Contend, Yahweh, with those who contend with me. Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help.
Brandish the spear and block those who pursue me. Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”
Parallel Translations
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Contend, Yahweh, with those who contend with me. Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help.
Brandish the spear and block those who pursue me. Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”
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Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help.
Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.
Show all 3 translations
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A Psalm of David. Strive, O LORD, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, and rise up to my help.
Draw out also the spear, and the battle-axe, against them that pursue me; say unto my soul: 'I am Thy salvation.'
Cross-references (33)
- Psalms 43:1 (v1) Vindicate me, God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. Oh, deliver me from deceitful and wicked men.
- Psalms 119:154 (v1) Plead my cause, and redeem me! Revive me according to your promise.
- Jeremiah 51:36 (v1) Therefore Yahweh says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry.
- Isaiah 49:25 (v1) But Yahweh says, “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the plunder retrieved from the fierce, for I will contend with…
- Proverbs 22:23 (v1) for Yahweh will plead their case, and plunder the life of those who plunder them.
Show all 33 cross-references
- Proverbs 23:11 (v1) for their Defender is strong. He will plead their case against you.
- Lamentations 3:58 (v1) Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul. You have redeemed my life.
- 1 Samuel 24:15 (v1) May Yahweh therefore be judge, and give sentence between me and you, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of your hand.”
- Acts 5:39 (v1) But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it, and you would be found even to be fighting against God!”
- Exodus 14:25 (v1) He took off their chariot wheels, and they drove them heavily; so that the Egyptians said, “Let’s flee from the face of Israel, for Yahweh…
- Micah 7:9 (v1) I will bear the indignation of Yahweh, because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my case, and executes judgment for me. He will…
- Acts 23:9 (v1) A great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ part stood up, and contended, saying, “We find no evil in this man. But if…
- Nehemiah 4:20 (v1) Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally there to us. Our God will fight for us.”
- Joshua 10:42 (v1) Joshua took all these kings and their land at one time because Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.
- Psalms 91:4 (v2) He will cover you with his feathers. Under his wings you will take refuge. His faithfulness is your shield and rampart.
- Exodus 15:3 (v2) Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is his name.
- Isaiah 42:13 (v2) Yahweh will go out like a mighty man. He will stir up zeal like a man of war. He will raise a war cry. Yes, he will shout aloud. He will…
- Deuteronomy 32:41-42 (v2) if I sharpen my glittering sword, my hand grasps it in judgment; I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me.…
- Isaiah 12:2 (v3) Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my…
- Psalms 27:2 (v3) When evildoers came at me to eat up my flesh, even my adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.
- Psalms 7:12-13 (v2) If a man doesn’t repent, he will sharpen his sword; he has bent and strung his bow. He has also prepared for himself the instruments of…
- Psalms 51:12 (v3) Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit.
- Psalms 91:16 (v3) I will satisfy him with long life, and show him my salvation.”
- Isaiah 13:5 (v2) They come from a far country, from the uttermost part of heaven, even Yahweh, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
- Isaiah 8:9-10 (v3) Make an uproar, you peoples, and be broken in pieces! Listen, all you from far countries: dress for battle, and be shattered! Dress for…
- Genesis 49:18 (v3) I have waited for your salvation, Yahweh.
- 1 Samuel 23:26-27 (v3) Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men on that side of the mountain; and David hurried to get away for fear of Saul;…
- Job 1:10 (v3) Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his…
- Psalms 62:7 (v3) My salvation and my honor is with God. The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.
- Psalms 76:10 (v3) Surely the wrath of man praises you. The survivors of your wrath are restrained.
- Isaiah 10:12 (v3) Therefore it will happen that when the Lord has performed his whole work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the…
- Luke 2:30 (v3) for my eyes have seen your salvation,
- Acts 4:28 (v3) to do whatever your hand and your council foreordained to happen.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. Plead my cause, O Jehovah! As the enemies…
1. Plead my cause, O Jehovah! As the enemies of David not only avowedly sought to take away his life, but also troubled him by calumny and misrepresentation, he pleads for the redress of both these grievances. In the first place, by appealing to God for his aid in defense of his cause, he intimates, that he has to do with wicked and maligning men. In the second place, by urging him to take up arms, he shows that he was grievously oppressed. It was a very dishonorable thing, that this holy man, alike eminent for his beneficence and inoffensiveness towards all men, and who by his courtesy and meekness had merited, both in public and private, the esteem and favor of all, was not permitted to escape the reproach and calumny of wicked men; but it is important for us to know this, and it sets before us a very profitable example. If even David did not escape the malice of wicked men, it ought not to seem wonderful or strange to us, if they blame and bite at us. The injuries they inflict upon us may be grievous and painful, but there is incomparable consolation presented to us in this consideration, that God himself interposes for our protection and defense against false accusations. Though calumniators, then, should arise, and tear us, as it were, to pieces, by falsely charging us with crimes, we need not be disturbed, so long as God undertakes to plead our cause against them. There can be no doubt, that in the second clause of the verse David implores God to resist the armed violence of his enemies. The amount of the whole is, that being falsely accused and cruelly persecuted, and finding no help at the hands of men, the Prophet commits the preservation of his life and his reputation to God.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1–3 He desireth God to undertake his cause against them…
He desireth God to undertake his cause against them that did persecute him and slander him.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Psa 35:1 « [A Psalm] of David. » Plead…
Psa 35:1 « [A Psalm] of David. » Plead [my cause], O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.
Ver. 1. Plead my cause, O Lord] We may safely pray the same, when oppressed with calumnies and false accusations, as now David was by Saul’s sycophants, or, as others think, when he was in great heaviness, and even heart sick; after that Amnon had defiled Tamar, and Absalom had slain Amnon; his disaffected subjects, such as Shimei, insulted over him, and said, it was just upon him for the matter of Uriah, and other miscarriages; which they wrongfully charged him with. See a promise in this case, Isa 49:21.
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Fight against them, &c.] Or, devour them that devour me; for in Niphal only it signifieth to fight.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Seeing I am unable to right myself and the…
Seeing I am unable to right myself and the magistrates refuse to do me justice, be thou my Patron and Protector.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 In these verses we have,
In these verses we have,
I. David's representation of his case to God, setting forth the restless rage and malice of his persecutors. He was God's servant, expressly appointed by him to be what he was, followed his guidance, and aimed at his glory in the way of duty, had lived (as St. Paul speaks) in all good conscience before God unto this day; and yet there were those that strove with him, that did their utmost to oppose his advancement, and made all the interest they could against him; they fought against him (Psa 35:1), not only undermined him closely and secretly, but openly avowed their opposition to him and set themselves to do him all the mischief they could. They persecuted him with an unwearied enmity, sought after his soul (Psa 35:4), that is, his life, no less would satisfy their bloody minds; they aimed to disquiet his spirit and put that into disorder. Nor was it a sudden passion against him that they harboured, but inveterate malice: They devised his hurt, laid their heads together, and set their wits on work, not only to do him a mischief, but to find out ways and means to ruin him. They treated him, who was the greatest blessing of his country, as if he had been the curse and plague of it; they hunted him as a dangerous beast of prey; they digged a pit for him and laid a net in it, that they might have him at their mercy, Psa 35:7. They took a great deal of pains in persecuting him, for they digged a pit (Psa 7:15); and very close and crafty they were in carrying on their designs; the old serpent taught them subtlety: they hid their net from David and his friends; but in vain, for they could not hide it from God. And, lastly, he found himself an unequal match for them. His enemy, especially Saul, was too strong for him (Psa 35:10), for he had the army at his command, and assumed to himself the sole power of making laws and giving judgment, attainted and condemned whom he pleased, carried not a sceptre, but a javelin, in his hand, to cast at any man that stood in his way; such was the manner of the king, and all about him were compelled to do as he bade them, right or wrong. The king's word is a law, and every thing must be carried with a high hand; he has fields, and vineyards, and preferments, at his disposal, Sa1 22:7. but David is poor and needy, has nothing to make friends with, and therefore has none to take his part but men (as we say) of broken fortunes (Sa1 22:2); and therefore no marvel that Saul spoiled him of what little he had got and the interest he had made. If the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and his anointed, who can contend with them? Note, It is no new thing for the most righteous men, and the most righteous cause, to meet with many mighty and malicious enemies: Christ himself is striven with and fought against, and war is made upon the holy seed; and we are not to marvel at the matter: it is a fruit of the old enmity in the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman.
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II. His appeal to God concerning his integrity and the justice of his cause. If a fellow-subject had wronged him, he might have appealed to his prince, as St. Paul did to Caesar; but, when his prince wronged him, he appealed to his God, who is prince and Judge of the kings of the earth: Plead my cause, O Lord! Psa 35:1. Note, A righteous cause may, with the greatest satisfaction imaginable, he laid before a righteous God, and referred to him to give judgment upon it; for he perfectly knows the merits of it, holds the balance exactly even, and with him there is no respect of persons. God knew that they were, without cause, his enemies, and that they had, without cause, digged pits for him, Psa 35:7. Note, It will be a comfort to us, when men do us wrong, if our consciences can witness for us that we have never done them any. It was so to St. Paul. Act 25:10, To the Jews have I done no wrong. We are apt to justify our uneasiness at the injuries men do us by this, That we never gave them any cause to use us so; whereas this should, more than any thing, make us easy, for then we may the more confidently expect that God will plead our cause.
III. His prayer to God to manifest himself both for him and to him, in this trial. 1. For him. He prays that God would fight against his enemies, so as to disable them to hurt him, and defeat their designs against him (Psa 35:1), that he would take hold of shield and buckler, for the Lord is a man of war (Exo 15:3), and that he would stand up for his help (Psa 35:2), for he had few that would stand up for him, and, if he had ever so many, they would stand him in no stead without God. he prays that God would stop their way (Psa 35:3), that they might not overtake him when he fled from them. This prayer we may put up against our persecutors, that God would restrain them and stop their way. 2. To him: "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation; let me have inward comfort under all these outward troubles, to support my soul which they strike at. Let God be my salvation, not only my Saviour out of my present troubles, but my everlasting bliss. Let me have that salvation not only which he is the author of, but which consists in his favour; and let me know my interest in it; let me have the comfortable assurance of it in my own breast." If God, by his Spirit, witness to our spirits that he is our salvation, we have enough, we need desire no more to make us happy; and this is a powerful support when men persecute us. If God be our friend, no matter who is our enemy.
IV. His prospect of the destruction of his enemies, which he prays for, not in malice or revenge. We find how patiently he bore Shimei's curses (so let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him); and we cannot suppose that he who was so meek in his conversation would give vent to any intemperate heat or passion in his devotion; but, by the spirit of prophecy, he foretells the just judgments of God that would come upon them for their great wickedness, their malice, cruelty, and perfidiousness, and especially the enmity to the counsels of God, the interests of religion, and that reformation which they knew David, if ever he had power in his hand, would be an instrument of. They seemed to be hardened in their sins, and to be of the number of those who have sinned unto death and are not to be prayed for, Jer 7:16; Jer 11:14; Jer 14:11; Jo1 5:16. As for Saul himself, David, it is probable, knew that God had rejected him and had forbidden Samuel to mourn for him, Sa1 16:1. And these predictions look further, and read the doom of the enemies of Christ and his kingdom, as appears by comparing Rom 11:9, Rom 11:10. David here prays, 1. Against his many enemies (Psa 35:4-6): Let them be confounded, etc. Or, as Dr. Hammond reads it, They shall be confounded, they shall be turned back. This may be taken as a prayer for their repentance, for all penitents are put to shame for their sins and turned back from them. Or, if they were not brought to repentance, David prays that they might be defeated and disappointed in their designs against him and so put to shame. Though they should in some degree prevail, yet he foresees that it would be to their own ruin at last: They shall be as chaff before the wind, so unable will wicked men be to stand before the judgments of God and so certainly will they be driven away by them, Psa 1:4. Their way shall be dark and slippery, darkness and slipperiness (so the margin reads it); the way of sinners is so, for they walk in darkness and in continual danger of falling into sin, into hell; and it will prove so at last, for their foot shall slide in due time, Deu 32:35. But this is not the worst of it. Even chaff before the wind may perhaps be stopped, and find a place of rest, and, though the way be dark and slippery, it is possible that a man may keep his footing; but it is here foretold that the angel of the Lord shall chase them (Psa 35:5) so that they shall find no rest, shall persecute them (Psa 35:6) so that they cannot possibly escape the pit of destruction. As God's angels encamp against those that fight against him. They are the ministers of his justice, as well as of his mercy. Those that make God their enemy make all the holy angels their enemies. 2. Against his one mighty enemy (Psa 35:8): Let destruction come upon him. It is probable that he means Saul, who laid snares for him and aimed at his destruction. David vowed that his hand should not be upon him; he would not be judge in his own cause. But, at the same time, he foretold that the Lord would smite him (Sa1 26:10), and here that the net he had hidden should catch himself, and into that very destruction he should fall. This was remarkably fulfilled in the ruin of Saul; for he had laid a plot to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines (Sa1 18:25), that was the net which he hid for him under pretence of doing him honour, and in that very net was he himself taken, for he fell by the hand of the Philistines when his day came to fall.
