Psalm 9
“Celebrate God’s Justice”
Translation By
NAW
1. For the concert-master, Alamoth
for the son, a Psalm belonging to David.
I will respond to Yahweh with all my heart;
I will recount all of Your wonders.
2. I will be happy and exuberant in You.
I will play music about Your preeminent Name -
3. While my enemies turn
back.
They will stumble and
perish before Your face,
4. For You effected my justice and my adjudication;
You sat on the bench, judging righteously.
5. You repulsed nations;
You destroyed the wicked
– You obliterated their name forever and ever!
6. As for the enemy,
[his] swords were finished off indefinitely;
You even uprooted [his]
cities.
The memory of them
perished noisily,
7. But as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He
has prepared His bench for the judgment.
8. And He Himself will judge the world with
righteousness;
He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are
right.
9. And Yahweh will be a stronghold for the one who is
beaten down, a stronghold for times that include trouble.
10. Then those who know Your name will trust in You,
for You did not forsake those who were seeking You,
Yahweh!
11. Y’all, play music for Yahweh (the One who inhabits Zion).
Declare among the peoples His exploits,
12. For the One who is out for blood has remembered
them;
He did not forget a [single] cry of lowly ones.
13. “Yahweh, see my
misery [caused by] those who hate me.
Be gracious to me by raising
me from the gates of death,
14. In order that
I may recount all Your praises within the gates of the
daughter of Zion,
[and] rejoice in Your
salvation.”
15. Nations have sunk into a pit they made;
their foot has been caught in a net which they hid!
16. Yahweh is known; He did justice, snaring a wicked man by work of his
hands.
Meditative Selah.
17. Wicked men will turn in the direction of the grave – all nations
which forget God,
18. For it will not be that the needy is forgotten indefinitely
[or that] the hope of lowly ones will perish for ever.
19. Arise, Yahweh, don’t let mortal man be strongest;
let the nations be judged before Your face.
20. Pin rebellion on them, Yahweh;
let the nations know that they are mortal men.
Selah.
Exposition
1.
For the concert-master, Alamoth for the son, a Psalm belonging to David.
- This Psalm is the first in the Psalter to use the
Hebrew alphabet as an acrostic, governing the first letter of every other
verse in the Psalm.
- The acrostic actually continues into Psalm 10, so
that Psalm 9-10 together form an acrostic of most of the Hebrew alphabet,
so it’s possible that these two were originally one Psalm.
- There are two other reasons which may also
indicate that Psalm 9 and 10 were originally one Psalm, and they are 1)
that Psalm 10 has no superscription, and 2) the Septuagint, which is a
Greek translation of the Old Testament dating back to about 200 BC, as
well as the Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible dating back to about
400 AD, both count Psalms 9-10 together as one Psalm.
- Our modern English Bibles split them into two
Psalms, following the Masoretic Hebrew text, which dates to about 1,000 AD.
- Another curiosity of Psalm 9 is the meaning of
this Hebrew phrase in the superscription, “’Almut-labben” or “to the tune
of Death of the son.”
- It can also be translated “maidens for the son”
(which is the reading of Aquilla’s Greek translation and Origen’s Quinta
dating to around 150AD),
- or the word for “maiden” can be translated more literally,
as the Septuagint and Vulgate did, “the secrets of the Son,” or less
literally, “for the sopranos,” as Origen and Theodition did in the late
second century.
- Jewish scholarship, however, seems to agree upon
breaking ‘almoot into two
words, ‘al meaning
“on/to/for” and moot
meaning “death,” and
they tended to interpret the word labben
as a neighboring ruler who was oppressive to the Jews of David’s time.
Some (Rashi, Targums) believed that labben
referred to Goliath, the Philistine giant, which, if we could be sure of
it, would give us a definite context for this Psalm.
- This Psalm certainly seems to be written on the
heels of a military victory. Franz Delitzsch, the pre-eminent Hebrew Bible
scholar from Germany suggested it was David’s victory against the
Syrio-Ammonites, but I don’t think we can be certain.
- Psalm 9 opens with five “I will’s” which
introduce what he is going to do in the rest of the Psalm:
I will respond to Yahweh
[praise/thank the LORD] with all my heart;
I will recount [shew forth/tell] all
of Your wonders/marvelous deeds.
