughing and cleaving the earth,
Our bones are strewn at the mouth of Sheol.
8 For toward Thee, Jehovah, Lord, are mine eyes [turned];
In Thee do I take refuge--pour not out my soul.
9 Keep me from the hands of the snare which they have laid for me,
And from the gins of the doers of iniquity.
10 May the wicked fall into their own nets,
Whilst at the same time I pass by!
Part of this psalm is hopelessly obscure, and the connection is
difficult throughout. It is a prayer of a harassed soul, tempted to
slacken its hold on God, and therefore betaking itself to Him. Nothing
more definite as to author or occasion can be said with certainty.
The allusions in vv. 6, 7, are dark to us, and the psalm must,
in many parts, remain an enigma. Probably Baethgen and Cheyne are
wise in giving up the attempt to extract any intelligible meaning
from ver. 5_c_ and ver. 6 as the words stand, and falling back on
asterisks. Delitzsch regards the psalm as being composed as suitable
to "a Davidic situation," either by David himself, or by some one who
wished to give expression in strains like David's to David's probable
mood. It would thus be a "Dramatic Idyll," referring, according to
Delitzsch, to Absalom's revolt. Ver. 2 is taken by him to allude to
the king's absence from the sanctuary, and the obscure ver. 6, to the
fate of the leaders of the revolt and the return of the mass of the
people to loyal submission. But this is a very precarious reference.
The psalm begins with the cry to God to hear, which so often
forms the introduction to psalms of complaint and supplications
for deliverance. But here a special colouring is given by the
petition that the psalmist's prayers may be equivalent to incense
and sacrifice. It does not follow that he was shut out from outward
participation in worship, but only that he had learned what that
worship meant. "Appear" might be rendered "established." The word
means to be set firm, or, reflexively, to station oneself, and hence
is taken by some as equivalent to "appear" or "come" before Thee;
while others give prominence rather to the notion of stability in the
word, and take it to mean _continue_--_i.e._, be accepted. There may
be a reference to the morning sacrifice in the "incense," so that
both morning and evening ritual would be included; but it is more
natural to think of the evening incense, accompanying the evening
"meal offering," and to suppose that the psalm is an evening prayer.
The penetrating insight into the realities of spiritual worship which
the singer has gained is more important to note than such questions
about the scope of his figures.
The prayer in vv. 3, 4, is for deliverance not from dangers,
but from temptation to sin in word or deed. The psalmist is not
suffering from the hostility of the workers of iniquity, but dreads
becoming infected with their sin. This phase of trial was not David's
in Absalom's revolt, and the prominence given to it here makes
Delitzsch's view of the psalm very doubtful. An earlier psalmist had
vowed to "put a muzzle on his mouth," but a man's own guard over
his words will fail, unless God keeps the keeper, and, as it were,
sets a sentry to watch the lips. The prayer for strength to resist
temptation to wrong acts, which follows that against wrong speech, is
curiously loaded with synonymous terms. The psalmist asks that his
heart, which is but too apt to feel the risings of inclination to
fall in with the manners around him, may be stiffened into wholesome
loathing of every evil--"To practise practices in wickedness with men
[perhaps, _great men_] who work iniquity." The clause rather drags,
and the proposed insertion of "Let me not sit" before "with men that
work iniquity" lightens the weight, and supplies a good parallel
with "Let me not eat of their dainties." It is, however, purely
conjectural, and the existing reading is intelligible, though heavy.
The psalmist wishes to keep clear of association with the corrupt
society around him, and desires to be preserved from temptations to
fall in with its luxurious sensuality, lest thereby he should slide
into imitation of its sins. He chose plain living, because he longed
for high thinking, and noble doing, and grave, reverend speech. All
this points to a period when the world fought against goodness by
proffering vulgar delights, rather than by persecution. Martyrs have
little need to pray that they may not be tempted by persecutors'
feasts. This man "scorned delights" and chose to dwell with good men.
The connection of ver. 5 with the preceding seems to be that in it
the psalmist professes his preference for the companionship of the
righteous, even if they reprove him. It is better, in his judgment,
to have the wholesome correction of the righteous than to feast with
the wicked. But while this is the bearing of the first part of the
verse, the last clause is obscure, almost to unintelligibility, and
even the earlier ones are doubtful. If the Hebrew accents are adhered
to, the rendering above must be adopted. The division of clauses and
rendering adopted by Hupfeld and many others, and in the A.V. and R.V.,
gives vividness, but requires "it shall be" to be twice supplied. The
whole sentence seems to run more smoothly, if the above translation is
accepted. "Oil for the head" is that with which the head is anointed
as for a feast; and there is probably a tacit suggestion of a better
festival, spread in the austere abodes of the righteous poor, than on
the tables loaded with the dainties of the wicked rich.
But what is the meaning and bearing of the last clause of ver. 5?