V. His prospect of his own deliverance, which, having committed his cause to God, he did not doubt of, Psa 35:9, Psa 35:10. 1. He hoped that he should have the comfort of it: "My soul shall be joyful, not in my own ease and safety, but in the Lord and in his favour, in his promise and in his salvation according to the promise." Joy in God and in his salvation is the only true, solid, satisfying joy. Those whose souls are sorrowful in the Lord, who sow in tears and sorrow after a godly sort, need not question but that in due time their souls shall be joyful in the Lord; for gladness is sown for them, and they shall at last enter into the joy of their Lord. 2. He promised that then God should have the glory of it (Psa 35:10): All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee? (1.) He will praise God with the whole man, with all that is within him, and with all the strength and vigour of his soul, intimated by his bones, which are within the body and are the strength of it. (2.) He will praise him as one of peerless and unparalleled perfection. We cannot express how great and good God is, and therefore must praise him by acknowledging him to be a non-such. Lord, who is like unto thee? No such patron of oppressed innocency, no such punisher of triumphant tyranny. The formation of our bones so wonderfully, so curiously (Ecc 11:5; Psa 139:16), the serviceableness of our bones, and the preservation of them, and especially the life which, at the resurrection, shall be breathed upon the dry bones and make them flourish as a herb, oblige every bone in our bodies, if it could speak, to say, Lord, who is like unto thee? and willingly to undergo any services or sufferings for him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive…
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me,.... Meaning Saul and his courtiers; concerning whom he elsewhere desires that the Lord would judge between them, plead his cause, and deliver him; as he accordingly did, and maintained it, and the righteousness of it, Sa1 24:12. So Christ pleaded not his own cause as man, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously; and his people leave their cause with him, who is their advocate, and is able to plead it thoroughly; and does plead it against wicked and ungodly men, who unrighteously charge them; against. Satan the accuser of the brethren, who stands at their right hand to resist them; and against their own hearts, and the sins of them, which lust and war against them, and condemn them;
fight against them that fight against me: so the Lord is sometimes represented as a man of war, and Christ as a warrior fighting for the saints; and safe are they on whose side he is; but miserable all such who are found fighters against him and his; for none ever opposed him and prospered.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 David prays for deliverance from his enemies, and prophecies…
David prays for deliverance from his enemies, and prophecies their destruction, ver. 1-10, Describes their wickedness, ver. 11-21. Foretells their confusion, the joy of the righteous, and his own thanksgiving, ver. 22-28. A psalm of David.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The psalmist, in great straits, prays for his personal…
PSALM XXXV
The psalmist, in great straits, prays for his personal safety,
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1-3;
and for the confusion of his enemies, 4-8;
expresses has confidence in God, 9, 10;
mentions his kindness to those who had rewarded him evil for
his good, 11-16;
appeals to God against them, 17-26;
prays for those who befriended him; and praises God for his
goodness, 27, 28.
NOTES ON PSALM XXXV
There is nothing in the title worthy of remark. The Psalm is simply attributed to David, and was most probably of his composing; and refers to the time of his persecution by Saul and his courtiers. The Syriac says it was composed when the Idumeans attacked David. The Arabic says it is a prophecy concerning the incarnation, and concerning the things practised against Jeremiah by the people. Some think that our Lord's sufferings are particularly pointed out here; and Bishop Horsley thinks that verses 11 to 16 apply more literally and exactly to Christ than to any other whomsoever.
Verse 1. Plead my cause, O Lord] Literally, Contend, Lord, with then that contend with me. The word is often used in a forensic or law sense.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v1 Psa 35:1-3. Plead my cause, O Lord, &c. —…
Psa 35:1-3. Plead my cause, O Lord, &c. — Take my part, and maintain my cause against those that contend with me, and have raised war against me; for I am not able to defend myself, and have none else to appear for me. Take hold of shield and buckler — Wherewith to cover and defend me; that is, Be thou my protector, and preserve me under the shield of thy almighty providence. And stand up for my help — Oppose thyself to them, and keep off all their assaults. Draw out also the spear — Thy offensive as well as defensive weapons. Strike them through, as well as defend me. He alludes to the practice of soldiers in battle. Stop the way, &c. — In which they are advancing directly and furiously against me. Let them run upon the spear and the sword, if they continue to pursue me. Say unto my soul — That is, unto me, either, 1st, By thy Spirit assuring me of it; or, 2d, By thy providence effecting it. Confirm my soul in this belief, that thou wilt at last deliver me from this persecution.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Plead my cause, O Lord - The word “plead”…
Plead my cause, O Lord - The word “plead” means, properly, to argue in support of a claim, or against the claim of another; to urge reasons for or against; to attempt to persuade one by argument or supplication; as, to plead for the life of a criminal, that is, to urge reasons why he should be acquitted or pardoned; and then, to supplicate with earnestness in any way. The original word used here - רוב rûb - means to contend, strive, quarrel; and then, to contend before a judge, to manage or plead a cause. The idea here is, that the psalmist desires that God would undertake his cause against those who had risen up against him, as if it were managed before a tribunal, or before a judge, and God should be the advocate. The same word is used, in another form, in the other member of the sentence - “with them that strive - יריבי yârı̂ybāy - against me.” The idea is, that they were “pleading” against him, or were urging arguments, as it were, before a tribunal or a judge, why he should be condemned. They were his bitter opponents, engaged in bringing all manner of false accusations against him, and seeking his condemnation. The psalmist felt that he could not manage his own cause against them; and he, therefore, pleads with God that He would interpose, and stand up for him.
Fight against them that fight against me - The same idea substantially occurs here as in the former member of the verse. It is a prayer that God would undertake his cause; that He would exert His power against those who were opposed to him.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 35
Psalms 35
A Psalm of David
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1 Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me:
Fight against them that fight against me.
2 Take hold of shield and buckler,
And stand up for mine help.
3 Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me;
Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.
4 Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul:
Let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt.
5 Let them be as chaff before the the wind:
And let the angel of the Lord chase them.
6 Let their way be dark and slippery:
And let the angel of the Lord persecute them.
7 For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit,
Which without cause they have digged for my soul.
8 Let destruction come upon him at unawares;
And let the net that he hath hid catch himself;
Into that very destruction let him fall.
9 And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord.
It shall rejoice in his salvation.
10 All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee,
Which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him,
Yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him?
11 False witnesses did rise up;
They laid to my charge things that I knew not.
12 They rewarded me evil for good
To the spoiling of my soul.
13 But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth:
I humbled my soul with fasting:
And my prayer returned into mine own bosom.
14 I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother.
I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother.
15 But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together:
Yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not;
They did tear me, and ceased not:
16 With hypocritical mockers in feasts,
They gnashed upon me with their teeth.
17 Lord, how long wilt thou look on?
Rescue my soul from their destructions,
My darling from the lions.
18 I will give thee thanks in the great congregation:
I will praise thee among much people.
19 Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me:
Neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause.
20 For they speak not peace:
But they devise deceitful matters against them, that are quiet in the land.
21 Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me,
And said, Aha, aha, our eye hath seen it.
22 This thou hast seen, O Lord: keep not silence:
O Lord, be not far from me.
23 Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment,
Even unto my cause, my God and my Lord.
24 Judge me, O Lord my God, according to thy righteousness;
And let them not rejoice over me.
25 Let them not say in their hearts, Ah, so would we have it!
Let them not say, We have swallowed him up.
26 Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together
That rejoice in mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonor
That magnify themselves against me.
27 Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause:
Yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified,
Which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.
28 And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness
And of thy praise all the day long.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Its Contents and Composition—This Psalm is not so much a lamentation, which repeats the same phrases prolixly and to excess (De Wette, Hupfeld), as a rythmical and agitated prayer. The same three thoughts recur in the three chief divisions (Psa_35:1-28), but always with different forms, references and figures. These are 1) the prayer that Jehovah will interfere without delay for the protection of His servant, that his righteous cause may be carried out and his enemies ruined; 2) the description of the wickedness and unthankfulness of these enemies, which have previously received sympathy and tokens of love from him whom they now persecute without cause; and 3) the vow of thankfulness, which the delivered man will offer as an expression of his entire resignation to the Lord, publicly in the congregation and to their edification. The movement of these thoughts around in a circle corresponds throughout with the deeply felt experiences of a heart, which is shaken to its foundation by bitter experiences, which have been so contrary to all his expectations. His heart can become master of its own emotions only gradually, and indeed only by urgently clinging to God. This, as well as the manner of expression, which is picturesque, in part drastic, and corresponds closely with his experiences even to the tone of the language, is opposed to the idea that the author speaks from the person of the righteous as such (Hengst.) The citation of Psa_35:19 in the mouth of Jesus (Joh_15:25), which may be derived from Psa_69:4, as well, does not demand either this supposition, or the Messianic interpretation of the ancient church, or the typical interpretation in the narrow sense, but is founded upon the general relation of the sufferings of Jesus to every undeserved suffering at the hands of wicked and unthankful men. This is only strengthened and brought into narrower historical connection by maintaining its composition by David, which has nothing against it. For the correspondences with Jer_18:19; Jer_23:12 : Lam_2:16, upon which Hitzig lays so much stress, do not lead to the priority of the prophet Jeremiah, since the opening strophe of the Psalm uses the language of a man of war. In the life of David the most suitable time for the composition of this Psalm is found in the time of his persecution by Saul, and it is most nearly related to Psalms 40, 69. It seems to be a lyrical carrying out of the words used by David 1Sa_24:16, and owes its place in the collection of Psalms, probably to the circumstance that the Maleach Jehovah is mentioned here in the singular, as in the preceding Psalm.
Str. I. Psa_35:1. Fight them that fight me, make war upon them that make war upon me.—The expression רִיב leads at first to the idea of litigation, but this when carried out brings about directly warlike complications. The את is not the preposition with, but the sign of the accusative.9 If the fundamental meaning of לחם were vorare (most interpreters), yet it does not follow that war among the Hebrews was once connected with devouring men (Daumer der Feuer und Molochdienst der alten Hebr. § 242). We might think of a figure of the entire annihilation of the enemy as it is used Num_24:8. We may likewise, however, according to the derivation from the Arabic, get the meaning of a dense throng, a large crowd, and tumult (Delitzsch).