2. I will be glad/happy
and I will be exuberant/exult/rejoice
in You.
I will sing praise/play music about
Your preeminent Name –
·
The word translated “sing praise” in
most English Bibles is the word for “Psalm” in Hebrew (zamar), which has to do with plucking
strings. It’s possible to praise God with instrumental music.
·
Note that this is not half-hearted
praise; this is “all” his heart, and he isn’t going to stop with just some of
God’s “wonders;” he’s going to recount them ALL. Later on in v.14, we see he’s
going to sing of ALL God’s praises. This would have taken some time and dedication
to compile an unabridged account of God’s praises and marvelous deeds!
·
What sorts of deeds are called “wonderful/marvelous”
in the Bible?
- In reference to human activity, the word pala has to do with things that are
difficult or even impossible to do. In reference to God, the word is used
to describe:
- His creation of the world (Job 37:14?),
- Giving Sarah a child in her old age (Gen.
18:14),
- The 10 plagues upon Egypt (Ex. 3:20, Ps. 106:7),
and
- The crossing of the Jordan River at flood season
and possession of the Promised Land (Josh. 3:5, Psalm 78).
- Do God’s acts of creation and providence and
covenant-keeping and deliverance make you happy enough to jump up and down
and sing out loud (‘eltzah – v.2)
and dance a jig (gilah – v.14),
like it made David do? Why not?
- As David mentions later in this Psalm, the more
we come to know God, the more we will find this kind of joy in Him and
the less excited we will be about other things like food and clothing and
entertainment.
- “Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in His
wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the
light of His glory and grace.”
·
JMB – It is… often true that Christian
complain of how God has been treating them, carry on excessively about their
personal needs or desires, or gossip.” Instead try every day to acknowledge
“God’s goodness in some area to another person.”
- B.P. Power, Quoted by CHS: “if only we could
determine to praise the Lord, we should surmount many a difficulty which
our low spirits never would have been equal to, and we should do double
the work which can be done… As the evil spirit in Saul yielded in the
olden time to the influence of the harp of the son of Jesse, so would the
spirit of melancholy often take flight from us, if only we would take up
the song of praise.”
·
CHS – “It
sometimes needs all our determination to face the foe and bless the Lord in the
teeth of his enemies; vowing that whoever else may be silent we will bless his name… Gratitude for one
mercy refreshes the memory as to thousands of others. One silver link in the
chain draws up a long series of tender remembrances. Here is eternal work for
us, for there can be no end to the showing forth of all his deeds of love.”
- Now, in v.3, David gets past his introduction of
telling us what he’s going to do and actually starts gleefully recounting
God’s wonders:
3. While
my enemies turn back. They will stumble and perish before Your face,
- That would be a fair description of what happened
to Goliath when David hit him with the stone from his slingshot! He went
faint, stumbled and perished.
- Now, most of us don’t have human enemies that we
have to fight and kill on the battlefield like David did, but we do have
an enemy of our souls who has been “turned back” by our champion, and that
is the Devil, when Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mt. 16:33)
- JMB: “There is
one area in which we can echo David’s words wholeheartedly… and that is in
the Lord Jesus Christ’s victory over Satan. Satan is our great spiritual
enemy, a ruthless enemy. But Jesus has defeated him. Satan is active, yet
he is a defeated foe; we can praise God for that.”
- The spiritual enemies of sin and demons are
staggering and perishing before Jesus - and before us who are in Him. Do
you have any stories of beating a sin out of your life or of banishing an
evil spirit? It’s an awesome experience worth praising God over! These
things don’t happen in our strength, but because God’s power is engaged in
the battle.
4. For You effected my justice and my
adjudication; You sat on the bench, judging righteously.
- GHW: “The legal term employed in the case of ‘my
right’ is the familiar Hebrew word mishpat
(‘judgment, justice’), which describes the judge’s determination of what should have occurred in a case before
investigating how each party’s actions measure up to that expectation.
‘Cause’ is the Hebrew din
(‘verdict, sentence’), which refers to the judge’s pronouncement of
findings concerning all parties… [So here,] Yahweh’s judgment has already
been decided in the psalmist’s favor.”
5. You [rebuked]
repulsed nations; You destroyed the wicked [made them perish] – You [put
out/blotted out] obliterated their name forever and ever!
