1. A reel belonging to David,
which he sang to Yahweh over the words of the
Yahweh, my God, in You I have taken refuge.
Cause to save me from all my pursuers, and cause to deliver me.
2. Otherwise he will tear my soul apart like a lion rips, and there will be no deliverer.
3. Yahweh, my God, if I did this –
4. if there is unfairness in my palms;
if I repaid evil to one who is at peace with me
and delivered my adversaries unreasonably -
5. let an enemy pursue and overtake my soul
and stamp out my life into the ground
and lay my glory into the dirt. Selah.
6. Arise, Yahweh, in Your anger!
Be lifted up by [the] excesses of my adversaries,
and stir up for me [the] judgment You decreed.
7. Then the assembly of peoples will mill about You,
so return over it to the height.
8. Yahweh will adjudicate peoples.
Judge me, Yahweh, according to my righteousness.
9. Please let [the] evil of wicked men end,
then You will establish righteousness for Yourself,
and the God of righteousness will test minds and emotions.
10. My shield is upon God causing to save right-hearted ones.
11. God is one who judges righteously,
and God is one who pronounces curses during every day.
12. Since He does not turn back,
He will whet His sword;
He will bend His bow and set it [at the ready].
13. And for His [use] He caused to be set [at the ready] deadly weapons –
He worked up His arrows for those in hot pursuit.
14. Look, he is in labor with iniquity,
yes, he conceived trouble, and he will give birth to falsehood.
15. He dug out a hole and scoured it, but he fell into a pit he worked on.
16. His trouble will return in his head, and his violence will come down upon his noggin.
17. I will respond to Yahweh according to His righteousness,
and I will hymn the name of Yahweh the Most High.
Five years ago, the
There are, of course, many other entrenched evils which are deeply disturbing:
REVIEW:
· v1.
“A Shiggaion – or reel – belonging
to David, which he sang to Yahweh over the words of the
· So David prays… “Yahweh, my God , in You I have taken refuge. Cause to save me from all my pursuers, and cause to deliver me.” - How should we deal with injustice? “There is only one thing to do, and that is to take your problem to God, as David does. We can appeal to God for justice… ‘whereas a [false accusation] may deceive and convince our fellow human beings, it cannot deceive God.’” ~JMB
· v6. “Arise, Yahweh, in Your anger!” - In other words, “My enemies have gone too far in their anger against me. They have flipped out over a false rumor and done me wrong in the process. Now I need you to intervene and restore justice. I appeal this case to You, God; arouse Your justice and call Your court into session!” If David doesn’t appeal for justice, there will be no theater for the nations to see God provide salvation for those who take refuge in Him. Like David, we need to set the stage by appropriately appealing for God’s justice so that others will have opportunity to see God’s justice!
· v8. “Yahweh will adjudicate peoples. Judge me, Yahweh, according to my righteousness and according to my perfection over me.” - This “righteousness” and “integrity” is not intrinsic to David, it comes from outside of him – from the Most High God – the “Lord who is our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6) – “upon” him or “into” him.
· Then in v.10 David says, “my shield – my defense – rests upon God saving the righteous. God proves His righteousness by ending wickedness and establishing justice. In the words of commentator Gerald Wilson, “[The Psalmist] invite[s] us to understand divine righteousness as a source of confidence and comfort rather than of fear and dismay.” If we know we do not measure up to God’s righteousness, we should not run away from God (and the church) in order to avoid looking bad next to the righteousness of God, rather let us run to God and take refuge in His righteousness.
· Now we come to the second half of the Psalm. It opens in v.11 by describing God as righteous (bear with me a moment if you’re reading from the King James), and closes with the righteousness of God being the reason to praise Him and give Him thanks. The righteousness of God is a key concept in this passage.
· What does this word “righteousness” mean? Rather than review the almost-300 instances of the word, let me refer to the word study done by Harold G. Stigers in the Theological Wordbook Of the Old Testament:
o “[Tsadiq]…refers to an ethical, moral standard and of course in the OT that standard is the nature and will of God. ‘The Lord is righteous (s[add|<q) in all his ways and holy in all his works’ (Ps. 145:17)… The earliest usages of s[edeq or s[eda4qa=… occur in relation to the functions of judges. All of their deliverances or decisions are to be according to the truth and without partiality (Lev. 19:15). It is applied similarly to weights and measures (Lev. 19:36). Commercial fraud and deception are not allowed… The word describes three aspects of personal relationships: ethical, forensic, and theocratic.