Psa_35:2. Target and shield.—The figures displace one another, and thus, with the strong anthropomorphic description of the Divine interference, lead away from the form to the subject. This is shown clearly by the mention of the two shields, never used by a warrior at the same time, the smaller one to protect the head (1Ki_10:16), and the larger to protect the entire body.10
Psa_35:3. Stop (the way.)—This may be designated by a military technical term (Hengst.), although we do not think exactly of the circle which was formed by the light armed in retiring from their adversaries after throwing the spear (Schegg). At any rate סִגֹר was taken as an imperative by all ancient translations. Most interpreters supply, at least in thought, viam, with the translation interclude. Hitzig compares the Æthiopic and Arabic in favor of the meaning; advance rapidly, haste. The explanation of the word of the battle-axe of upper Asia, particularly of the Scythians (Kimchi, Hupf., et al), to which Greek writers give the name of σάγαοις, whilst in other respects acceptable, has particularly against it the fact that the substantive סְגוּר occurs in Hos_13:8, Job_28:15, in an entirely different meaning (Geier).
Str. II. [Psa_35:4. Confounded,—disgraced,—blush,—Hupfeld: “The usual formula for the frustration and failure of the hopes and undertakings of the wicked: heaped up to strengthen the sense as Psa_35:26; Psa_6:10; Psa_40:14, etc., but connected by the retreat back, that is be beaten back, (vid.Psa_6:10) with the preceding figure of hostile attack, and thus to be taken here in this particular sense.”—C. A. B]
Psa_35:5. As chaff before the wind. [Comp Psa_1:4; Psa_18:42; Psa_83:13].—Jehovah’s angel—Hitzig remarks correctly, that Jehovah (Psa_104:4,) makes the winds his angels, but here in reality the angel takes the place of the wind in the comparison, and the angel is designated as the ἐνέργεια of the flight. From this we conclude, that the angel is not figurative, or a collective, but is to be taken individually and properly, which is confirmed by the parallel Psa_35:6, as well as the similarity with Exo_14:25; Jdg_5:25. “That this angel here takes part, when the question is whether the kingdom of the promise shall be destroyed in its origin or not, agrees with the appearance of the Maleach Jehovah in the fundamental period of the history of redemption” (Delitzsch). If now this angel is a mediator of Divine help for the servants of God, he is an angel of judgment for their enemies. Calvin, it is true, takes the expression here as in the previous Psalm, as collective, but makes the remark which brings forward the correct thought, that the angels could not protect and save, unless they on the other side could at the same time prevent and punish Accordingly if this is true, without doubt, then every prayer for the Divine interference for deliverance from the power of wicked enemies, implicitly contains the prayer for a Divine punishment of these enemies. In most cases this reverse side of the prayer for deliverance either does not come to consciousness, or takes the form of a petition for one’s own deliverance, whilst the treatment of the enemy is left to the estimation of God. It may, however, happen that the servant of God, as he is obligated to proclaim the Divine judgment, may thus feel justified in the prayer for its execution, that is, when he has to do with the affairs of God’s kingdom and the decision of affairs in the history of redemption, and the petitioner regards himself as executingthe Divine will. The highest stage of perfection then renders possible, in looking at the fulfilment of
the Divine plan of the world, still further intercession for the forgiveness of guilt, (Luk_23:34 sq.; 2Pe_3:9; 2Pe_3:15), and the limitation of the punishment to temporal ruin (Gal_1:9; Gal_5:12; 2Ti_4:14), and in the sense of evangelical chastisement (1Pe_4:6; 1Co_5:5). The Old Testament has not gone as far as this, although the duty of love to the enemy is most distinctly commanded and recognized (Exo_23:4; Lev_19:18; Job_31:29; Pro_20:22; Pro_24:17; Pro_25:21). But we must not say that David acted selfishly and revengefully, and that his thankfulness Psa_35:9 sq. even has a trace of joy in the misfortunes of his enemies. His thankfulness refers expressly to the help he has received, and it is designated as a rejoicing in the Lord.
[Psa_35:6. Alexander: “Dark and slippery, literally darkness and smoothness, an emphatic substitute of the abstract for the concrete. The fearful image thus suggested of men driven, like chaff before the wind, along a dark and slippery path, is rendered more terrible by the additional idea of their being hotly pursued by the destroying angel. The construction of the last clause, both in this verse and the one before it, is; (let) the angel of Jehovah (be) pursuing them.”—C. A. B.]
Str. III. Psa_35:7. For without cause they have hid for me their net, without cause digged a pit for my soul.—The reading שַׁחת רִשְׁתָם is scarcely tenable. For “the pit of their net” or “their net-pit” might actually mean a pit provided with a snare, which was covered with boughs or earth; but the connection of these words, partly with one another, partly with the verb “hide,” is unheard of, and the figurative reference of pit to ruin, as if the reference could be to the net of destruction (Luther, von Meyer), is therefore to be rejected, because pernicies laquei (after the Sept. διαφθορὰ παγίδος) notwithstanding Grotius, can no more stand for laqueus exitialis than the destruction of their net can mean: their destructive net. Since now to “hide nets” and “dig pits” are usual figures of hostile waylaying, the removal of שׁחת from the first line to the second, proposed by Houbigant and best advocated by Hitzig and Hupfeld, is the more to be approved as the verb “dig” would otherwise lack its usual object.
Psa_35:8. Let destruction come upon him unawares.—It is uncertain whether שׁוֹאָה means the disordered confusion of things or of tunes, in its origin and in this passage. Most interpreters take it in the former sense=fall, ruin, devastatio, and remind us of the parallels in Psa_34:21; Psa_36:12. Venema, Hitzig and Ewald take it in the latter sense as, roar, noise, the latter thinking particularly of a storm. Delitzsch takes Psa_35:8 a in the former and Psa_35:8 c in the latter meaning, which Calvin (cum tumultu = horrore) changes without authority from an objective event to a subjective experience. Kurtz combines both meanings in Psa_35:8 a: crashing fall. The Syriac translates “in the pit” as if it had read שּׁחח. But since it adds “which he dug,” we are to suppose rather a paraphrastic explanation than another reading. A like explanation is given by Seb. Schmidt, J. H. Mich., Stier, Hupf with the translation in vastationem (quam mihi paravit) in eandem incidat. Olshausen thinks of a marginal gloss which has come into the text. And the manner of expression of Psa_35:8 c is certainly striking in its relation to Psa_35:8 a, yet it is not to be designated as a corruption, with any certainty.—The singular suffix=“him” does not necessarily designate a particular person, as, for example, Ahithophel, Shimei, Mephibosheth (Ruding.), nor properly the ideally wicked (Hengst.), but is used as an individual (Hupf.) for the class, and thus for every individual (Hitzig) of the enemies conceived as one body (Delitzsch).—The idea of sudden and unavoidable is expressed in Hebrew by the asyndetical, “he knows not” as Isa_47:11; Pro_5:6.
Psa_35:10. All my bones.—This does not mean the innermost being (Hengst.), but the body as the complement of the soul mentioned in Psa_35:9 (Aben Ezra), at the same time it contains a prayer and hope that the Lord will preserve all his bones (Psa_34:20), will keep him unharmed (Stier).—[Jehovah, who is like Thee.—Delitzsch: “This exclamation is from Exo_15:11, it demands emphatic expression, it serves not for closer connection, but for rendering more decidedly prominent.”—C. A. B.]
[Str IV. Psa_35:11. Unjust witnesses rise up, they question me of what I am unconscious—This is a figure of persecution and especially slander, derived from the complaints and questionings of a criminal process (De Wette, Hupfeld). They demand of him the admission of things of which he is unconscious, and which are contrary to his course of conduct (Delitzsch). Ewald renders “cruel witnesses,” without sufficient reason, and is followed by Alexander, Perowne, et al. but the translation given above is that of De Wette, Hupfeld, Delitzsch, Moll, et al., and is better.
Psa_35:12. My soul is bereaved.—Perowne: “I am alone in the world. I, who have ever sought to help the friendless and comfort the afflicted, and who prayed so earnestly for others, am forsaken of all.”11—C. A. B.]
Str. V. Psa_35:13. And my prayer—into mine own bosom it returned.—The context shows, that this is not of the recompense of the intercession, whether in a sarcastic sense, comp. Psa_35:12 (Hupf.), or as an optative (Sept., Jerome, Isaki, Flamin., Sachs).12 No more is it of its failure, since, on account of the ungodliness of those who were prayed for, it returned empty (Riehm,13 after an explanation proposed by Calvin). Usage does not allow us to think of a repeated or an ardent prayer from the heart, or for something lying upon the heart (Aben Ezra, Luther, Geier, et al.), or a silent prayer of the heart (Calvin); but it allows the expression to be understood with reference to the being bowed down, mentioned in the next verse, of a prayer flowing back into the bosom, because it was spoken with the head bowed down. Yet this does not need for an explanation, that the bowed posture of prayer should be brought into consideration (most recent interpreters), which is customary among the Mohamedans (Reland, de relig. Moham. p. 87), but is not mentioned among the Hebrews, and has no suitable parallel in 1Ki_18:42. It is “the natural expression in the body, of the being bowed down in oneself in sorrow and pain” (Clauss).14
[Psa_35:14. As a mourner for a mother, squalid I bowed down.—Alexander: “He not only mourned in their calamity, but with the deepest grief, as for a friend, a brother, or a parent, which terms are so arranged as to produce a beautiful and striking climax.—The verb in the first clause corresponds very nearly to the familiar English phrase went on, in the sense of lived or habitually acted.—The Hebrew word קֹדֵר means squalid, dirty, in allusion to the ancient oriental practice of neglecting the appearance, and even covering the dress and person with dust and ashes, as a token of extreme grief. The bowing down is also to be taken as a part of the same usage.”—C. A. B.]
Str VI. Psa_35:15. Smiting, and I know it not.—According to that which is supplied the latter clause may be taken = unawares, as Psa_35:8, comp. Job_9:5; Jer_14:18, unexpectedly (Stier, Hupf., Hitzig), or innocently, comp. ver 11b (most interpreters), or whom I do not know (Hengst., Delitzsch). Much more difficult is the preceding word נֵכִים, which is suspicious in form and obscure in sense. Yet it is not allowable on this account to change the word into נֵכְרִים=strangers in the sense of foreigners (Olsh.), so long as there is the least possibility of an explanation. The word is hardly a substantive, although it is thus taken by the Sept. and Vulg. and translated: “scourges;” and Hitzig, by means of the Arabic, formerly brought out the meaning of fools. Hitzig now changes the reading into כַמַּיִם=as water. The word inclines to the substantive, only as a participle from a root which means smiting. According to its form it might have a passive meaning (Job_30:8), thus: beaten. But the context shows that there can no more be a reference to the afflicted, in the sense of worn out (Holländ. and Berleberg. Bibel), than of smitten in spirit. For the latter would lead not to the idea of blindly raging, but either to that of the mad or disordered spirit, or that of simple fools, or weak in spirit, or to that of deeply troubled (Isa_16:7). We must accordingly think of the afflicted in the sense of outcasts (Kimchi, Calv., Grot.), or knaves (Mendelssohn), or men reduced in circumstances (Hengst.), vulgar men, of the dregs of the people (Delitzsch). But this meaning is artificial in its origin rather than proved from the language of the text. Still less can we with Luther translate limping, since the additional “on the feet,” which decides the meaning in 2Sa_4:4, is missing here, not to mention the fact that this reference, whether in scorn (Piscator, et al.), or as applied to the two-faced hypocrite (Luther’s gloss), is inapplicable here. On this account the word may perhaps be taken as active, notwithstanding its unusual form (Symmach., Jerome), unless we should change it into מַכּים; yet it cannot be explained of smiting with the tongue, of pettifogging (Chald., Gesen., Stier), for this very specific addition made in Jer_18:18, is not made here. We must stand by the idea of violent acts (Hupf). To this the קרע in the following line of the verse may be referred (Hengst., Hupf.), which has elsewhere the meaning of tearing open the mouth in scorn and laughter (Kimchi, Vatabl., Schmidt, et al.), or that of slander (Aben Ezra, Delitzsch), as a tearing down with words (Stier).