No wholly satisfactory answer has been given. It is needless here
to travel through the various more or less violent and unsuccessful
attempts to unravel the obscurities of this clause and of the
next verse. One sympathises with Hupfeld's confession that it is
an unwelcome (_sauer_) task to him to quote the whirl of varying
conjectures. The rendering adopted above, as, on the whole, the least
unlikely, is substantially Delitzsch's. It means that the psalmist
"will oppose no weapon but prayer to his enemies' wickedness, and
is therefore in the spiritual mood susceptible to well-meaning
reproof." The logic of the clause is not very clear, even with this
explanation. The psalmist's continuance in prayer against the wicked
is not very obviously a reason for his accepting kindly rebuke. But
no better explanation is proposed.
The darkness thickens in ver. 6. The words indeed are all easily
translatable; but what the whole sentence means, or what an allusion
to the destruction of some unnamed people's rulers has to do here,
or who they are who hear the psalmist's words, are questions as yet
unanswered. To cast men down "by the sides [lit., _hands_] of a
rock" is apparently an expression for the cruel punishment mentioned
as actually inflicted on ten thousand of the "children of Seir" (2
Chron. xxv. 12). Those who, with Delitzsch, take the revolt under
Absalom to be the occasion of the psalm, find in the casting down
of these judges an imaginative description of the destruction of
the leaders of the revolt, who are supposed to be hurled down the
rocks by the people whom they had misled; while the latter, having
again come to their right mind, attend to David's word, and find
it pleasant and beneficent. But this explanation requires much
supplementing of the language, and does not touch the difficulty of
bringing the verse into connection with the preceding.
Nor is the connection with what follows more clear. A various
reading substitutes "Their" for "Our" in ver. 7, and so makes the
whole verse a description of the bones of the ill-fated "judges"
lying in a litter at the base of the precipice. But apparently the
reading is merely an attempt to explain the difficulty. Clearly
enough the verse gives an extraordinarily energetic and graphic
picture of a widespread slaughter. But who are the slain, and what
event or events in the history of Israel are here imaginatively
reproduced, is quite unknown. All that is certain is the tremendous
force of the representation, the Æschylean ruggedness of the
metaphor, and the desperate condition to which it witnesses. The
point of the figure lies in the resemblance of the bones strewn at
the mouth of Sheol to broken clods turned up by a plough. _Sheol_
seems here to waver between the meanings of the unseen world of
souls and the grave. The unburied bones of slaughtered saints "lie
scattered," as unregarded as the lumps of soil behind the ploughman.
In vv. 8-10 the familiar psalm-tone recurs, and the language clears
itself. The stream has been foaming among rocks in a gorge, but
it has emerged into sunlight, and flows smoothly. Only the "For"
at the beginning of ver. 8 is difficult, if taken to refer to the
immediately preceding verses. Rather, it overleaps the obscure
middle part of the psalm, and links on to the petitions of vv. 1-4.
Patient, trustful expectance is the psalmist's temper, which gazes
not interrogatively, but with longing which is sure of satisfaction,
towards God, from amidst the temptations or sorrows of earth. The
reason for that fixed look of faith lies in the Divine names, so rich
in promise, which are here blended in an unusual combination. The
devout heart pleads its own act of faith in conjunction with God's
names, and is sure that, since He is Jehovah, Lord, it cannot be vain
to hide oneself in Him. Therefore, the singer prays for preservation
from destruction. "Pour not out my soul" recalls Isa. liii. 12, where
the same vivid metaphor is used. The prayer of the earlier verses was
for protection from temptation; here, circumstances have darkened,
and the psalmist's life is in danger. Possibly the "snares" and
"gins" of ver. 9 mean both temptations and perils.
The final petition in ver. 10 is like many in earlier psalms. It was
a fundamental article of faith for all the psalmists that a great _Lex
Talionis_ was at work, by which every sin was avenged in kind; and
if one looks deeper than the outside of life, the faith is eternally
warranted. For nothing is more certain than that, whomsoever else a man
may harm by his sin, he harms himself most. Nets woven and spread for
others may or may not ensnare them, but their meshes cling inextricably
round the feet of their author, and their tightening folds will wrap
him helpless, like a fly in a spider's web. The last clause presents
some difficulties. The word rendered above "at the same time" is
literally "together," but seems to be used here, as in Psalm iv. 8
(_at once_), with the meaning of _simultaneously_. The two things are
co-temporaneous--the enemies' ensnaring and the psalmist's escape. The
clause is abnormal in its order of words. It stands thus: "At the same
time I, while [until] I pass by." Probably the irregularity arose from
a desire to put the emphatic word "at the same time" in the prominent
place. It is doubtful whether we should translate "while" or "until."
Authorities are divided, and either meaning is allowable. But though
the rendering _until_ gives picturesqueness to the representation of
the snared foe restrained and powerless, until his hoped-for prey walks
calmly through the toils, the same idea is conveyed by "while," and
that rendering avoids the implication that the snaring lasted only as
long as the time taken for the psalmist's escape. What is uppermost
in the psalmist's mind is, in any case, not the destruction of his
enemies, but their being made powerless to prevent his "passing by"
their snares uncaptured.