- In Genesis 7:23, we see that God sent a flood to “blot
out” mankind because they were wicked – all but Noah and his family
- In Exodus 17:14, God promised to “blot out” the
“memory” of the Amalekites because of their harassment of the Israelites
in the desert, and He was as good as His word (Deut. 25:19). They were
wiped out by Joshua while Aaron and Hur held Moses’ hands up in prayer on
the mountain the day the sun stood still.
- And God promises to “obliterate” the
“remembrance” of everyone who sins against Him (Ex. 32:33, Deut. 29:30,
Ps. 34:16, Prov. 10:7), although He also offers to “obliterate” the sinful
record of those who repent and receive His salvation (Neh. 4:5, Ps.
51:1&9, Isa 43:25) so that He doesn’t have to “obliterate” them for
their sins.
- The first five verses of this Psalm use lots of
words which David has used before in the first seven psalms, for instance:
- 1:6 “the way of the wicked will perish”
- 6:10 “my enemies will be shamed and dismayed,
they will turn back; they will suddenly be ashamed.”
- 7:8 “The Lord judges the peoples; vindicate me,
O Lord according to my righteousness… 17 I will give thanks to the Lord according
to His righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most
High.”
- Now from verse six on, the ideas and words are
newer and not so much a review of the previous Psalms.
- This does create some translations challenges,
however, for instance in v.6, the ancient Latin (Aug.), Greek (LXX), and
Syriac translations of this Psalm read, “The swords of the enemy
have been finished off,” rather than what most English Bibles read,
“Destructions/perpetual ruins have come to an end/are finished forever.”
- The Hebrew word charavot
can be translated either “ruins” or “swords,”
- however, this plural noun has to be the subject
of the sentence to match the plural verb “they have been finished
off/completed/ended,” (the word for “enemy” is singular here, and does
not match the plural verb).
- And it makes more sense to me for “swords” to be
“finished off” than for “ruins/desolations” to be “finished off.” It paints
a picture of the enemy being stripped of his weapons so he can’t hurt
anybody anymore (cf. 2 Sam. 2:26, Job 4:20).
6. As
for the enemy, [his] swords were finished off indefinitely; You even uprooted
[his] cities. The memory of them perished noisily,
- This reminds me of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nobody has been able to conclusively identify where those cities are.
There are lots of theories as to their whereabouts, but those cities were
so thoroughly obliterated, that their memory only exists in the Bible
story of their destruction.
- English translations render the last word in the
Hebrew verse “with them,” or “very” or “even,” but the Septuagint,
Augustine, and even the editor of my Hebrew Bible
say hammah means “with a
rumbling noise,” and that matches a number of other Bible passages that
speak of judgments of God accompanied by rumbling noises (Ps. 39:6, 46:6,
83:2, Isa. 22:2), but I don’t think it’s worth making a big deal over.
- Now, in verses 7-8, David switches from Past
tense to Future tense:
7. But
as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He has prepared His bench for the
judgment.
8. And He Himself will judge the
world with righteousness; He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are
right/with equal rights/equity/uprightness.
- See the contrast between the transient enemy,
here today and gone tomorrow, and the LORD, who “endures/reigns/abides” –
literally “sits” forever, not like we think of “sitting” as in doing
nothing, but rather “sitting” as in holding the office of a judge forever.
- In the past, the LORD has done things like destroying
the wicked in the flood of Noah’s day and raining fire and brimstone on
Sodom and Gomorrah and routing the Amalekites and toppling the giant
Goliath with a slingstone, but there is coming a Judgment Day in which all
human activity will be judged, and that is when Jesus (the “righteous judge”
mentioned in 2 Tim. 4:8) will come to “judge the world” (Acts 17:31) and
“reign forever” (Luke 1:33, Rev. 11:15). Preparations are being made for
that future time even now!
- Does that have anything to do with us in the here
and now? Yes! Being concerned for justice is a healthy part of being a
Christian aligned with the character of God.
