Psalm VII
Shiggaion of D ivid, which lie sang unto the Lord, concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite.
1 0 Lord my God, in thee do I put my trust: Save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me:
2 Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none
to deliver.
3 0 Lord my God, if I have done this; — if there be iniquity in my hands;
4 If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (Yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy!)
5 Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; Yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, — and lay mine honour in
the dust. Selah.
6 Arise, O Lord, in thine anger, — lift up thyself because of the rage of mine
enemies: And awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.
7 So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about: For their sakes therefore return thou on high.
8 The Lord shall judge the people! Judge me, O Lord, According to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in
me.
9 Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; — but establish the just! For the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.
10 My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.
1 1 God judgeth the righteous, — and God is angry with the wicked every day.
12 If he turn not, he will whet his sword; — he hath bent his bow, and made
it ready.
13 He hath also prepared for him the instraraents of death; He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.
14 Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, And hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood.
15 He made a pit, and digged it, — and is fallen into the ditch which he made. IG His mischief shall return upon his own head.
And his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate. 17 1 will praise the Lord according to his righteousness: x.ud will sing praise to the name of the Lord most high.
There is something like excitement in the style of this Psalm. Ti,e tone and We do not find in it the calm, deep cries of one in anguish, but rather, the earnest, almost indignant, appeals of one whose righteous soul is vexed by a world’s opposition.
“JeJwvah, my God, in thee have I put my trust!
Save me from my itersecutors!” (Yer. 1.)
It is the voice of one who betakes himself to Jehovah as his
tiile.
only Adullam-cave, and who makes his cave of refuge ring with his vehement apjDeals. Horsley remarks there is in it complaint, supplication, prediction, crimination, commination, and thanksgiving.
liggaicn. “Shiggaion,” though some have attempted to fix on it a reference to the moral aspect of the world as depicted in this Psalm, is in all probability to be taken as expressing the nature of the composition. It conveys the idea of something erratic (py, to wander), in the style; something not so calm as other psalms; and hence EwaJd suggests, that it might be rendered,” a confused ode,^’ a Dithyramb. This characteristic of excitement in the style, and a kind of disorder in the sense, suits Habakkuk iii. 1, the only other place where the word occurs.
wi Contents. But who was “Gush the Benjamite? “None can give a decided answer, though all turn their eye to Saul, and seem nearly agreed that his calumnies against David gave occasion for the writing of this Psalm. The Targum hesitates not to say it is” Saul, the son of Kish.” Hengstenberg concludesp that Gush, the Ethiopian, is a name for Saul, because of his dark, black hatred of David; others refer the name to some one of SauFs retinue who was as Ethiopian in heart as his master. This last conjecture may be the truth; for David had a variety of foes. But at all events, the Holy Spirit made use of some special attack of some one foe as his time for conveying to his servant this song. He is a ‘’God who giveth songs in the night,” and he has by this means given to his Church a song which every succeeding generation has felt appropriate in a world lying in wickedness, and which was never more appropriate than in these latter days.
scd by cinist. The true David, no doubt, took it up in the days of his flesh; and often may he have used it as part of his wondrous Liturgy, when alone in the hills of Galilee. The cry in vei-. 9, — ^’ 0 let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end! And establish the just! And the trier of the heart and reins be thou, 0 God!”
fcjUowed up by ver. 10, “My defence is in* God who saveth
* Literally, ‘’Mi, shield /*• ujjon God,” like Psalm lxii. 8,” My salvation is upon dody The idea may be taken from the armour-bearer, ever ready at hand
to give the needed weapon to the warrior.
giveth victory to) the upright in heart” may remind us of Him who elsewhere longs for the day of God in the words, “Till the day break and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense.”
From ver. 1 to ver. 5, innocence is pleaded against those who are adversaries “without a cause.” This feature of enmity, “without a cause,” seems to have wounded the tender heart of our David very deeply; for in John xv. 25, we find him quoting another Psalm where the same words occur, and where the emphasis lies on “without a cause.” The world has hated him, because it hated the holiness that furnished no cause of accusation; and so has it hated his members because of what resemblance they bear to their unblemished Head. The world’s enmity is ever directed against the only thing in the saints which they are sure the Lord loves; and so they can appeal with their Head against “Those that without cause are our adversaries.”
After a Sclah-^iwae (see Psalm iv.), the tone changes. From ver. 6 onward, the future day of retribution comes into view. What an importunate cry is raised in ver. 6, “Arise, 0 Lord, in thine anger” — put on that fierce wrath which consumes all before it. “While thy foes are raging (as in Psalm ii. 1), lift li’p thyself;” and all this because “Thou hast appointed a day in which thou wilt judge the world in righteousness.” Had not Paul at Athens (Acts xvii. 31), his eye on this verse: “The judgment thou, hast ordained?”
In ver. 7, we see all the tribes (D’’S^<7), gathered round the Lord’s tribunal; and “over that congregation,” or assembly, the Lord takes his seat — as if they were all met there, waiting the arrival of the Judge, who does at last appear, and walks up to his seat in the view of all. Is there not a reference to the long-expected arrival of one who had gone for a time to a far country in the word “return?” (Luke xix. 12.)
And now, ver. 8. “The Lord judges the nations,” acting in all the plenitude of the Judge’s office — the office as held by Othniel, and Ehud, and Gideon, and Samson. As to right and wTong, he is what an ancient Roman was called, ‘^ Scoypulus reoruni” — every guilty man makes shipwreck on that rock; but He is ruler, too, putting earth in order. And when the Son of David used this prayer, he was impHcitly asking for the day of his own glory — when the Father shall be the Judge by committing all judgment to the Son. (John v. 22, 27.)
The remainder of this judgment-day Psalm presents us with views of the fearful overthrow of the ungodly — all of them doubly emphatic when understood as spoken by Him who had seen the armoury of heaven, “no man having ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven,” and who spake what he did know, and testified what he had seen. Whether we apply these verses to each individual sinner, or use them of the great Antichrist — that special avoiMg, lawless one — the description is so constructed as to apply in terrible grandeur. We see Jehovah’s daily anger (ver. 11), which is, in other words, his daily hatred of sin, “Judging righteously, while every day finding cause of anger.” We hear him tell, that if yonder sinner return not (ver. 12, “If a man turn not”), then there is prepared for him the sword, as well as the bow, q. d., there is the arrow from the bow aimed at his heart to lay him low, like Goliath laid low by the pebble in his forehead, and then the sword to complete the work of death. Let none think of recovering from the wound; for his instruments are “instruments of death,” and he “makes his arrows burninf/” (Dip”?!); and he shoots his flaming shafts, burning with the fire of Almighty wrath, into their hearts! All this the sinner has wrought for himself — all this Antichrist has wrought for himself — it is the cup he has filled, and filled double.
“Beliold! he travailed with misch ‘cf, (‘]1J«{) And hath conceived misery! 0!2i) And hringeth forth fahehood!” (disappointment) — He is precipitated into “the pit” from the height of his prosperity. How brief, yet how comprehensive, is this sketch of his doom! It is James i. 15 exhibited in each sinner’s history, and in the final end of “That Wicked” whom the Lord shall destroy by the brightness of his coming.
Ver. 17, is the “Hallelujah, amen!” of Rev. xix. 1-4. And is not the whole Psalm one which we mav well believe the.
PSALM Vlll. — MANIFESTATION OF JEHOVAH S NAME. 27
Head of the Church often used, and which each member uses still when in sympathy with the martyr-band (Rev. vi. ] 0)? In either view it is —
The Rvjltteous One’s cry for ri<jhteous retribution.