o “The ethical aspect involves the conduct of men with one another… The man who is righteous tries to preserve the peace and prosperity of the community by fulfilling the commands of God in regard to others… (Mal. 3:18). Specifically, he like Job, delivers the poor and orphan, helps the blind along the way, supports the weak and is a father (provider) to the poor (Job 29:12-15)…. [This] Righteous conduct issues from a new heart (Ezek. 36:25-27… Hab. 2:4)... from imparted righteousness.
o “The forensic aspect of s[edeq applies to the equality of all, rich and poor, before the law… In terms of an individual involved in litigation, to be righteous means to be free from guilt in relation to any infraction of law (Gen. 30:33)... This… forensic meaning of justification of the ungodly is a real precursor of Rom. 3:26 [where the “righteousness” of God is demonstrated by being “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”]. The word describes the righteous standing of God's heirs to salvation, with no charge to be laid against them (Isa. 54:17), this righteousness, actually possessed by Messiah (Jer. 23:6), is bestowed by him, thus pointing toward the NT doctrine of Christ our righteousness.
o “[Thirdly] s[edeq is used attributively when applied to God himself as to his character. The Lord is the just judge (II Chr. 12:6; Ps. 11:7; Jer. 12:1; Lam. 1:18)… his standards, his judgments set out in his word are righteous (Ps. 119:144, 160, 172). Being everlasting, they are the confidence of his people and will not fail. God's hate of sin and love of righteousness (Ps. 45:7 [H 8]) express his essential righteousness. Therefore righteousness and judgment are the habitation (‘foundation’ NASB, NIV) of God's throne…
o “The salvation of God appears in this righteousness, for God delivers his people (Isa. 51:1ff.)… his saving action is properly signified by his righteous right hand (Isa. 41:10). [Indeed I might add that righteousness always has an eye toward salvation and restoration. Furthermore, the covenantal nature of God is also connected with His righteousness:] “His … covenant requires obedience… and is the way of his people (Ps. 1:1-6; Deut. 6:25), a way of righteousness. God is righteous, under the covenant, when he delivers his people from trouble (Ps. 31:1 [H 2]), their enemies (Ps. 5:8 [H 9]), the wicked (Ps. 37:6)… [But the covenant cuts both ways…] God is [also] just to deliver the national sanctuary to the sword of Israel's enemies on account of her sins… but God would bring her back according to his own righteousness (Isa. 46:13)… In this fulfillment of the covenant God is declared righteous (Isa. 54:14)...”
o I think that gives a good sense of what the Psalmist means by the word “righteous.”
· The word for “judge” at the beginning of v.10 is a participle in Hebrew, which can be interpreted as a present tense verb like the KJV did, “God judgeth,” but it’s hard to find any other version[2] of Psalm 7:11 in any other language that does not translate this participle instead as a noun (“one who judges”). I think that the parallel structure of this verse supports this latter view, and that it is best translated as in New King James: “God is a righteous judge.”
· The second half of v. 10 expresses this same concept of righteousness in terms of God’s wrath using another participle: zo’eym – translated “is angry/feels indignation/expresses wrath.”
o Throughout its 11 occurrences in the Old Testament, zw’eym is generally used as a parallel for a Hebrew word for “curse.”
o The only
use of this verb before this passage in the Psalms is in Numbers 23 when the
king of
o The prophet Zachariah, used the same Hebrew word (1:12) to point out that when Israel went into exile, it was in fulfillment of the covenantal curses which the nation had agreed to back in Deuteronomy.
o But, as Isaiah pointed out – again using the same word – God’s wrathful curses against sin will fall upon anyone in the world who is at enmity with Him: “the hand of Jehovah will be known by His servants, but He will denounce His enemies” (Isa. 66:14, NAW).
· The reason that God is angry and pronounces these curses in judgment EVERY DAY has been explained by Jewish commentators as being due to the fact that humans sin against Him every day, which is true.
o Charles Spurgeon framed it picturesquely, “God’s sword has been sharpening upon the revolving stone of our daily wickedness,”
o but the bigger picture is that God’s justice is consistent. He will always love good and hate evil, so there will never be a day when He has a lapse of judgment and overlooks evil. God is consistently righteous; He always has been and always will be, every day!
12. Since He does not turn back, He will whet His sword; He will bend His bow and set it at the ready.
The KJV and NIV render a more accurate translation into English, “If he does not turn/relent, he will whet/sharpen...”
