Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 7 Sept 2014
1. A prayer belonging to David.
Give heed to righteousness, Yahweh; Please be attentive to my outcry.
Please give ear to my prayer – it is definitely not [from] lips of deceit.
2. Let the verdict concerning me issue forth from your presence;
please let Your eyes perceive from things that are right.
3. You have tested my heart [for genuineness];
You have brought accountability [by] night.
You have refined me. You won’t find [anything];
I have made a plan: never will my mouth transgress.
4. By the word of Your lips, pertaining to the works of mankind,
I myself have guarded [against] paths of robbery,
5. to hold onto my progress in your tracks; my footsteps have never been overthrown.
6. As for me, I called to you because You will answer me, God.
“Incline Your ear to me; hear [what] I’m saying.
7. Savior of those who take refuge from adversaries by Your right hand, showcase your lovingkindness.”
8. Protect me like You would [the] apple of [your] eye.
In the shadow of Your wings You will hide me
Every person accused of a crime needs a good lawyer to defend them in court, but often lawyers fail. I am reminded of a few movies I’ve seen in which defense lawyers failed for various reasons:
o In some cases, the lawyer simply does not have the power to convince the jury of the right decision. That’s what happened in the movie, To Kill A Mockingbird. The good-guy lawyer was assigned to defend a black man who was innocent of any crime, but the person accusing him of a crime was a white woman in a small Southern town, and since everyone on the jury was white, it didn’t matter how good a lawyer Atticus was; he was not going to be able to get the black man acquitted.
o In the Movie A Few Good Men, there was another problem situation where it was the lawyer himself who had no integrity. Two marines serving at Guatanamo Bay are accused of murder, but they are sure that it was not their fault because they followed their orders perfectly. However, when they meet their attorney, played by Tom Hanks, they are crestfallen. Hanks is a perfect contrast to these disciplined, conscientious, careful marines; he is careless, scatterbrained, and undisciplined. How will their just cause be taken seriously in court when their own counsel won’t take the case seriously?
o I think of another movie called From the Hip, where the lawyer is trying to serve his client well, but over time he realizes that his client is truly guilty of murder, yet the client has covered it up so well that the lawyer becomes afraid that the prosecution won’t be able to figure out how to convict him of the crime, so he realizes that it is his moral duty to purposefully lose the court case in such a way that it looks like he is doing his best for his client.
o Please don’t take this as an unqualified endorsement of these movies – none of them represent a Biblical worldview, but they underscore, in their own ways the fact that when we trust in human advocates, they can be disappointing, whether they are well-intentioned but powerless, whether they are foolish and careless, or whether they are duplicitous and are trying to get you into trouble. Jesus is none of those things. He is powerful enough that if He takes your case He will win it. He is wise enough to handle every detail of your case properly, and He is not out to get you convicted because He has already decided to get you acquitted by dying on the cross for you.
o When we trust in the one true God and bring to Him our struggles with evil, He will handle our case so expertly that we can rest secure in the knowledge that He will not disappoint us.
o In Psalm 17, David sets an example for us of how to gain this kind of peace of mind.
o This is a prayer of David, but it is also a model to us of how to pray.
o The old Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “David would not have been a man after God’s own heart if he had not been a man of prayer. He was a master in the sacred art of supplication.”
o In my studies on this Psalm, I was struck by what the late Presbyterian preacher James Montgomery Boice noted in his commentary. He noted that this prayer psalm is organized around three lines of argument.
o First David argues that he is innocent,
o second he argues that God should save him because of His covenant obligations,
o and third, he argues from the direness of his need for deliverance.
o This is a pattern worth imitating in our prayers, for as he puts it, “Arguments force us to carefully think through what we are asking and to sharpen our requests.”
Now, as we consider the first line of argument, something sounds fishy. Hasn’t David just written that there is none righteous, not even one? How can he say that he is right and has never slipped and that God will find no fault with him?