- Micah 6:8 “What does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
- GHW: “Rather than use power to ensure
self-benefit and comfort, [we] are to support the cause of the poor and
needy… [Some of] the more obvious ways… are… legislative action to work
for civil rights and … education… and services, concern with rising
crime, access to health… care, the care and feeding of the homeless… What
creative activities can bring people together in ways that allow the
building of relationships, two-way sharing of resources, and a real
witness to the power of Christ to obliterate barriers of race, class,
wealth? … Taking our stance alongside the suffering, oppressed, and
marginalized in our society is certainly one way to stand with Jesus over
against the oppressive powers of our day…”
9. And Yahweh will be a stronghold
[refuge] for the one who is beaten down [oppressed], a stronghold for times
that include trouble.
- CSH: “There
were cities of refuge under the law. God is our refuge-city under the gospel.
As the ships when vexed with tempest make for harbour, so do the oppressed
hasten to the wings of a just and gracious God. He is a high tower so
impregnable, that the hosts of hell cannot carry it by storm, and from its
lofty heights faith looks down with scorn upon her enemies.”
- This word for “stronghold/refuge” is a unique
word used almost exclusively by David. I think it refers to a particular
kind of hideout in a cave carved out of a cliff which he may have lived in
during his years of hiding in the Judean wilderness. It became a picture
to him of the refuge God can give from trouble, kind of like the cleft in
the rock that God hid Moses in and covered over with His hand when He
passed by in order that Moses would be protected and not die from the
radiance of God’s glory (Ex. 33:22).
- What does it mean by “times of trouble?”
- The word for “trouble” here was used by Jacob
when he discovered that his brother Esau (whom he had cheated years
before), was coming at him with an army (Gen. 35:3). Jacob said, “Uh oh,
I’m in trouble! Help me, Lord!” And God gave him peace with his brother.
- This word for “trouble” also shows up in Judges
10:14 describing the oppression of the Israelites by the Philistines,
- and again in 2 Sam 4:9 to describe the stress
that David experienced under King Saul’s constant threats on his life.
During that time of trouble, David found peace and safety in God, and he
promises that we too will find that kind of peace and safety if we will
take refuge in God.
- And all who find sanctuary in God come to “know”
His name and trust Him.
10. Then those who know Your name
will trust in You, for You did not forsake those who were seeking You, Yahweh!
- Heb. 13:5 “Never will I leave you; never will I
forsake you.”
- Matt. 28:20 “Surely I am with you always, to the
end of the age.”
- David knew the name of God as “Yahweh,” but we
know the name “Jesus.” In Hebrew, the name Jesus (yeshua) means, “He saves!”
- When we experience salvation from our enemies,
both fleshly and spiritual, we come to know Jesus as Savior at a deeper
level, and we will put greater levels of trust in Him.
- On the other hand, as we will see in v.20, the
rest of mankind who do not take refuge in Jesus for their salvation will
eventually come to know that, although they thought that human strength
was enough to compete with God, they actually did need a divine savior.
- How should we respond to such a great God who
punishes the wicked and is a stronghold for those who seek after Him and
who loves them with everlasting love? Through worship and world missions!
11. Y’all, play music for [sing
praises/Psalms to] Yahweh (the One who inhabits Zion). Declare among the
peoples His exploits,
- JMB: “Sing”
and “declare” - “[I]n each part, the Psalmist combines singing with preaching.
And it is interesting to remember that great periods of church history
have always been marked by both.”
- Reformation preaching was accompanied by Bach’s
and Luther’s chorales.
- The first great awakening was accompanied by
Wesley’s hymns.
- Moody’s preaching was accompanied by Sankey’s
songwriting.
- We need good hymnwriters still!
- The ESV is correct in showing that the word “sits
enthroned” is the same Hebrew word as the one in v.7, but the context is
different here; it’s now “Zion” – the people of God, the church. The idea
is not so much that God is filling the office of a king or a judge but
more that He is living with this humble flock that He has saved. That’s
something to sing about!
- What are God’s “deeds” which should be
“declared?”
- The Hebrew word for
“deeds/doings/what He has done” is not the regular word in Hebrew for
“deeds;” these ‘alilot are
the notorious deeds, the kind that make the news.
- The word is used to describe a lot of the same
wonders/marvels that I mentioned in v.2: the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the giving of the 10 Commandments, and entering into the Promised land (Psalm 66:5,
77:12, 78:11, 103:7, 105:1).
- Of course David’s knowledge of God’s great deeds
of salvation was limited to the first seven (or so) books of the Bible,
which was all that had been written by his time.