The NIV, although not a literal translation of the words, is technically correct that this is talking about stringing a bow. The verb here for “readying/stringing” the bow is derek, literally “to step over” it, which is how we string longbows, using leverage between your thigh and the ground to bend the top of the bow down enough to get the string on, and then it’s ready to put an arrow to the string. But this is no ordinary arrow He puts to the string! …
The Hebrew verb describing what He did with these “deadly weapons” (or “instruments of death[6]”) is the same root as what He did in readying his bow, although most English versions use different verbs[7]. I’m just pointing out that there is strong parallelism here.
The Hebrew word ledolkim, translated “flaming” or “fiery shafts” or “persecutors,” depending on which English version you’re reading[8], only occurs 8 other times in the Bible, and its meaning is hard to pin down.
This verse introduces two more aspects of the justice of God,
· First: death is God’s just punishment for sin;
o it was what God told Adam and Eve back in Genesis 2 would be the result of disobeying His law, and it has been the standard of moral justice for the rest of history.
o Jews had to kill an animal when they sought forgiveness of their sin because, as the apostle Paul put it in his letter to the Romans, “The wages of sin is death.”
o Only your death or the death of an innocent person willing to die on your behalf can satisfy the justice of God.
· The second concept that I see this verse introducing is the fact that God does not depend on other people to determine or carry out justice. He does it for Himself.
o God has His own reasons for setting up various punishments on this earth; It satisfies His own sense of justice,
o and when justice is served, it may come through human agents, but ultimately it is He who caused that justice to roll down,
o therefore our eyes should remain upon God to bring about justice, and our hearts and lips should praise God when we do see justice happen.
·
At the beginning of verse 14, the word “Behold/Look” (which,
unfortunately is missing in the NIV), tips us off that David is switching from
God’s justice against evil, which is being mobilized unseen to the human
eye, back to world which can be seen. Perhaps David is peering through a
crack in the rocks in the
· David compares the evil plot to assassinate him to the birth of a baby, using three parallel statements. James does the same thing in his epistle, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1:14-15, NASB)
· The synonyms for childbirth and pregnancy here in this Psalm do not seem to be clearly distinguishing different parts of the birth process; I think they’re just poetically used as parallel statements meaning pretty much the same thing:
o He conceives/is pregnant/travails with/brings forth evil/wickedness/iniquity.
o He conceived/is pregnant with mischief/trouble, and
o He brings forth/gives birth to falsehood/lies/disillusionment.
· This is actually a quote from the book of Job 15:34, “For the company of the godless is barren… They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity, And their mind prepares deception (mirmah).”[13] (NASB)
· As David faces this injustice and this threat upon his life, he has reminded himself in vs. 11-13 of the certainty that God will carry out justice, and now David quotes scripture to remind himself of the certainty of the bad end that people who pursue injustice will come to.
· “[W]hen it comes to the birth… It is falsehood; it is a cheat upon himself; it is a lie in his right hand. He cannot compass what he intended, nor, if he gain his point, will he gain the satisfaction he promised himself. He brings forth wind (Isa. 26:18), stubble (Isa. 33:11), death (James 1:15)… They prepare destruction for themselves… loading themselves with guilt and submitting themselves to their corruptions.” ~Matthew Henry
· The Hebrew word for what the wicked conceived is ‘amal, the word for laborious work or drudgery that causes grief and trouble. Saul thought he was coming up with a great idea to assassinate David, so he went to all this trouble to pull off a desert war campaign, and what would the result be? More work and difficulty for himself, as Saul is put to shame and David survives! Eventually, the Philistines which Saul tried to get to kill David instead became such a threat to Saul that he killed himself by falling upon his own sword. What David believed and wrote here before all that happened with Saul proved true!
· The word for “falsehood” in Psalm 7:14 is the same word used in the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear (sheqer) false witness against thy neighbor.” We already saw in Psalm 5:6 some synonyms: “You will destroy speakers of falsehood (cezev); a man of bloodshed and deceit (mirmah) Yahweh will abhor.” (NAW) God will punish sinners, troublemakers, and liars; you can count on it.
He made/dug a pit/hole
And dug/hollowed/scooped/scoured[14] it out
And then fell into the ditch/hole/pit he made[15].
His trouble/mischief will return/recoil on[16] his head
and his violence (the word here for violence is Hamas – you may have heard of a Middle Eastern terrorist group by that name) his violence will come down on his own pate/crown/skull/head[17].