Classic Hebrew scholar Franz Delitzsch, in his commentary on the Psalms explains, “The Old Testament conception [of righteousness]… looks more to the phenomena than to the root of the matter… but the righteousness of life of the Old Testament and that of the New have one and the same basis, viz., in the grace of God, the Redeemer, towards sinful man… (Ps. 143:2). Thus there is no self-righteousness, in David's praying that the righteousness, which in him is persecuted and cries for help, may be heard... it must be remembered that in such confessions the Old Testament consciousness does not claim to be clear from sins, but only from a conscious love of sin.”
The triple request that opens Psalm 17 is intense: “Hear… be attentive… give ear to” “my cry… my prayer… righteousness [my just cause].”
o It is much like the opening of Psalm 5: “Please give ear to my words, Yahweh; Please comprehend my meditation. Please be attentive to my voiced cry, my king and my God, because it will be to You that I pray.” (NAW, cf. Psalm 61:1-2)
o It is very important that communication happens between us and God. David realizes that. Without that two-way communication there is no security.
However, without a commitment to truth, there is no communication in the first place, so David, knowing that God speaks only truth, clears it up from his end, saying in effect, “Why would I lie?” for in Psalm 5:6b he has already warned that “…a man of bloodshed and deceit Yahweh will abhor.” (NAW)
o Brothers and sisters, we must pray. We have no spiritual life without it. And when we pray, we must be perfectly honest with God – admitting all our sin and also not trying to manipulate Him to do our will instead of His will.
o As we pray, of course, we might suddenly realize that we are minimizing our sin or trying to manipulate God. This is a problem, for Isaiah 59:2 teaches that, “…your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear.”
o But that doesn’t have to be the end of your relationship with God. Simply confess it and ask Him to forgive you and go on praying where you can honestly say, “I don’t have deceitful lips anymore. You have cleansed them. Now hear my prayer!” More on that later.
Now there is another person who can pray like this, and that is Jesus[1]. As we read the Psalms, we can read them from the perspective of David (which is a lot like ours) or from the perspective of Jesus, who is prefigured with imperfections in David.
o If we look at this Psalm from the perspective of Jesus being the speaker, we are reminded that Jesus is our “advocate before the Father” (1 John 2:1), pleading that since He paid the penalty of death for our sin, we be saved and accepted in a blessed relationship with Him.
o Jesus lives a perfect life, so there is no deceit found in His mouth (1 Pet 2:22).
o Therefore “He lives to make intercession” for us (Hebrews 7:25b). Romans 8:34 puts it this way,“Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.” (NKJV)
o It is because Jesus is successful as our advocate before the Father that we can pray to the Father ourselves in Jesus’ name.
The yasharim “equitable/right things” in this verse parallel the tsedek “right/just cause” in v.1[3].
It reminds me of what we read in Psalm 9:7-8 “But as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He has prepared His bench for the judgment. And He Himself will judge the world with righteousness; He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are right.” (NAW)
Psalm 17:2 verbalizes a real trust that God will issue a “verdict/ sentence/ judgment” that will vindicate David.
o David doesn’t want anybody else judging him but God. He is confident that if God sees David’s case laid out, then God will be able to perceive what is right, and His judgment will be made from the same determinations of right and wrong that are revealed in the Bible.
o In the New Testament, by the way, Jesus did the same thing: He “committed himself to the One who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2:23).
God does not leave His people to do their own thing. He holds them accountable to His standards of righteous character and refines us through trials to purify us of sin. And “Any examination… made by omniscience cannot fail to be thorough...”(Plumer)
This is what God does, and He begins, not by judging the unrighteous, but “judgment begins with the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17) and then later falls on the unrighteous.
o Psalm 11:6-7 “Yahweh will test a righteous man, but as for a wicked man and one who loves violence, His soul has hated… Because Yahweh is righteous, He has loved righteous things, [and] His face will see [the] one who is right” (NAW).
o Psalm 8:4 “What is man that you remember him, and the son of a man that you visit (or hold him accountable)?”
o Malachi 3:3 “He will sit as a refiner… He will purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer to the LORD An offering in righteousness.” (NKJV, cf. Isa. 48:10)
God even brought trials upon His own Son Jesus, leading Him into the wilderness in order to be tempted by the devil and later putting Jesus through the night-time test of the will in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus passed His tests; His mouth did not transgress, and because His record is applied to us, we can be confident that God will find nothing on us.