Psa_35:16. In the most wicked stammering of distorted things.—The fundamental meaning of חָנֵף is impure, defiled, hence in a religious reference, the profane, so that in the Syriac and Æthiop. the corresponding word is likewise applied to the heathen and heretics (comp. Gesen. Thesaurus). The translation: hypocrites (ancient interpreters, after the Vulg. and the Rabbins) is therefore incorrect. The preposition בְּ expresses not communion with (Stier), but denotes the characteristic or the condition. The connection with what follows is such that we may either connect the superlative with the following genit partit. (Delitzsch, Stier, Böttcher), or suppose independent designations, subordinate to one another (Hitzig). The former is to be preferred, because לַעֲגֵי, which only occurs besides in Isa_28:11, and indeed of stammering of the lips with reference to the unintelligible language of the foreigner, is apparently a plural of a nom. abstr., not of an adjective. The sense leads not to speaking wit and scoffings, but to expressions which sound to the Psalmist as perverse, as foreign and unintelligible. It is not necessary here to think of a real foreigner, or heathen barbarians, with whom his enemies had confederated, or after whose example they acted (Hupfeld, with wicked stammering of gibberish). It designates very appropriately the furious speech of bitter enemies. That this is at the same time unjust, is expressed by the following obscure and disputed word, which according to the context is to be most properly derived from עוג in the meaning, gained through the Arabic, of crooked, distorted, but is not to be regarded as foreign, unintelligible language (Hupf.), or as the words of scorn (Hitzig), but as those of slander (Ewald). Thus all ancient translators have thought of a word like the previous one (Sept.), or related to it (Chald.) Symmach. has at once: ἐν ὑποκρίσει, ῥήμασι πεπλασμένοις, Jerome: in simulations verborumfictorum. Similarly Kimchi. Isaki was the first to understand עגָה=מעוג, as 1Ki_17:13, of the flat bread of the Hebrews, which was baked in the ashes, and to refer the expression to the fawning flatterers, which as favorites of Saul, or in order to obtain food and drink from Saul, and to please him, made sport and witticisms respecting David. Such parasites would then be designated here as outcasts who mocked for bread (Hengst.), or as cake-mockers (De Wette, Delitzsch). At any rate this is better than the interpretation which regards these wicked persons as making mockery as indifferently or as willingly as they would eat a piece of bread or cake (Aben Ezra). But this whole explanation is very uncertain, because bread has this name only on account of its circular form, which has then given rise to the reference to prating around the table (Böttcher), or to mockery in the circle = in turn (Köster).
[Str. VII. Psa_35:17-18. For the meaning of how long, vid.Psa_13:1.—From young lions my only one, or solitary one. Comp. Psa_22:20-21. For the vows of thanksgiving comp. Psa_22:22; Psa_22:25.—C. A. B.]
Str. VIII. [Psa_35:19. Wink with the eye.—Hupfeld: “This is often in the Proverbs a gesture of agreement between confederates, and of cunning, as Pro_10:10, with ב, Pro_6:13, for which likewise the verb עצה is used with עין, Pro_16:30=to close the eyes, and parallel with it, to press the lips together in the same sense.”—C. A. B.]
Psa_35:20. Against the quiet in the land.—The construction is like Isa_23:8, and the meaning is derived from Isa. 18:12 and Jer_6:16, where the nom. abstr. can only have the sense of “quiet.” Thus it is very properly taken by Luther. after Syr. and Chald. The Rabbins on the other hand explain it as cleaving the earth=hiding-place, which is followed in part by Calvin in his translation super scissuras terræ, or they understand the word of fat, rich, and take עַל=with. Clauss translates: “for the stirring up of the land.” The attempts of the Roman Catholic interpreters with the words of the Vulgate, in iracundia terræ loquentes dolos cogitabant, are very artificial. Now it is said to mean a wrath that has worn away (Allioli), then a wrath of a carnal-minded heart (Bellarmin), then wrath=pain and earth=men (Agellius), yes, even terræ is taken as a dative and is made to mean “to the earth”=with itself (Calmet), then the wrath of the earth = common vulgar wrath (Schegg). Jerome has in rapina terræ after Symmach. The other Greek translations differ from one another here. Even in the Sept. there is uncertainty. Whilst Cod. Alex. reads: ἐπ’ ὀργὴν γῆς λαλοῦντες, in the Cod. Vatic. there is. ἐπ’ ὀργῇ δόλους διελογίζοντο. The ancient Psalteries follow the latter reading: super iram dolose cogitabant.
[Psa_35:21. Comp. Psa_22:7 for the first clause. Alexander: “The Hebrew interjection in the last clause (חֶאָה) seems to be a natural express on of joyful surprise. Their success was almost too great to be real, yet attested by their senses. The verse ends with a kind of aposiopesis: ‘our own eyes have seen’—what we could not have believed on the report of another, to wit, the gratification of our warmest wishes Vid. below, Psa_35:25.”—C. A. B.]
[Str. IX. Psa_35:22-24. Thou hast seen.—Antithesis to Psa_35:21, and referring back to Psa_35:17.—Be not silent.—Comp. Psa_28:1.—Be not far.—Comp. Psa_22:11; Psa_22:19; Psa_38:21; Psa_71:12.—Arouse Thyself and awake.—Comp. Psa_7:6; Psa_44:23.—C. A. B.]
[Str. X. Ver 25. Aha, our desire—נפשׁ used by metonymy for desire, and is parallel with swallow up, and refers to the greediness of devouring and the desire to destroy. Comp. Psa_17:9; Psa_27:12.
Psa_35:26. Put on shame.—Hupfeld: “Variation of the previous clause. This is a usual figure of attributes as well as events. Comp. Psa_104:1-2; Psa_109:29; Psa_132:18; Job_8:22.”—C. A. B.]
Str. XI. Psa_35:27. Great is Jehovah.—Hitzig connects the always [A. V. continually] with that which is said, whilst he, with Hupfeld, Delitzsch, et al., regard it as optative. Let Jehovah be great, or be magnified. [So A. V., and this is better, though the view of Hitzig is to be rejected.—C. A. B.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The prayer for Divine interposition for the defence and deliverance of the person and right of a servant of God, may be so closely connected with zeal for the cause and glory of God, that it cannot be stated with any certainty, what in the prayer is in the interest of the service, and what belongs to personal excitement. But it may be very easily seen that such a zeal, even in its utmost strength and its more particular form, has nothing in common with personal revenge, but the inflamed heart and importunity of language. For when the heart is not kindled in sinful passion, but in the fiery wrath of a holy love, it will disclose this internal heat likewise in fiery words; but the breath, which moves and directs this flame, is not the whirlwind of human rage, but the Spirit of God, who makes the servant of God an instrument of the righteousness of God, as well in punishing as in blessing. He, therefore, who would earnestly carry out the Divine will in the world, and who experiences pain, indignation and wrath on account of the opposition of the ungodly, with regard to its power and punishableness, as strongly and deeply as he feels the certainty of his own readiness to the will of God, will not forbear, under suitable circumstances, to implore the execution of the Divine judgment in the punishment of the ungodly, as well as in the deliverance of the innocent and the righteous. Comp. Exeget. and Crit. on Psa_35:5
2. Prayers of this kind may in the life of a man like David appear as necessary, and be recognized as justifiable. For David was without doubt made, by Divine election and calling, a bearer of the historical revelation of redemption, was designated by the anointing ordered of God as the royal vessel and the historical type of the royal majesty of the Messiah, and was preserved and kept in this position and purpose by Divine guidance. His experience and his actions are thus in the closest and most personal relation with the history of the kingdom of God in Israel, so that his enemies appear as the enemies of God. Therefore David may in his prayers, in all earnestness appeal to his just cause and the good pleasure and interest of God in his person, may claim with confidence the righteousness of God, and reckon upon the shame and ruin of his enemies, with as much confidence as he is sure of his own deliverance and preservation, by faith in the Divine faithfulness and truth. He is from this point of view the type of the innocent, suffering, righteous servant of Jehovah, whilst from the other side, he is likewise a sinful man. Therefore he partly seeks his own salvation in the grace of the merciful God alone, partly he has to take good care, in his description of the unrighteousness, wickedness, and ungodliness of his enemies, and in appealing to the Divine righteousness, that he is not carried too far, in his mixing his own carnal nature therewith, and that he does not transgress the legal stand-point of the Old Testament. So much the more then let every man who is not in a similar historical position, calling, and situation, take care of calling down the Divine retributive justice. “The same zeal for the glory of God, which in the Old Testament regarded judgment and revenge on the despisers of God as necessary to atone for the crimen læsæ majestatis, must in the New Testament, where the grace of God stands pre-eminent in the foreground of consciousness, think first whether there is not perhaps a door of grace still open for such wicked ones; and therefore the prayer for mercy must prevail over the prayer for just judgment” (Kurtz).
3. If a man can with a good conscience appeal to his own innocent, benevolent, loving behaviour towards his adversaries, as abundantly shown to them in former times, and yet in remembering this in times of suffering and persecution through the wickedness and unthankfulness of those to whom he had done good, is yet not misled to revengefulness of mind, or driven to deeds of retaliation, but gives the retributive judgment into the hands of God, he will be preserved in the strongest way from transgressing his privileges, and misusing his rights, by the firm view of the earnest and difficult duties; which are laid upon the servant of God with respect to the glory of God and the good of the congregation. He who does this, will not only oppose the false love of the world with true love, but will overcome the sinful hate of the world by holy wrath, and in both ways, help to break the power of the adversaries of God in the world.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
He who would have God for his helper against his enemies, must see to it that he himself has God for his friend, and that he serves Him properly in the congregation.—A servant of God has not only to work for the glory of God, but likewise to suffer, but by both he edifies the congregation.—The righteousness of God is a two-edged sword for the protection of the pious and the ruin of the ungodly.—Prayer is likewise a weapon. He who uses it should see to it that he carries it properly.—A man is not ruined by his enemies, but by his unrighteousness and his impenitence.—Good deeds are often rewarded in the world with ingratitude, but the payment does not fail.—Prayer for retributive judgment has its proper place, but does not suit every time, and is not becoming to everybody.—That armed enemies are opposed by an armed God, brings terror among the ungodly, fleeing to their own ruin, but consolation, help, and joy to the afflicted pious.—The end of the wicked is their ruin in their own nets, but they are driven by the angel of the Lord.—As the sorrows of the pious are undeserved, so the Divine judgment comes upon the ungodly unexpectedly.—As God delivers the entire man, so the entire man is to thank Him.—Wicked enemies, false witnesses, and unjust judges, can bring an innocent man into great danger and severe sorrow of heart; but God is not only our Avenger, but likewise the Deliverer of those who trust in Him.—What happens to thee in secret from the goodness of God, should be thankfully proclaimed in the congregation.—As the goodness of God towards us has no end, so the praise of God should never cease in the congregation.—Wilt thou learn to know thy heart, prove thy experiences, when thou perceivest that it fares badly with thine enemies?
Starke: Since the enemies of a child of God are at the same time enemies of God, he may be comforted by the sure assistance, protection, and judgment of God.—An entire host of angels must protect the pious, a single one, however, is used to ruin an entire troop of the ungodly.—The honor of God does not permit that He should not avenge the innocent on those who have slandered them.—A pious man lives, as it were, among robbers, who desire to rob his soul, but he relies in comfort on the Divine promise to be his deliverer.—A carnal mind makes men wicked hypocrites and enemies of God.—Cruel men carry in human form the character of wild beasts, and show themselves to be such by their works.—If God looks long upon the enemies, He does it, not that He has pleasure in our persecution, but He has pleasure in our patience.—God’s presence, the testimony of a good conscience and confident trust in God can give sufficient and strong consolation in all persecutions.—The greatest power of faith consists in properly appropriating and applying to one’s self the word: my God.—The best description of believers is that they have all their delight in the righteousness of Jesus.—The final end of our redemption consists not in good days and pleasure, but in spreading abroad the glory and majesty of God in the whole world.