· From the earliest days of Israel, people “dug out” wells to get water to drink, and they “dug” graves to bury their dead,
·
but they also used pits and caves to imprison
people – for instance, the 11 sons of
· In the Psalms, David often spoke of being trapped in a pit. Perhaps this whole scenario refers to him having to hide out in caves in the Judean wilderness to escape from Saul, and then finding Saul asleep in some of those very caves, I don’t know. (Cf. Ps. 57:6, 94:13, 119:85, Prov. 26:27)
· But the point is, justice will be served. Those who try to hurt other people will experience a downfall. In the picture presented here, it’s like after he falls into the pit, all that dirt that he toiled to dig out of the pit comes piling down on top of his head, and he is buried in trouble!
· “The Lord caused dogs to lick the blood of Ahab in the midst of the vineyard of Naboth. Sooner or later the evil deeds of persecutors have always leaped back into their arms. So will it be in the last great day, when Satan's fiery darts shall all be quivered in his own heart, and all his followers shall reap the harvest which they themselves have sown.” ~CHS
· Now, does this mean that God is the only agent of justice and that we just have to sit back and wait for Jesus to return before we see any justice? By no means! C.S. Lewis, in his book, Reflections on the Psalms, made the good point that even though Christians may naturally gravitate toward applying this Psalm spiritually in terms of God’s ultimate heavenly justice, it is still “right and proper to yearn for and work toward justice on earth, relieving the oppressed from injustices and vindicating those who are unjustly accused.”
· If God has entrusted you with leadership, you are responsible to punish evil and promote righteousness in your sphere of authority, be it your home as a parent, or your office at work, or in the public square if you are a civil magistrate. In this way we display to the world in a tangible way the righteous character of our God.
· The punishment for all who disregard God is indeed “death” in the “pit” of hell, so this is no laughing matter, and no mere figure of speech. (Ps. 28:1, 30:3, 40:2, 88:4, Prov. 1:12, Isa. 14:15, 48:18, Zech. 9:11, Rev. 9:1) In Revelation 21:8, God’s word says, “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
o The only way out of being cast into that pit is to throw yourself upon God’s own offer of salvation, and that is the substitutionary death of Jesus to pay for our sin.
o Two verses previous in Revelation 21, Jesus says, “I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. [So, this salvation to life is a free gift from God.] He who overcomes [and “Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” ~1 John 5:5] will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” (Rev. 21:6-7, NASB)
o If you have not told God that you are thirsty for His free gift of life and that you will trust in Jesus and that you want to be His child and Him to be your God, there is no better time than now!
· The Psalm ends with one more abrupt change – switching from third person to first person. We started out with God as the subject in vs. 11-13, then the wicked man was the subject in vs. 14-16, and now the Psalmist himself is the subject.
17. I will respond to Yahweh according to His righteousness, and I will hymn the name of Yahweh[18] the Most High.
· What should we do in light of God’s righteousness?
o In light of the fact that God is sovereignly working out a just resolution to every evil,
o in light of the fact that every bad guy is going to really get it in the end,
o and also the fact that God has given His righteous status as a gift to all who will trust in Jesus to save them from being punished for the bad things we have done?
· David points the way here with responding[19] to God rather than ignoring Him: the first Hebrew word in v.17 can be appropriately translated “praise” or “give thanks” – these are appropriate responses to the righteousness of God.
· And his response is done with music. The Hebrew word to describe this is zamar, which is translated “sing praise,” but which also includes playing musical instruments.
o The root meaning of the word is “to pluck,” as in plucking on the strings of a harp.
o Throughout the Psalms, this word zamar is used as a synonym for yadah (“praise/thank”) and shiyr (“sing”), so it probably includes singing, but half a dozen times in the Psalms, this musical praise is said to be done with stringed instruments like harps and lyres (Psalm 33:2, 71:22, 98:5, 144:9, 147:7, 149:3),
o so keep practicing your instruments, all you musicians; this is one of the best ways we can respond appropriately to God’s righteousness!
o If you don’t play an instrument, you can still sing, and God loves that. In fact, in later Psalms and in the Epistles of the New Testament, God commands us to sing, so remaining silent is not even an option!
· Let us who value God’s righteousness in judgment and His righteousness in Christ which saves us sing praise to Him!
It’s exciting when you do see God bring justice to bear. My
opening story about Planned Parenthood receiving Title X funding is not the
whole story. In God’s providence, Governor Sebellius
was taken out of
[1] http://nationalblackroberegiment.com/condemned-hang-pregnant-sudanese-doctor-refuses-recant-faith-christ/
[2] RV, ESV, NAV, NASB, NIV, NLT, CEB, CJB, NET, Holman, Wycliffe, Young, Douay-Rheims, French (Louis II), Spanish (BLA), Vulgate, and LXX all translate “judge” as a noun. This is true of all the scholarly translations, although I did run across a couple of simple English versions (CEV and Bible in Basic English) which went with the KJV reading. Where the Vulgate and Septuagint got the extra words “and strong and patient” is a mystery to me – Kittel does not even comment on this in his textual apparatus in the BHS! It also appears that the translators of the Septuagint (and Syriac) read the Hebrew word “El” (God) backwards, which turned it into the Hebrew word for “not,” thus giving the opposite meaning “not inflicting vengeance every day” (Brenton).