Now, as for us, we don’t always pass our tests, but God does always make us grow through them. Perhaps David’s night visitation in which God visited him and held him accountable was the pricking of conscience during the night that he spoke of in Psalm 16.[6]
The third thing David says that God did in this verse is literally that he “smelted” him. It’s rendered “tried” or “tested” in most English versions, but it is the word used for melting down precious metal and burning out the impurities in a crucible. The Hebrew root is tsaraf. The Septuagint translated it “tried by fire.”
o It is, of course, parallel to the first two actions ascribed to God, namely “tested/tried,” and “examined/visited” so I don’t’ want to read too much into this,
o but it reminds me strongly of Isaiah 6, where the prophet acknowledged his sin, and God sent an angel to cauterize Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal and cleanse him from his sin.
o David is confident that God will not find offense in him because he is confident in the effectiveness of God’s provision to cleanse him from all his sin!
But not only is he confident of God’s cleansing of all past sin; he is also confident that into the future, his lips will continue not to cross over the lines of right and wrong and transgress what God had instituted. This indicates a confidence in God’s salvation to change David into a man who walks in righteousness! He can do that same transforming work in you as well if you want it.
It is unclear from the Hebrew text of verse 4 (which contains no definite articles or prepositions)
o whether David is saying that, as king he prevented other people from committing these violent crimes by applying God’s word to his civil government,
o or whether David is saying that God’s word helped him personally avoid the temptation to defraud his own subjects[7],
o but either way, the words of God’s lips have become the theme of David’s lips and life.
These paths of “robbery/ destruction/ violence,” are in stark contrast to the “path of life” that Psalm 16 says God instructs us in.
David’s prayers are based on God’s word which he read before he prayed to God. If we don’t input God’s word into ourselves, we will not have the confidence David had to distinguish the path of life from the divergent paths.
The first verb is an infinitive (“to hold”) with no built-in subject, so it is up to the reader to interpret what the subject is.
o The KJV and Septuagint (along with Calvin and the Book of Common Prayer) interpret the subject to be God (as in, “let God uphold my goings”),
o while the NAS, NIV, and ESV[10] interpret ME as the subject (“my steps have held fast”),
o however, infinitives are usually expressions of purpose, so I interpreted it as Augustine also did, as the purpose for which David used the words of God’s lips to guard against the path of the violent: it was so that he could progress in the way of the Lord!
o Isn’t that what he said later on in Psalm 119? “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee”?
Now does this mean that we are able to be righteous without God’s help? Of course not. Our resolve and effort to obey God is only one part of the whole equation. Ultimately the only reason we are able to hold on is because God holds on to us.
o Psalm 16:5b used the same word to tell us that “Yahweh… is holding onto my lot;”
o and the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3:12 put it this way, “Not that I have already taken hold or have already been made complete, but I pursue as if also to overtake that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus.” (Ron Kruis)
David and his antitype Jesus – as well as we ourselves – can expect not to slip but rather to be secure and unshakeable, David uses the same word here at the end of verse5 that he used in Psalm 15 and 16: “He who does these things will never be shaken/moved… Because the Lord is at my right hand I shall not be shaken,” and here it is again, “with the word of God on my lips and my mind on guard against the paths of the violent, I can expect that I won’t slip – I won’t be shaken or toppled!”
Furthermore, my stability is secured because God Himself is answering my prayer for stability by providing refuge for me. That’s what I see in verses 6-8.