Osiander: The praise of the grace and righteousness of God will remain and endure till the day of judgment. For the Gospel will never be entirely quenched in the Church of God, although it shines more dimly at times, and then again more brightly.—Selnekker: The world is ungrateful, but generally rewards good finally with evil. Accept it and fear God. The disciple is not to be better than his master. We do not crave anything better of the world, it remains as it is.—Menzel: God is patient with the sighs of the afflicted Christian.—Renschel: The fruit of sin is shame and disgrace before God and men.—God’s is the vengeance.—Frisch: The armor of God is protection to the pious, defiance to the ungodly.—On earth the cross is regarded as a disgrace, but before God and in heaven it is all honor and glory. Our faith and hope see this, and patience quietly waits the issue.—Arndt: The life of an ungodly man is a constant combat; God has a defence and weapons with which to protect us.—The comfort of the persecuted is the presence of God, the cause of God, the righteousness of God.—Francke: Lord, who is like Thee? This should always be the field-badge of spiritual knighthood.—Tholuck: Whilst thousands who make these prayers care for nothing more than assistance, David in the Spirit is delighted in the moment when all his bones being pervaded with thankfulness, he will give the glory to God, and confess that no other help can be compared with His help.—Stiller: God has no pleasure in the wickedness of men, but He often makes use of such briars in order to train and prove His children.—Diedrich: He who communes with God is likewise true at heart, and makes all the troubles of his neighbors his own, although he cannot himself be comforted by their love in return.
[Matth. Henry: It will be a comfort to us, when men do us wrong, if our consciences can witness for us that we have never done them any.—If God be our friend, no matter who is our enemy.—We shall not lose by the good offices we have done to any, how ungrateful soever they are, for our rejoicing will be this, the testimony of our conscience.—Though the people of God are and study to be a quiet people, yet it has been the common practice of their enemies to devise deceitful matters against them.—Barnes: When we are right in our own cause we may ask a just God to interpose and determine between us and our enemies according to His own nature. As between ourselves and our fellow-men we may bring our cause with this plea before a righteous God; as between ourselves and God, we can make no appeal to His justice, but our only hope is in His mercy.—Spurgeon. What a glorious idea is this of Jehovah blocking the way of persecutors, holding them at the pike’s end, and giving time for the hunted saint to elude pursuit.—One word from the Lord quiets all our fears.—Prayer heard should always suggest praise. It were well if we were more demonstrative in our holy rejoicings. We rob God by suppressing grateful emotions.—God is the champion, the true Knight-errant of all oppressed ones.—Prayer is never lost; if it bless not those for whom intercession is made, it shall bless the intercessor. Clouds do not always descend in showers upon the same spot from which the vapors ascended, but they come down somewhere; and even so do supplications in some place or other yield their showers of mercy.—Praise—personal praise, public praise, perpetual praise—should be the daily revenue of the King of heaven.—To cause hatred is the mark of the wicked, to suffer it causelessly is the lot of the righteous.—Malice has but one eye; it is blind to all virtue in its enemy. Eyes can generally see what hearts wish.—C. A. B.]
Footnotes:
[9][It is better to translate by strive which retains the original meaning and yet may likewise refer to warlike strife.—C. A. B.]
[10][Perowne: “An amplification of the figure occurring already in the Pentateuch where God is spoken of as a man of war, Exo_15:3; Deu_32:41. The bold anthropomorphic working out of the figure is, however, remarkable. It shows the earnest desire in the Poet’s mind to realize the fact that God not only taught his fingers to fight, but mixed in the battle, fighting as it were by his side and assuring him of victory.”—C. A. B.]
[11][Delitzsch refers to the real bereavement of David in the time of his persecution by Saul. His parents had been obliged to flee to Moab. Michal had been torn from him, Jonathan withdrawn, all those at the court of Saul, who had previously sought his favor and friendship as the favorite of the king, were now his enemies.—C. A. B.]
[12][Perowne: “The prayer I offered for them is a prayer I might have offered for myself. So true a prayer was it, so full of love, that I could wish nothing more than that the blessings I asked for them should be vouchsafed to me. This agrees with what follows, ‘As though for my friend or my brother,’ etc.“—C. A. B.]
[13][Riehm refers to Mat_10:13; Luk_10:6; and refers to the custom of carrying valuables in the bosom (likewise of taking to the bosom what is returned to one).—C. A. B.]
[14][This does not seem to give a very clear sense. The context is in favor of heartfelt prayer. And though usage does not allow a direct reference to repeated prayer or praying from the heart, yet the return of the prayer to the bosom may very well be in order to remain there in the bosom as the abiding possession of the soul. The figure of the bosom as the place for the valuable and beloved thing is in favor of this. (Psa_89:50; Num_11:12; Isa_40:11). Thus is prefer the explanation of Aben Ezra, Luther, Calvin, et al.—C. A. B.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v3 fight against--literally, "devour my devourers."
fight against--literally, "devour my devourers."
stop the way against--literally, "shut up" (the way), to meet or oppose, &c.
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I . . . thy salvation--who saves thee.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. Plead my cause—Hebrew, simply plead. The term is…
1. Plead my cause—Hebrew, simply plead. The term is properly forensic, as Job_13:6, but here it means forcible coercion. It variously denotes strife or striving of any kind, but the imagery of Psa_35:1-3 is wholly martial, showing that things had passed beyond the limits of argument and reason, and nothing would avail but power in the line of judgment. This the psalmist cannot undertake, and appeals the matter directly to God.
Fight— A stronger and more specific word than “plead.”
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–2 1. Plead my cause] There is as it were…
1. Plead my cause] There is as it were a suit between him and his enemies. He appeals to Jehovah the Judge to do him justice (cp. Psa_35:23-24). But the court in which the cause is to be tried is the field of battle; and therefore (dropping the figure of a suit) he calls on Jehovah to arm on his behalf. So in Psa_9:4 victory is regarded as a judicial decision. Cp. 1Sa_24:15; 1Sa_25:39. The renderings strive with them that strive with me (R.V.); or, (as Isa_49:25), contend with them that contend with me, obscure this point, and miss the connexion with Psa_35:23. Plead my cause with them that implead me (Cheyne) represents the original better.
1–3. Appeal to Jehovah to arm himself as the Psalmist’s champion.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 (1) Plead my cause.—Better, Strive, O Jehovah, with them…
(1) Plead my cause.—Better, Strive, O Jehovah, with them that strive with me. The construction requires this, and the parallelism suggests recourse to arms rather than to the law.
Fight.—Literally, devour. (Comp. Num_24:8.
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“He shall eat up the nations.” So a Latin author—
“Qua medius pugnæ vorat agmina vortex.”
SILIUS: Punic, 4:230.
Comp. Shakespeare—
“If the wars eat us not up.’—Coriolanus, Acts 1, sc. 1)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–3 A PSALM ascribed to David by the title, and…
A PSALM ascribed to David by the title, and with many characteristics of his early style abrupt, impassioned, full of lively and graphic images, and full of transitions The picture which the writer draws of his own circumstances and position (vers. 11-17, 19-21) accords well with what we know of David"s life when he was a fugitive from Saul, and there is a special agreement between the first verse of the psalm and words historically ascribed to David at this period of his career. (1Sa_24:15) The psalm naturally divides itself into three portions, nearly of equal length (vers. 1-10; 11-18; and 19-28), in each of which may be traced the three elements of complaint, prayer, and promise of thanksgiving; the promise of thanksgiving being in each case reserved to the close. Prayer predominates in the first and third portions, complaint (vers. 11-16) in the second.
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me (comp. 1Sa_24:15, "The Lord therefore be Judge, and judge between me and thee; and see, and plead my cause , and deliver me out of thine hand. The word translated "plead" is a judicial term; but the context shows that it was in the battle-field, rather than in the law-courts, that David"s cause was to be pleaded. The second hemistich is therefore added to explain and correct the first; it is fighting, not pleading, that is needed under the circumstances.
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HOMILIES BY C. CLEMANCE Vers. 1-28. A hard case a very hard one laid before God.
This is one of those psalms in which the writers often meet with much scolding and with scant sympathy. It has been said that this psalm is not worthy of David. We are not prepared to say so: but we are prepared to contend that many of the criticisms passed on it are utterly unworthy of those who thus criticize. If we will but study the whole psalm in all its bearings while we may not feel called on to justify every expression therein, we shall feel bound to regard fairly those circumstances of extreme hardship by which such expressions were called forth. We may have the case before us, if we "open up" the contents of the psalm in the following threefold order.
I THE CASE SHOULD BE ADEQUATELY STUDIED. Beyond all question, it is a hard one, almost more than flesh and blood could bear. We will look at it:
1. As between David and his enemies. A bare enumeration of its main features (of which there are seven) will suffice. He was waylaid without cause (ver. 7). False witnesses spake maliciously against him (ver. 11). They actually rewarded evil for good (ver. 12). In their trouble David had behaved himself as their friend or brother (vers. 13, 14). In his trouble the enemies manifested a malicious joy (vers. 15, 16). Their malice was not against him only, but against others also (ver. 20). And not only so, but against the entire cause of righteousness of which David was the representative, their rage and hatred were directed (ver. 22). Now let us look at the case:
2. As between David and his God. How does he plead with Jehovah? He prays that God himself would interpose, and come into conflict with those who thus afflicted him (vers. 1, 2, 3, 17, 22, 23); that God would manifest himself as David"s Deliverer (ver 3); that the wicked might be thoroughly put to shame; that their way might be dark and slippery, etc. (vers. 4, 5, 6, 8, 26); that God would reveal his delivering grace (ver. 10); that David and those who favoured his righteous cause might rejoice in God"s salvation (ver. 9); that God would execute righteousness and judgment (ver. 24); that he would not permit the malicious joy of the enemy to continue (vers. 19, 25); that the righteous might yet shout for joy at the triumph of their cause (ver. 27); and that with their joy David himself might blend his own (ver. 28). Now, when we thus set the whole psalm before us, and note how grievous is the case which was thus laid before God, and how varied are the forms of petition in which that is done, we cannot but feel amazed at the harsh estimate of David in which some of his critics have indulged. If David was too harsh in speaking of the wicked, his critics are afortiori far too harsh in their treatment of him. Let us therefore note
II THE CASE SHOULD BE FAIRLY ESTIMATED. Let us look at it:
1. Negatively.
(1) The words of this psalm are not the words of God to man, but words of man to God: this is an all-important distinction to make in dealing with the Psalms.
(2) No man can, no man ever could, pray beyond the level of his own spiritual attainment.
(3) Hence it is not necessary that we should attempt to justify every word in the ending of an Old Testament saint, any more than we should attempt to do so in the prayers of God"s people now. But it may be said, "David was a prophet." True, and when he professed to give out God"s word to him, we accept such word implicitly. But that is not the case here. He is not praying as a prophet, but as a troubled saint.
(4) This prayer, with the imprecations it contains, is by no means illustrative of the spirit of the Mosaic dispensation, but only of the degree to which a man who could pray like this, actually fell below the spirit of the dispensation under which he lived. Here we are compelled to differ sharply from Bishop Perowne and others who regard this psalm as indicative of the contrast between the morality of the Old Testament and New Testament dispensations. Though in the Scriptures, revelation is progressive, yet the morality enjoined in the Old Testament is precisely the same as that enjoined in the New. So our Lord teaches. (Mat_22:36-40 Mat_5:17, Mat_5:18) In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord tears off the wrappings with which "they of old time" had concealed the teachings of the Mosaic Law, and restores that Law to its pristine integrity and glory, on his own authority. But in the psalm before us we have not Old Testament morality as given by God, but Old Testament morality as far as attained by the writer. Many a modem representative of religion would sanction the cutting down of Zulus by the thousand in war. What should we say if any one declared that to be New Testament morality, when it was only that individual presenting his own view of it? So with this and other imprecatory psalms; they give us, not God"s precept, but man"s defective prayers. At the same time, while we do not justify these maledictions of David, we are bound in all fairness also to put the matter:
2. Positively.
(1) Here is a case of extreme provocation.