[3] Delitzsch and Spurgeon favor that position, though.
[4] I opted for “whet” because the Hebrew word is a specialized one like this English word is, and its meaning has more to do with the impact on the metal than with the narrowing of the metal’s edge.
[5] In Hebrew, this verse starts with the phrase “and for
him.” This could be parallel to the phrase later on in the verse “for the ones
that flame” – in other words, the first half of this verse could be saying that
the arrows are aimed at the bad guys (CHS,
[6] This phrase “instruments of death” does not appear to have a technical meaning distinct from the meanings of the words that make up the phrase. It appears nowhere else in the O.T., although there is one place where a similarly-spelled phrase designates Jonathan’s armor-bearer who followed in Jonathan’s wake, carrying these lethal weapons as they charged into the Philistine garrison.
[7] Delitzsch suggested that the first “cun” is the stringing of the bow and the second “cun” is the aiming of the arrow, which seems likely to me.
[8] Augustine and Delitzsch opted for “burning” whereas Henry and JFB went for “persecutors.” In the Soncino commentaries, Rabbi Aaron Cohen took issue (I think rightly so) with the American Jewish Version which rendered the word “sharp;” he instead advocated for the meaning, “for them that pursue me.”
[9] The Hebrew word behind this (p’l) has to do with “work,” not with “commanding,” so the newer English versions improve on the translation of the verb by rendering “make.”
[10] The concept of “shaft” is not present in the Hebrew here unless you repeat the word for “arrow” by ellipsis, but even if it is supplied by ellipsis, it is misleading to insert a different English word than “arrow.”
[11] “a bow that is already strung against the sinner with the arrow pointed towards him” ~Delitzsch
[12] I am ruling out Augustine’s interpretation which, I think, reads too much into the text figuratively, namely that the bow is “the Holy Scripture, in which by the strength of the New Testament, as by a sort of string, the hardness of the Old has been bent and subdued. From thence the Apostles are sent forth like arrows, or divine preachings are shot. Which arrows ‘He has wrought for the burning,’ arrows, that is, whereby being stricken they might be inflamed with heavenly love,” and what of the “deadly instruments”? He suggested that they are “heretics,” shot from the same “bow.”
[13] Isaiah also picked up on this quote in 26:18; 33:11; and 59:4,13.
[14] This is quoted in Ecclesiastes 10:8. This Hebrew word (kheper) means both “excavate” (as in digging a well Genesis 21:30; 26:15-32) and “spy out” (penetrate throughout - Deuteronomy 1:22; Joshua 2:2-3). I think the English word “scour” carries both meanings the best. The difference in meaning with the earlier verb (carah) should not be emphasized, however, since they are synonymous parallel words, just as the words for pit. (Bor and shekhet both are used to mean a trap, a prison-hole, a grave-pit, or death/hell; about the only difference is that shekhet is never used to indicate a water-well.)
[15] Gesenius and Delitzsch interpreted this Imperfect as a Present tense (“of his making”/“as he is making it”) rather than construing it as dependent on the Perfect carah at the beginning of the verse, the latter of which sets both verbs in Past tense as I and most other English translators have done.
[16]
Technically “in” (ב).
[17] This Hebrew word qadqad is used as the opposite of the soles of the feet several times in scripture, so it means the top of the head (Deuteronomy 28:35; 2 Samuel 14:25; Job 2:7), but it is also frequently used as a synonym to roash (the word for “head” earlier in the verse), so its difference from “head” is not to be emphasized (Genesis 49:26; Deut. 33:16; Psalms 68:21).
[18] The BHS notes that there are some Hebrew manuscripts with substitute the word “according to” (כ) with the word “with” (ב) and which substitute Yahweh (the LORD) with Elohim (God), the latter of which is supported by the Targums, however, neither really changes the meaning of the passage as we are still witnesses of and participants in the righteousness of God and the same God goes by a variety of names, including Elyon (Most High).
[19] See my commentary on Psalm 6:5 regarding yadah. JMB also noted that this expresses deep trust in the LORD, perhaps even before David had even seen God bring about the justice he anticipated.