Here is another statement of confidence: “I called to You, God, because I knew You would answer!” Brothers and Sisters,
o don’t believe the lie of Humanism that says there is no God to answer our prayers.
o don’t believe Satan’s lie that God doesn’t hear when you pray;
o call out to God because He will answer you, just as He answered Jesus, “in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard…” (Heb. 5:7, NKJV)!
The second half of this verse and all of the next appears to me to be the prayer that David prayed, starting with a reverent – but confident – introduction, asking God to bend His ear forward and listen to what David is about to ask for.
David is confident that God is the Messiah who will always “save those who hope/ trust/ take refuge” in Him by sticking at His right hand.
The “adversaries” who “rise up” against him are mentioned in a very similar prayer back in Psalm 3: “Yahweh, how have my oppressors become [so] many? Many are rising up against me! Many are saying to my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’ Yet you, Yahweh, are a shield beside me, my glory, and You are lifting up my head. [With] my voice, I will call to Yahweh, and He will answer me from the mountain of His holiness” (NAW).
The picture that verse 7 paints in my mind is that of a poor person who has stumbled into the throne room of heaven, where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God Almighty. This person begs to be taken under the protection of Jesus, and Jesus receives this one who has run to Him for refuge. Now Jesus is executing the role of savior with real enthusiasm.
o Satan rises to accuse this poor person. But “If God is for us, who can be against us? … Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. (Romans 8:31-34, NKJV) “The Accuser of the brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, will be cast down” (Rev. 12:10).
o The kings of the earth may approach with their armies to kill this poor man, but he leans upon Jesus with confidence and admiration, and when the lawless appear, “the Lord will consume [them] with the breath of His mouth and destroy [them] with [His] brightness...” (2Thess. 2:8, NKJV)
That’s the kind of security I’m talking about! As it says in Psalm 16, “because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken!” Nearness to God – “by His right hand” – equals safety.
And when our Lord takes on that protective stance for poor ragamuffins like us, He showcases – makes a wonderful demonstration of – His merciful lovingkindness.
Verse 7 quotes phrases from the Song of Moses in Exodus 15:11-13, which speaks of God’s covenantal faithfulness, “Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders? You stretched out Your right hand; The earth swallowed them. You in Your mercy have led forth The people whom You have redeemed…” (NKJV).
The figures of speech in v.8 speak of the same thing:
This is the third time shamar (“Keep/protect”) has appeared in this Psalm – this theme of security continues. As we take refuge in Him, He, for His part, provides protective covering, hiding us from our enemies.
The two word pictures in verse 8 of God’s protection are from Deuteronomy 32:9-12 “For the LORD's portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land And in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, Hovers over its young, Spreading out its wings, taking them up, Carrying them on its wings, So the LORD alone led him, And there was no foreign god with him.” (NKJV, cf Zech. 2:5-11)
James Montgomery Boice, in His commentary wrote that these two Mosaic songs in Exodus 15 and Deuteronomy 32, “celebrate… God’s faithfulness to His covenant, which He demonstrated by delivering His people from their many enemies. Therefore, when David echoes their language in the psalm [verses 7-8], he is appealing to what God has already revealed Himself to be like. God has kept His covenant in the past. He is unchanging. Therefore, He can be expected to do the same for David in his parallel and equally dangerous circumstances.” Take notes; this is how to pray!
David is the only writer in scripture who uses the phrase “shadow of Your wings[12],” and he uses it three other times:
o Psalm 36:7 “How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.” (NKJV)
o Psalm 57:1 “… O God, be merciful to me! For my soul trusts in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, Until these calamities have passed by” (NKJV).
o Psalms 63:7 “Because You have been my help, Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice” (NKJV).