(2) David was a king.
(3) As such, he was not a merely private individual, but the representative of God"s cause.
(4) Hence his petitions are not those of personal vindictiveness; they are the passionate cries of one who yearns for God"s vindication of the right. For we see at once the reason why, and the limit within which, he prays for vengeance on his enemies.
(5) Whoever, owing to an inadequate study of the psalm, cherishes sympathy with David"s enemies rather than with him, is grievously unjust. But we can not only free the case from being any stumbling-block to faith, we may even turn it to good account. Form
III THE CASE MAY BE HELPFULLY UTILIZED. We gather from it:
1. How great is the mercy that wronged saints can look up to God as the Avenger of their cause! (Luk_18:1-8)
2. There is a very great difference between a private feeling of vindictiveness, and the indignation felt at a great public wrong. It would be wicked of us to cherish the first; it would be wicked of us not to cherish the second.
3. Whatever the case of wrong we have to lay before God, we may tell it to him just as we feel it. He is a loving Friend to whom we may unburden everything without any danger of being misunderstood.
4. If in our putting of the case before God, we say anything wrong or wrongly, God will forgive what is wrong in our prayers, and will answer them in his own way, often doing "exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think.
5. Hence we may leave the method of vindicating the right and of shaming the wrong, entirely in the hands of God. Such expressions as those in Vers. 4, 5, 6, 8 would ill become us. (cf. Rom_12:19, Rom_12:20)
6. Nevertheless, it is perfectly true that severity to evil-doers is sometimes the greatest mercy to the Church of God. (Act_5:1-11)
7. God, even now, very often answers the agonizing prayers of saints by "terrible things in righteousness". (Psa_65:5 Rev_8:3-5)
8. If we do not so far sympathize with the spirit of this and other imprecatory psalms as to yearn to see righteousness triumphant and wickedness put to shame, we are fearfully guilty before God, and are sinking immeasurably below the morality and public spirit of those very psalms which are so unfairly criticized and so thoughtlessly condemned. To plead for the victory of righteousness and for the crushing and shaming of iniquity is a necessity of a good man"s nature. He cannot help it. Yea, one petition in the Lord"s Prayer involves the whole, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." And more than this, no one understands the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, who looks at it as providing only for the present forgiveness of individual souls: it is a grand and glorious plan for the in bringing of universal and everlasting righteousness; and when the Saviour"s blood moistened earth"s soil, it guaranteed that earth should be rescued from the destroyer, that the hosts of ill should be exposed and put to shame, and that Christ should wear the everlasting crown. C.
HOMILIES BY W. FORSYTH Vers. 1-28. The flesh and the Spirit.
This psalm has been variously interpreted. Some say David speaks here representatively, not for himself, but for the community of Israel Others say that he speaks prophetically, and with special reference to the days of Messiah. Others again hold that he speaks as a holy man, moved by the Holy Spirit to record the feelings that had passed through his own heart in time of trial. This last seems the more reasonable interpretation.
I First it agrees best with THE METHOD OF INSPIRATION. The object of inspiration is truth. It is not necessary that what is perfect should alone be recorded, but it is that the record itself should be perfect. Besides, there is undoubtedly an advance in the New Testament from the Old, both as respects the spirit of the prophets, and the greatness of the truths revealed.
II Further, this view agrees best with THE ANALOGY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. In Job and Ecclesiastes and elsewhere there are different speakers, and they do not all speak the same thing. There is diversity of opinion, and high debate. We have to walk circumspectly. We have to discriminate, lest we should take the devil"s lie or the counsel of fallible men for the eternal truth of God. (Job_2:4 Job_42:7) So of the Psalms. The record is true, but all that is recorded is not truth. There ate various phases of thought and feeling, of character and life. Even the same speaker does not ways keep the same level; at one time he may cry, "I was as a beast before thee." and almost with the same breath, "Whom have I in heaven but thee?". (Psa_73:22, Psa_73:25)
III Again, this view accords best with THE FACTS OF DAVID"S LIFE. He was not a perfect man; and who so ready to confess this as himself?
Look at the historical parts of Scripture, and you find him saying and doing things far from righteousness. Why should he be judged differently when he speaks in poetry than when he speaks in prose? Is it not reasonable to take what he says, in the one case as in the other, as the honest expression of his heart, and to judge it by the same standard? No doubt the Psalms are to be regarded as spoken in moments of highest religious consecration; but if David is to be held as always speaking in the Psalms as a perfect man, it will be hard to bring the facts into harmony with the other facts of his life, and, moreover, the effect would be to remove the psalms from the sphere of ordinary experience, and to empty them of much of their sweetness and virtue. Delitzsch has said that "this whole psalm is as it were the lyrical amplification of that which David says when face to face with Saul in 1Sa_24:16." Looking at it in this light, it seems the story of a soul"s conflict the struggle of the spirit against the flesh painful and severe, with risings and failings, till at last peace is attained. It begins with a passionate cry to God for justice, and the language, full of fire and impetuosity, is such as would naturally rise to the lips of a man of war. His imagination works in the line of his desires, and pictures an overthrow of his enemies, quick and terrible. Their destruction would be his "salvation," and for this he would rejoice and give God thanks (vers. 9, 10). In the second part of the psalm he reverts W the cruel treatment he had received, but speaks of it with more calmness more in sorrow than in anger. He remembers how he had tried to be patient, how he had restrained himself, and returned good for evil. But it had been in vain. Brooding upon this, his heart again rises in wrath (ver. 17). But as he comes nearer to God, and feels more intensely the sweetness of God"s love, he recovers more quietness. Once more the surges of passion rise, and he is in danger of being overwhelmed; but again he turns to God, his only Refuge, and casting himself upon his care, and committing things wholly to his hand, he enters into the rest of faith and hope and love. The portrait may be said to be true to life. We have not only the good, but the bad; not only love to man, but the struggle to keep that love; not only faith in God, but the difficulty of gaining the height of that faith, and of holding it when it had been won. Thus we have a record which harmonizes with the experience of God"s saints of all ages from Abraham to Paul, and that is rich in instruction and comfort. Who is there who tries to follow Christ, but knows how hard it is to be patient under injustice, to forgive our enemies, and to pray for them who despitefully use us and persecute us? It is some comfort for us, as with Christian when sorely tried in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, to hear the voice of a brother, and to be able to say, each one to his soul, "that some who feared God were in this valley as well as himself. W.F.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT Vers. 1-10. Battle and victory.
The psalmist complains of unbelievers, ungodly enemies, prays for deliverance, giving promise of thanksgiving if his prayer is granted. The psalm falls into three divisions, in each of which the three elements of complaint, prayer, and thanksgiving are contained. The divisions are vers. 1-10; vers. 11-18; vers. 19-28. Take first division and its suggestions (vers. 1-10).
I EVERY MAN HAS A SPIRITUAL BATTLE TO FIGHT, We have to contend against:
1. Enemies that threaten the destruction of the soul. (Ver. 4) Our temptations, from within and from without, are our dangerous foes, who will conquer and destroy us if we do not conquer and destroy them. We know what unresisted sin leads to.
2. They are crafty and insidious foes. (Vers. 7, 8) They use smiles and sophistries to conceal their real nature and designs. Evil men lay plots to ensnare the young and unwary. Hence the need of watchfulness and circumspection.
3. They are cruel, unrelenting foes. (Ver. 4) They devise our hurt and follow us continually. There can be no compromise with them.
II WE MUST SEEK THE HELP OF GOD TO GIVE US THE VICTORY IN THIS BATTLE.
1. We must fight with Divine weapons. The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and the helmet of salvation, etc.
2. Under the Divine inspiration. Filled with the trust, and love, and courage, and hope of those who catch their inspiration from Christ. Christ is the Captain of our salvation. The true soldier will follow the great General everywhere.
3. God helping us, we are stronger than all our foes, and are sure of victory at last.
III WHEN THE BATTLE HAS BEEN FINALLY WON WE SHALL BE FILLED WITH GRATITUDE TO GOD. (Vers. 9, 10) For all the grace and help we have received in every stage of the conflict. And for the eternal value of the victory we have gained. This cannot be fully known here. S.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Title. A Psalm of David. Here is all we…
Title. A Psalm of David. Here is all we know concerning this Psalm, but internal evidence seems to fix the date of its composition in those troublous times when Saul hunted David over hill and dale, and when those who fawned upon the cruel king, slandered the innocent object of his wrath, or it may be referred to the unquiet days of frequent insurrections in David's old age. The whole Psalm is the appeal to heaven of a bold heart and a clear conscience, irritated beyond measure by oppression and malice. Beyond a doubt David's Lord may be seen here by the spiritual eye.
Divisions. The most natural mode of dividing this Psalm is to note its triple character. Its complaint, prayer, and promise of praise are repeated with remarkable parallelism three times, even as our Lord in the Garden prayed three times, using the same words. The first portion occupies from Ps 35:1-10, the second from Ps 35:11-18, and the last from Ps 35:19-28; each section ending with a note of grateful song.
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Ver. 1. Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Plead against those who plead against me; strive with my strivers; contend with my contenders. If they urge their suit in the law court, Lord, meet them there, and beat them at their own weapons. Every saint of God shall have this privilege: the accuser of the brethren shall be met by the Advocate of the saints. Fight against them that fight against me. If my advisers try force as well as fraud, be a match for them; oppose thy strength to their strength. Jesus does this for all his beloved--for them he is both intercessor and champion; whatever aid they need they shall receive from him, and in whatever manner they are assaulted they shall be effectually defended. Let us not fail to leave our case into the Lord's hand. Vain is the help of man, but ever effectual is the interposition of heaven. What is here asked for as a boon, may be regarded as a promise to all the saints; in judgment they shall have a divine advocate, in warfare a divine protection.
Whole Psalm. Bonar entitles this Psalm, "The awful utterance of the Righteous One regarding those that hate him without cause, "and he makes the following remarks thereupon: --"Throughout the endless day of eternity the Lord Jesus shall himself speak the Father's `praise, 'and shall put marked emphasis on his `righteousness'-- that righteousness which shall have been exhibited, both in the doom of those who hated the offered Redeemer, and in the salvation of those who received him. There is nothing in all this wherein his own may not fully join, especially on that day when their views of justice shall be far clearer and fuller than now. On that day we shall be able to understand how Samuel could hew Agag in pieces, and the godly hosts of Israel slay utterly in Canaan man and woman and child, at God's command. We shall be able, not only fully agree in the doom, `Let them be confounded, 'etc., but even to sing, `Amen, Hallelujah, ' over the smoke of torment. Re 19:1-2. We should in some measure now be able to see every verse of this Psalm in the spirit in which the Judge speaks it, we feeling ourselves his assessors in judging the world. 1Co 6:2. We shall, at all events, be able to use it on that day when what is written here shall be all accomplished." Andrew A. Bonar.
Ver. 1. Plead my cause, O God, with them that strive with me.
1. Doth the world condemn thee for thy zeal in the service of God? Reproachfully scorn thee for thy care to maintain good works? not blush to traduce thee with imputations of preciseness, conceited singularity, pharisaical hypocrisy? Oh, but if thy conscience condemn thee not all this while, if that be rectified by the sacred word of God, if thou aim at his glory in pursuing thine own salvation, and side not with the disturbers of the church, go on, good Christian, in the practice of piety, discourage not thyself in thy laudable endeavours, but recount with comfort that the Lord is thy judge 1Co 4:4, with a scio cui crediderim, "I know whom I have believed." 2Ti 1:12. 2. Art thou wrongfully adjudged in the erroneous courts of men? are truth and righteousness gone aside from their proper places? Is equity neglected, and poverty overlaid? Well, have patience awhile, cheer up thy fainting spirits, there is a God that beholdeth the innocency of thy cause, unto whom thou hast liberty to make thy last appeal: Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Or, 3. Art thou otherwise injured by the hands of malicious men? and doth a penurious estate disable thee to sue for amends? Doth a Nimrod oppress thee? A Laban defraud thee? A covetous landlord gripe thee? Well, yet take not the matter into thine own hands by attempting unlawful courses; presume not to be judge in thine own cause, for default of a present redress; but often remember what the apostle taught his Thessalonians: "It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you." Isaac Craven's Sermon at Paul's Cross, 1630.