- We have the whole rest of the Bible to inform us
of God’s exploits to be declared, especially the coming of Jesus to teach
us God’s ways and then to die on a cross as a sacrifice to pay for our
sins and then rise from the dead and ascend into heaven and send the Holy
Spirit to be with us in a special way. What a marvelous message we have
to share!
- Note that God’s exploits are to be declared among
the peoples.
- The word “peoples” is not a mistake. It is the
plural of “people,” just as “people” is the plural of “person.” “Peoples”
means multiple ethnic groups.
- Verse 8 says that the peoples will be judged – as
all mankind will be judged – by Jesus, so the only hope they have of
hearing the good news of how to find refuge from God’s wrath is if we
declare God’s exploits to them. “How will they hear unless someone
preaches?”
- But the world is like a waffle. If you pour a tablespoon
of syrup on one side of the waffle, it will only fill up a few squares.
It won’t spread all the way across the waffle because there are all these
little divisions. Likewise, ever since the Tower of Babel there have been
all these divisions of language and culture which separate people groups
so that if the gospel spreads among one people group, it doesn’t
naturally spread beyond that people group unless somebody jumps over that
language barrier and learns how to share the gospel in the language of
the next people group.
- So, it turns out that declaring God’s deeds
among the peoples takes cross-cultural work, because the world is like a
waffle, but it is what God wants us to do. It’s what Jesus said in the
Great Commission, “Make disciples within every ethnic group.”
- Now, no one person is able to fulfill that task,
because there’s thousands and thousands of different ethnic groups and
languages in the world, but Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center
for World Mission, once calculated that if all the Christian churches
could get together in groups of 50 churches, and each of those groups of
50 churches could come up with a missionary team to reach just one unreached
people group, then every people group in the world could be reached with
the gospel. Now that’s do-able!
12. For the One who is out for blood/inquires/requires/avenges
blood has remembered them; He did not forget/ignore a [single] cry of lowly
ones/humble/afflicted.
- Who is the one who is out for blood? God is. When
Cain killed Abel, the shed blood cried out from the ground for God to
avenge the wrong done. Remember, “The wages of sin is death.”
- Who does He remember? The peoples (v.8 & 11).
The oppressed (v.9). The lowly/humble/afflicted (v.12b). The ones who know
and trust and seek Him (v.10).
- God heard the Israelite slaves in Moses’ day as
they cried out under the oppression of their taskmasters in Egypt, and God delivered them (Ex. 3:7ff).
- God heard the “cry” of the Israelites who were
oppressed by the Philistines in David’s day, (1 Sam. 9:16) and God
delivered them.
- And God hears the cries of the martyrs even now
who cry out to Him, “How long?” and He will bring justice against the
wicked all in good time (Ex. 22:23, Job 34:28). But in the meantime, He is
not being slow to keep His promises, rather He is being patient to allowing
more people to be saved (2 Pet. 3:9)
- The God who doesn’t miss a single stroke of
justice also doesn’t miss a single cry for help.
- Let us, in turn, not miss a single chance to
praise Him and proclaim His glory.
- I want to close with another example from history
of praise to God on the heels of a military victory, that of the English
King Henry V over the French on the fields of Ajincor, as recorded by
William Shakespeare, and we’ll save the rest of the Psalm for next week.
KING HENRY V
Now, herald, are the dead number'd?
HERALD
Here is the number of the slaughter'd French….
KING HENRY V
This note doth tell me of ten thousand French
That in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number,
And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead
One hundred twenty six: added to these,
Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,
Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which,
Five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights:
So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,
There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;
The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,
And gentlemen of blood and quality.
…Here was a royal fellowship of death!
Where is the number of our English dead?
Herald shews him another paper
…But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss
On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine!
EXETER
'Tis wonderful!
KING HENRY V
Come, go we in procession to the village.
And be it death proclaimed through our host
To boast of this or take the praise from God
Which is his only.
FLUELLEN
Is it not lawful, an please your majesty, to tell
how many is killed?
KING HENRY V
Yes, captain; but with this acknowledgement,
That God fought for us.
FLUELLEN
Yes, my conscience, he did us great good.
KING HENRY V
Do we all holy rites;
Let there be sung 'Non nobis' and 'Te Deum;'
The dead with charity enclosed in clay:
And then to Calais; and to England then:
Where ne'er from France arrived more happy men.