As for the other simile here in verse 8 the Hebrew words are literally “protect me like the little man of the daughter of the eye.” The word picture is that I have taken refuge in Jesus through faith in His salvation and have therefore gotten close to Him. He is looking straight at me, and as I look into His eyes from close up, I can see a reflection of my face in the pupils of His eyes. If someone’s hand were to come near His face – or even a puff of dust, He would do what any normal person would do and shut his eyes to protect them and raise his hands to ward off anything that might possibly hurt His eye. It’s a very sensitive part of the body that we vigorously protect. This is a picture of the intimacy into which we can enter with God and the passion with which He will protect us.
Psalm 12:7 As for you, Yahweh, You will take care of them; You will protect us from this generation forever. (NAW)
I need to stop here for now, so let me close with
1. “In the endurance of wrong and sorrow, we can do nothing better than to leave our cause with God, v. 2. Our afflictions are great miseries when they lead us from God, and not to God.” So let us go to God and argue our case before Him, showing that we are not in active rebellion against Him, and that He has covenantal obligations to save us.
2. However, “It is not unusual for God to delay for a season the execution of justice, even in behalf of his people, v. 2. Delay is not refusal. He will come at the best time. ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you, that he will avenge them speedily.’ Therefore ‘men ought always to pray and not to faint.’” Don’t give up on praying… and remember:
3. “God's people are as much under His care in time of siege, or when surrounded by foes, as at any other time, v. 11. At such seasons the most feeble child of God may sing: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me in this will I be confident.’” We have an advocate with God the Father, and He will not fail.
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Ps. 17 |
NAW |
KJV |
NKJV |
ESV |
NASB |
NIV |
LXX (16) |
Brenton |
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א תְּפִלָּה לְדָוִד שִׁמְעָה יְהוָה צֶדֶק הַקְשִׁיבָה רִנָּתִי הַאֲזִינָה תְפִלָּתִי בְּלֹא שִׂפְתֵי מִרְמָה. |
1. A prayer belonging to David. |
1 A Prayer of David. Hear [the] right, O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips. |
1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just [cause], O LORD, Attend to my cry; Give ear to my prayer which is not from deceitful lips. |
1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just [cause], O LORD; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer [from] lips free of deceit! |
1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just [cause], O LORD, give heed to my cry; Give ear to my prayer, [which] is not [from] deceitful lips. |
1 A prayer of David. Hear, O LORD, [my] righteous [plea]; listen to my cry. Give ear to my prayer— it does not [rise from] deceitful lips. |
1 Προσευχὴ τοῦ Δαυιδ. Εἰσάκουσον, κύριε, [τῆς] δικαιοσύνης [μου], πρόσχες τῇ δεήσει μου, ἐνώτισαι τῆς προσευχῆς μου οὐκ [ἐν] χείλεσιν δολίοις. |
1 A prayer of David. Hearken, O Lord [of my] righteousness, attend to my petition; give ear to my prayer not [uttered with] deceitful lips. |
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ב מִלְּפָנֶיךָ מִשְׁפָּטִי יֵצֵא עֵינֶיךָ תֶּחֱזֶינָה מֵישָׁרִים. |
2. Let the verdict concerning me issue forth from your presence; please let Your eyes perceive from things that are right. |
2 Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes behold the things that are equal. |
2 Let my vindication come from Your presence; Let Your eyes look on the things that are upright. |
2 From your presence let my vindication come! Let your eyes behold the right! |
2 Let my judgment come forth from Your presence; Let Your eyes look with equity. |
2 May my vindication come from you X; may your eyes see what is right. |
2 ἐκ
προσώπου σου
τὸ κρίμα
μου ἐξέλθοι,
οἱ ὀφθαλμοί |
2 Let my
judgment come forth from thy presence; let |
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ג בָּחַנְתָּ לִבִּי פָּקַדְתָּ לַּיְלָה צְרַפְתַּנִי בַל תִּמְצָא זַמֹּתִי בַּל יַעֲבָר פִּי. |
3. You have tested my heart [for genuineness]; You have brought accountability [by] night. You have refined me. You won’t find [anything]; I have made a plan: never will my mouth transgress. |
3 Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me [in the] night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. |
3 You have tested my heart; You have visited me [in the] night; You have tried me and have found nothing; I have purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. |
3 You have tried my heart, you have visited me [by] night, you have tested me, and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. |
3 You have tried my heart; You have visited me [by] night; You have tested me and You find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. |
3
[Though] you probe
my heart and examine
me at night, though you test
me, you will find nothing; I have resolved that my mouth will not |
3 ἐδοκίμασας
τὴν καρδίαν
μου, ἐπεσκέψω
νυκτός· ἐπύρωσάς
με, καὶ οὐχ
εὑρέθη ἐν
ἐμοὶ ἀδικία.