Ver. 1. Plead, etc. More literally, litigate, O Lord, with them that litigate against me, contend against them that contend with me; i.e., avenge me of mine adversaries. Daniel Cresswell, D.D., F.R.S., in "The Psalms of David according to the Book of Common Prayer: with Critical and Explanatory Notes",
1843.
Ver. 1. Jesus our Advocate and Champion; our friend in the courts of heaven and the battles of earth.
Psalms 35:2*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 35
Psalms 35
THE psalmists life is in danger. He is the victim of ungrateful hatred. False accusations of crimes that he never dreamed of are brought against him. He professes innocence, and appeals to Jehovah to be his Advocate and also his Judge. The prayer in Psa_35:1 a uses the same word and metaphor as David does in his remonstrance with Saul. {1Sa_24:15} The correspondence with Davids situation in the Sauline persecution is, at least, remarkable, and goes far to sustain the Davidic authorship. The distinctly individual traits in the psalm are difficulties in the way of regarding it as a national psalm. Jeremiah has several coincidences in point of expression and sentiment, which are more naturally accounted for as reminiscences by the prophet than as indications that he was the psalmist. His genius was assimilative, and liked to rest itself on earlier utterances. The psalm has three parts, all of substantially the same import, and marked off by the conclusion of each being a vow of praise and the main body of each being a cry for deliverance, a characterisation of the enemy as ungrateful and malicious, and a profession of the singers innocence. We do not look for melodious variations of note in a cry for help. The only variety to be expected is in its shrill intensity and prolongation. The triple division is in accordance with the natural feeling of completeness attaching to the number. If there is any difference between the three sets of petitions, it may be observed that the first (Psa_35:1-10) alleges innocence and vows praise without reference to others; that the second (Psa_35:11-18) rises to a profession not only of innocence, but of beneficence and affection met by hate, and ends with a vow of public praise; and that the final section (Psa_35:19-28) has less description of the machinations of the enemy and more prolonged appeal to Jehovah for His judgment, and ends, not with a solo of the psalmists gratitude, but with a chorus of his friends, praising God for his "prosperity." The most striking features of the first part are the boldness of the appeal to Jehovah to fight for the psalmist and the terrible imprecations and magnificent picture in Psa_35:5-6. The relation between the two petitions of Psa_35:1, "Plead with those who plead against me" and "Fight with them that fight against me," may be variously determined. Both may be figurative, the former drawn from legal processes, the latter from the battlefield. But more probably the psalmist was really the object of armed attack, and the "fighting" was a grim reality. The suit against him was being carried on, not in a court, but in the field. The rendering of the R.V. in Psa_35:1, "Strive with who strive against me," obscures the metaphorof a lawsuit, which, in view of its further expansion in Psa_35:23-24 (and in "witnesses" in Psa_35:11?), is best retained. That is a daring flight of reverent imagination which thinks of the armed Jehovah as starting to His feet to help one poor man. The attitude anticipates Stephens vision of "the Son of man standing," not throned in rest, but risen in eager sympathy and intent to succour. But the panoply in which the psalmists faith arrays Jehovah, is purely imaginative and, of course, has nothing parallel in the martyrs vision. The "target" was smaller than the "shield". {2Ch_9:15-16} Both could not be wielded at once, but the incongruity helps to idealise the bold imagery and to emphasise the Divine completeness of protecting power. It is the psalmist, and not his heavenly Ally, who is to be sheltered. The two defensive weapons are probably matched by two offensive ones in Psa_35:3. The word rendered in the A.V. "stop" ("the way" being a supplement) is more probably to be taken as the name of a weapon, a battle axe according to some, a dirk or dagger according to others. The ordinary translation gives a satisfactory sense, but the other is more in accordance with the following preposition, with the accents, and with the parallelism of target and shield. In either case, how beautifully the spiritual reality breaks through the warlike metaphor! This armed Jehovah, grasping shield and drawing spear, utters no battle shout, but whispers consolation to the trembling man crouching behind his shield. The outward side of the Divine activity, turned to the foe, is martial and menacing; the inner side is full of tender, secret breathings of comfort and love.
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The previous imagery of the battlefield and the Warrior God moulds the terrible wishes in Psa_35:4-6, which should not be interpreted as having a wider reference than to the issue of the attacks on the psalmist. The substance of them is nothing more than the obverse of his wish for his own deliverance, which necessarily is accomplished by the defeat of his enemies. The "moral difficulty" of such wishes is not removed by restricting them to the special matter in hand, but it is unduly aggravated if they are supposed to go beyond it. However restricted, they express a stage of feeling far beneath the Christian, and the attempt to slur over the contrast is in danger of hiding the glory of midday for fear of not doing justice to the beauty of morning twilight. It is true that the "imprecations" of the Psalter are not the offspring of passion, and that the psalmists speak as identifying their cause with Gods; but when all such considerations are taken into account, these prayers against enemies remain distinctly inferior to the code of Christian ethics. The more frankly the fact is recognised, the better. But, if we turn from the moral to the poetic side of these verses, what stern beauty there is in that awful picture of the fleeing foe, with the angel of Jehovah pressing hard on their broken ranks! The hope which has been embodied in the legends of many nations, that the gods were seen fighting for their worshippers, is the psalmists faith, and in its essence is ever true. That angel, whom we heard of in the previous psalm as defending the defenceless encampment of them that fear Jehovah, fights with and scatters the enemies like chaff before the wind. One more touch of terror is added in that picture of flight in the dark, on a slippery path, with the celestial avenger close on the fugitives heels, as when the Amorite kings fled down the pass of Beth-horon, and "Jehovah cast great stones from heaven upon them." Aeschylus or Dante has nothing more concentrated or suggestive of terror and beauty than this picture.
The psalmists consciousness of innocence is the ground of his prayer and confidence. Causeless hatred is the lot of the good in this evil world. Their goodness is cause enough; for mens likes and dislikes follow their moral character. Virtue rebukes, and even patient endurance irritates. No hostility is so hard to turn into love as that which has its origin, not in the attitude of its object, but in instinctive consciousness of contrariety in the depths of the soul. Whoever wills to live near God and tries to shape his life accordingly may make up his mind to be the mark for many arrows of popular dislike, sometimes lightly tipped with ridicule, sometimes dipped in gall, sometimes steeped in poison, but always sharpened by hostility. The experience is too uniform to identify the poet by it, but the correspondence with Davids tone in his remonstrances with Saul is, at least, worthy of consideration. The familiar figures of the hunters snare and pitfall recur here, as expressing crafty plans for destruction, and pass, as in other places, into the wish that the lex talionis may fall on the would be ensnarer. The text appears to be somewhat dislocated and corrupted in Psa_35:7-8. The word "pit" is needless in Psa_35:7 a, since snares are not usually spread in pits, and it is wanted in the next clause, and should therefore probably be transposed. Again, the last clause of Psa_35:8, whether the translation of the A.V. or of the R.V. be adopted, is awkward and feeble from the repetition of "destruction," but if we read "pit," which involves only a slight change of letters, we avoid tautology, and preserve the reference to the two engines of craft: "Let his net which he spread catch him; in the pit-let him fall therein!" The enemys fall is the occasion of glad praise, not because his intended victim yields to the temptation to take malicious delight in his calamity (Schadenfreude). His own deliverance, not the others destruction, makes the singer joyful in Jehovah, and what he vows to celebrate is not the retributive, but the delivering, aspect of the Divine act. In such joy there is nothing unworthy of the purest forgiving love to foes. The relaxation of the tension of anxiety and fear brings the sweetest moments, in the sweetness of which soul and body seem to share, and the very bones, which were consumed and waxed old, {Psa_6:3; Psa_32:3} are at ease, and, in their sense of well-being, have a tongue to ascribe it to Jehovahs delivering hand. No physical enjoyment surpasses the delight of simple freedom from long torture of pain, nor are there many experiences so poignantly blessed as that of passing out of tempest into calm. Well for those who deepen and hallow such joy by turning it into praise, and see even in the experiences of their little lives tokens of the incomparable greatness and unparalleled love of their delivering God!
Once more the singer plunges into the depths, not because his faith fails to sustain him on the heights which it had won, but because it would travel the road again, in order to strengthen itself by persistent prayers which are not "vain repetitions." The second division (Psa_35:11-18) runs parallel with the first, with some differences. The reference to "unjust witnesses" and their charges of crimes which he had never dreamed of may be but the reappearance of the image of a lawsuit, as in Psa_35:1, but is more probably fact. We may venture to think of the slanders which poisoned Sauls too jealous mind, just as in "They requite me evil for good" we have at least a remarkable verbal coincidence with the latters burst of tearful penitence: {1Sa_24:17} "Thou art more righteous than I, for thou hast rendered unto me good, whereas I have rendered unto thee evil." What a wail breaks the continuity of the sentence in the pathetic words of Psa_35:12 b! -" Bereavement to my soul!" The word is used again in Isa_48:7-8, and there is translated "loss of children." The forlorn man felt as if all whom he loved were swept away, and he left alone to face the storm. The utter loneliness of sorrow was never more vividly expressed. The interjected clause sounds like an agonised cry forced from a man on the rack. Surely we hear in it not the voice of a personified nation, but of an individual sufferer, and if we have been down into the depths ourselves, we recognise the sound. The consciousness of innocence marking the former section becomes now the assertion of active sympathy, met by ungrateful hate. The power of kindness is great, but there are ill-conditioned souls which resent it. There is too much truth in the cynical belief that the sure way to make an enemy is to do a kindness. It is all too common an experience that the more abundantly one loves, the less he is loved. The highest degree of unrequited participation in others sorrows is seen in Him who "Himself took our sicknesses." This psalmist so shared in those of his foes that in sackcloth and with fasting he prayed for their healing. Whether the prayer was answered to them or not, it brought reflex blessing to him, for self-forgetting sympathy is never waste, even though it does not secure returns of gratitude. "Your peace shall return to you again," though it may not bring peace to nor with a jangling household. Riehm (in Hupfeld) suggests the transposition of the verbs in Psa_35:14 a-and b: "I bowed down as though he had been my friend or brother; I went in mourning," etc., the former clause painting the drooping head of a mourner, the latter his slow walk and sad attire, either squalid or black.
The reverse of this picture of true sympathy is given in the conduct of its objects when it was the psalmists turn to sorrow. Gleefully they flock together to mock and triumph. His calamity was as good as a feast to the ingrates. Psa_35:15 and Psa_35:16 are in parts obscure, but the general sense is clear. The word rendered "abjects" is unique, and consequently its meaning is doubtful, and various conjectural emendations have been proposed-e.g., "foreigners" which, as Hupfeld says, is "as foreign to the connection as can be," "smiting," and others-but the rendering "abjects," or men of low degree, gives an intelligible meaning. The comparison in Psa_35:16 a is extremely obscure. The existing text is harsh; "profane of mockers for a cake" needs much explanation to be intelligible. "Mockers for a cake" are usually explained to be hangers on at feasts who found wit for dull guests and were paid by a share of good things, or who crept into favour and entertainment by slandering the objects of the hosts dislike. Another explanation, suggested by Hupfeld as an alternative, connects the word rendered "mockers" with the imagery in "tear" (Psa_35:15) and "gnash" (Psa_35:16) and "swallow" (Psa_35:25), and by an alteration of one letter gets the rendering "like profane cake devourers," so comparing the enemies to greedy gluttons, to whom the psalmists ruin is a dainty morsel eagerly devoured.