ὅπως ἂν μὴ λαλήσῃ
τὸ στόμα μου
τὰ ἔργα τῶν
ἀνθρώπ |
3 Thou
has proved mine heart; thou hast visited[lit. overseen] [me] by night; thou hast tried me as with fire,
and |
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ד לִפְעֻלּוֹת אָדָם בִּדְבַר שְׂפָתֶיךָ אֲנִי שָׁמַרְתִּי אָרְחוֹת פָּרִיץ׃ |
4. By the word of Your lips, pertaining to the works of mankind, I myself have guarded [against] paths of robbery, |
4 Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from [the] paths of [the] destroyer. |
4 Concerning the works of men, By the word of Your lips, I have kept away [from the] paths of [the] destroyer. |
4 With regard
to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have |
4 As for
the |
4 As for
the |
4 διὰ
τοὺς λόγ |
4 .By
the words of thy lips I have guarded
[ |
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ה תָּמֹךְ אֲשֻׁרַי בְּמַעְגְּלוֹתֶיךָ בַּל נָמוֹטּוּ פְעָמָי ׃ |
5. to hold onto my progress in your tracks; my footsteps have never been overthrown. |
5 Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not. |
5 Uphold my steps in Your paths, That my footsteps may not slip. |
5 My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped. |
5 My steps have held fast to Your paths. My feet have not slipped. |
5 My steps have held to your paths; my feet have not slipped. |
5 κατάρτισαι[14] τὰ διαβήματά μου ἐν ταῖς τρίβοις σου, ἵνα μὴ σαλευθῶσιν τὰ διαβήματά μου. |
5 Direct my steps in thy paths, that my steps slip not. |
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ו אֲנִי קְרָאתִיךָ כִי תַעֲנֵנִי אֵל הַט אָזְנְךָ לִי שְׁמַע אִמְרָתִי ׃ |
6. As for me, I called to you because You will answer me, God. “Incline Your ear to me; hear [what] I’m saying. |
6 I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech. |
6 I have called upon You, for You will hear me, O God; Incline Your ear to me, and hear my speech. |
6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me; hear my words. |
6 I have called upon You, for You will answer me, O God; Incline Your ear to me, hear my speech. |
6 I call
on you, O God, for you will answer me; give ear to me and hear my |
6 ἐγὼ |
6 I have
|
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ז הַפְלֵה חֲסָדֶיךָ מוֹשִׁיעַ חוֹסִים מִמִּתְקוֹמְמִים בִּימִינֶךָ ׃ |
7. Savior of those who take refuge from adversaries by Your right hand, showcase your lovingkindness.” |
7 Shew thy marvellous lovingkindness, O thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from those that rise up against them. |
7 Show Your marvelous lovingkindness by Your right hand, O You who save those who trust in You From those who rise up against them. |
7 Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand. |
7 Wondrously show Your lovingkindness, O Savior of those who take refuge at Your right hand From those who rise up against them. |
7 Show the wonder of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from [their] foes. |
7 θαυμάστωσον[15] τὰ ἐλέη σου, ὁ σῴζων τοὺς ἐλπίζοντας ἐπὶ σὲ ἐκ [τῶν] ἀνθεστηκότων τῇ δεξιᾷ σου. |
7 Shew the marvels of thy mercies, thou that savest them that hope in thee from [the] adversaries. |
|
ח שָׁמְרֵנִי כְּאִישׁוֹן בַּת עָיִן בְּצֵל כְּנָפֶיךָ תַּסְתִּירֵנִי ׃ |
8. Protect me like You would [the] apple of [your] eye. In the shadow of Your wings You will hide me |
8 Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, |
8 Keep me as the apple of Your eye; Hide me under the shadow of Your wings, |
8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings, |
8 Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me in the shadow of Your wings |
8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings |
8 φύλαξόν με ὡς κόραν ὀφθαλμοῦ· ἐν σκέπῃ τῶν πτερύγων σου σκεπάσεις με |
8 Keep me as the apple of the eye from those that resist thy right hand: thou shalt screen me by the covering of thy wings, |
[1] “This prayer must be assigned to the Person of the Lord, with the addition of the Church, which is His body.” ~Augustine
“And although it is nowhere in the New Testament declared to refer to Messiah, yet there is not in it an expression, which might not have been fitly used by Christ Jesus, when on earth. Indeed, the title in the Arabic is, ‘A prayer in the person of a perfect man, and of Christ himself, and of every one that is redeemed by him.’” ~Plumer
[2] Alternately, Rashi and Metsudath David interpreted yatza “go out” as God “dismissing” sins of those He loves from being judged. But a dismissive approach to sin without the consistent application of justice is not consistent with a Biblical view of justification.
[3] Delitzsch, on the other hand, argues that meyasharim should be translated as an adverb (“rightly”) rather than as an object (“from the things that are right”).
[4] A number of classic translations add a word not in the Hebrew: Chaldee “no corruption,” Septuagint “unrighteousness,” Syriac, Vulgate & Ethiopic “iniquity,” Arabic & Book of Common Prayer “wickedness.”
[5] Delitzsch, following Calvin and the Chaldee version depart from most other translations by interpreting the “mouth” as the object rather than the subject of the verb, cf. Prov. 30:32b, where the same key words reappear, “If you thought evil, lay your hand over your mouth!” It is worthy of consideration.
[6] Plummer, on the other hand suggested that night-time is when we are most vulnerable to sin, thus a night-time trial is the acid test of a man’s character.
[7] “To shun the paths of the destroyer is to avoid the life and work of a destroyer. This David did during all his troubles with Saul. This David's greater Son did also, see Luke 9:56; John 3:17.” ~Plumer
[8] cf. Cohen. The word for “paths” in this verse is actually a different Hebrew word than the Hebrew word in v.4. In 1 Sam 17 and 26, it shows up as the grounds where an army is camping. However, its entomology also seems to connote something that is circular (giyl), thus some translators refer it to wagon wheels or tracks. At any rate, it is the word in Psalm 23, “He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”
[9] The Hebrew words which most English versions translate “steps” and “feet” are poetic words that have to do with repetitive forward motion, and are not the regular word for “feet,” so I translated them “progress” and “footsteps.”
[10] supported by Delitzsch, Plumer, and Alexander
[11] “בַּת עַיִן is the eyeball, not the tears (Pareau)” commented Keil on Lamentations 2:18, the only other passage in the Hebrew Bible where this phrase occurs. But of this passage in Psalm 17, Delitzsch commented, “ [ishon] אִישֹׁון… in the diminutive and endearing sense of the termination on: the ‘little man’ … בַּת־עַיִן … ‘daughter of the eye’… the saint knows himself to be so near to God, that, as it were, his image in miniature is mirrored in the great eye of God.”
[12] “God's wings are the spreadings out, i.e., the manifestations of His love, taking the creature under the protection of its intimate fellowship, and the shadow of these wings is the refreshing rest and security which the fellowship of this love affords to those, who hide themselves beneath it, from the heat of outward or inward conflict.” ~Delitzsch
[13] Sym. = parabatou
[14] Aquil. = antilabesqai (“to keep [my steps] behind [you]”), Theod. = teleiwson
[15] Theod. = paradoxason