The picture of his danger is followed, as in the former part, by the psalmists prayer. To him Gods beholding without interposing is strange, and the time seems protracted; for the moments creep when sorrow laden, and Gods help seems slow to tortured hearts. But the impatience which speaks of itself to Him is soothed, and, though the man who cries, How long? may feel that his life lies as among lions, he will swiftly change his note of petition into thanksgiving. The designation of the life as "my only one," as in Psa_22:20, enhances the earnestness of petition by the thought that, once lost, it can never be restored. A man has but one life; therefore he holds it so dear. The mercy implored for the single soul will be occasion of praise before many people. Not now, as in Psa_35:9-10, is the thankfulness a private soliloquy. Individual blessings should be publicly acknowledged, and the praise accruing thence may be used as a plea with God, who delivers men that they may "show forth the excellencies of Him who hath called them out of" trouble into His marvellous peace.
The third division (Psa_35:18-28) goes over nearly the same ground as before, with the difference that the prayer for deliverance is more extended, and that the resulting praise comes from the great congregation, joining in as chorus in the singers solo. The former references to innocence and causeless hatred, lies and plots, open-mouthed rage, are repeated. "Our eyes have seen," say the enemies, counting their plots as good as successful and snorting contempt of their victims helplessness; but he bethinks him of another eye, and grandly opposes Gods sight to theirs. Usually that Jehovah sees is, in the Psalter, the same as His helping; but here, as in Psa_35:17, the two things are separated, as they so often are, in fact, for the trial of faith. Gods inaction does not disprove His knowledge, but the pleading soul presses on Him His knowledge as a plea that He would not be deaf to its cry nor far from its help. The greedy eyes of the enemy round the psalmist gloat on their prey; but he cries aloud to his God, and dares to speak to Him as if He were deaf and far off, inactive and asleep. The imagery of the lawsuit reappears in fuller form here. "My cause" in Psa_35:23 is a noun cognate with the verb rendered "plead" or "strive" in Psa_35:1; "Judge me" in Psa_35:24 does not mean, Pronounce sentence on my character and conduct, but, do me right in this case of mine versus my gratuitous foes.
Again recurs the prayer for their confusion, which clearly has no wider scope than concerning the matter in hand. It is no breach of Christian charity to pray that hostile devices may fail. The vivid imagination of the poet hears the triumphant exclamations of gratified hatred: "Oho! our desire!" "We have swallowed him," and sums up the character of his enemies in the two traits of malicious joy in his hurt and self-exaltation in their hostility to him.
At last the prayer, which has run through so many moods of feeling, settles itself into restful contemplation of the sure results of Jehovahs sure deliverance. One receives the blessing; many rejoice in it. In significant antithesis to the enemies joy is the joy of the rescued mans lovers and favourers. Their "saying" stands over against the silenced boastings of the losers of the suit. The latter "magnified themselves," but the end of Jehovahs deliverance will be that true hearts will "magnify" Him. The victor in the cause will give all the praise to the Judge, and he and his friends will unite in self-oblivious praise. Those who delight in his righteousness are of one mind with Jehovah, and magnify Him because He "delights in the peace of His servant." While they ring out their praises, the humble suppliant, whose cry has brought the Divine act which has waked all this surging song, "shall musingly speak in the low murmur of one entranced by a sweet thought" (Cheyne), or, if we might use a fine old word, shall "croon" over Gods righteousness all the day long. That is the right end of mercies received. Whether there be many voices to join in praise or no, one voice should not be silent, that of the receiver of the blessings, and, even when he pauses in his song, his heart should keep singing day-long and life-long praises.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 “This psalm, If It be as the inscription tells…
INTRODUCTION
“This psalm, If It be as the inscription tells us a psalm of David, must have been composed either during his persecution by Saul or during the revolt of Absalom. It is usual to connect it with his words in 1Sa_24:15. Its peculiar feature is, that the enemies on whom the poet imprecates the righteous judgments of God are men who had formerly been his friends, men for whom he had prayed in their sorrow’ with a brother’s heart,’ and who now requited his love with ungrateful hatred. Such an enemy Saul may have been; but we never find any trace of bitterness in David’s feelings towards Saul. The generous enemy whose heart smote him because he had cut off Saul’s skirt, and who always recognised in Saul the Lord’s anointed, would never have called down the judgments of God upon his head. It seems to me, therefore, more probable, that the aiders and abettors of Absalom’s conspiracy, men like Ahithophel and his associates, are aimed at in the poet’s burning words. But all this, and even the authorship itself, must be matter of conjecture. The psalm falls into three principal divisions, each of which closes with a thanksgiving.”—Perowne.
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WHOLE PSALM
The views taken of the spirit and purpose of this psalm vary greatly. Some interpreters hold that there is reference throughout to the Messiah. Thus, A. A. Bonar writes, “This is an awful psalm. Let us read it as the words of the Lord Jesus, and what do we find? We find Him praying to the Father for help, and then consenting to the doom of His relentless, impenitent foes; yea, rather pronouncing the doom with His own lips, even as when He shall say to the barren fig-tree, ‘Cut it down,’ and to those on the left hand, ‘Depart.’ It is in that spirit He says, ‘Let them be confounded’ (Psa_35:4-6). This is their sentence uttered by the lips of the Judge. It is not the wish of one who is revengeful; it is the utterance of justice compelled by the state of parties to speak in stern severity. Our Lord Himself quotes Psa_35:19, ‘They hated me without a cause,’ in Joh_15:25, on the last evening He spent with His disciples before He suffered. For then He found Himself in the very situation so strikingly described in Psa_35:11-12,—false witnesses rising up—men rewarding His whole career of kindness by spoiling His soul.”
Other interpreters strongly oppose this opinion. Thus, Dr. David Thomas calls the supposition that the psalm is prophetical of the Messiah, “simple blasphemy.” He says, “There is nothing of the spirit of Christ in the psalm; it is eternally antagonistic to the teachings of His Sermon on the Mount, and to the tenor of His whole life. This poem burns with vengeance from beginning to end,” As an exponent of the more general opinion, Perowne may be quoted. “But how are we to account for such prayers for vengeance at all? Are these the mere outbursts of passionate and unsanctified feeling, or are they the legitimate expression of a righteous indignation? Are they to be excused as being animated by’ the spirit of Elias,’ a spirit not unholy, indeed, but far removed from the meekness and gentleness of Christ? or are they stereotyped forms in which the spirit of Christian devotion may utter itself? Are they Jewish only, or may they be Christian also? An uninstructed fastidiousness, it is well known, has made many persons recoil from reading these psalms at all. Many have found their lips falter when they have been called to join in using them in the congregation, and have either uttered them with bated breath and doubting heart, or have interpreted them in a sense widely at variance with the letter. Some have tried to reconcile them with a more enlightened conscience by regarding such words, not as the expression of a wish, but as the utterance of a prediction; but the Hebrew optative, which is distinct enough from the simple future, absolutely forbids this expedient. Others, again, would see in them expressions which may lawfully be used in the soul’s wrestling against spiritual enemies. And, finally, some would defend them as utterances of righteous zeal for God’s honour, and remind us that if we do not sympathise with such zeal, it may be, not because our religion is more pure, but because our hearts are colder.
Now, the real source of the difficulty lies in our not observing and bearing in mind the essential difference between the Old Testament and the New. The older dispensation was in every sense a sterner one than the new. The spirit of Elias, though not an evil spirit, was not the spirit of Christ (Luk_9:55). And through Him His disciples are made partakers of the same spirit. But this was not the spirit of the older economy. The Jewish nation had been trained in a sterner school. It had been steeled and hardened by the discipline which had pledged it to a war of extermination with idoloters, and however necessary such a discipline might be, it would not tend to foster the gentler virtues. It is conceivable how even a righteous man under it, feeling it to be his bounden duty to root out evil wherever he saw it, and identifying, as he did, his own enemies, with the enemies of Jehovah, might use language which to us appears unnecessarily vindictive. To men so trained and taught, what we call “religious toleration” was a thing not only wrong, but absolutely inconceivable. It may be quite true that we find revenge forbidden as directly in the Old Testament as in the New, as, for instance, in Lev_19:18. And it may be no less true that we find instances of imprecation in the New (cf. 2 Tim. iv. 14; Act_23:3; and 1Co_16:23). But even these expressions are very different from the varied, deliberate, carefully constructed, detailed anathemas of the psalms. And our Lord’s denunciations, to which Hengstenberg refers, are in no way parallel. They are not curses upon individuals, but, in fact, solemn utterances of the great truth: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” But, after all, whatever may be said of particular passages, the general tone which runs through the two covenants is unquestionably different. To deny this is not to honour Moses, but to dishonour Christ (Mat_5:43; Mat_19:8). On the other hand, we must not forget that these imprecations are not the passionate longing for personal revenge. The singer undoubtedly sees in his enemies the enemies of God and His Church. They that are not with Him are against God. And because the zeal of God’s house ever consumes him, he prays that all the doers of iniquity may be rooted out. The indignation, therefore, is righteous, though it may appear to us wrongly directed, or excessive in its utterance. Once more, the very fact that a dark cloud hid God’s judgments in the world to come from the view of the Old Testament saints, may be alleged in excuse of this their desire to see Him take vengeance on His enemies here. How deeply the problem of God’s righteousness exercised their minds is abundantly evident from numerous places in the psalms. They longed to see that righteousness manifested. It could be manifested, they thought, only in the evident exaltation of the righteous, and the evident destruction of the wicked, here. Hence, with their eye always fixed on temporal recompense, they could even wish and pray for the destruction of the ungodly. The awful things of the world to come were to a great extent hid from their eyes. Could they have seen them, then, surely, their prayer would have been, not “Let the angel of the Lord persecute them,” but rather, with Him who hung on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I AM THY SALVATION
(Psa_35:1-10.)
Revenge was alien to the spirit of David, both as a man and as a prophet of the Lord (1Sa_24:9, Psa_7:3-5). It seems just, therefore, as it certainly is more pleasant, to regard him as speaking here, not from personal animosity, but from a holy indignation against evil and evil-doers. At first sight, we might imagine that he had particular individuals in view; whether he had or not, we cannot tell. It is sufficient for us to take his vehement cries for Divine judgment, as applicable more to principles than persons. This interpretation seems in accordance with Paul’s use of Psa_5:9, in his argument for the corruption of human nature (Rom_3:13). It is also agreeable to our circumstances, as under the dispensation of the gospel (Mat_5:43-45, Rom_12:19-21).
Psa_35:1-10. The key-note of this passage is found in Psa_35:3. “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” This is confirmed by the form of the thanksgiving in Psa_35:9. “And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord, it shall rejoice in His salvation.” Outward deliverances are but types of inward deliverances. The salvation of God cannot be held as consummated short of the eternal redemption of the soul.
I. Salvation is from God (Psa_35:1-3). “O Lord.” “The name Jehovah, the self-existent Creator, occurs eight times; Adonai, the rightful governor, three times; and Elohim, the everlasting Almighty, twice in this psalm. These names are in keeping with the tenor of the psalm, as it speaks of mercy and of judgment.”—Murphy. “The manifestation of God’s saving and protecting power is described in Scripture, under various figures corresponding to the form of the particular suffering or danger. Against injustice He appears as an advocate or Judge (Psa_35:23), against violence as a warrior (Deu_32:41-42). In this character the psalmist here entreats Him to appear, and for that end to seize, grasp, or lay hold of his weapons.”—Alexander. “Such figurative representations of God tend to give us a more vivid apprehension of His powerful help.”—Tholuck. “Plead, O Lord, with them that strive with me.” This means, “Oppose my opposers, devour my devourers, strive with my strivers.” “Shield and buckler” were weapons of defence. They may represent “the greater and the lesser protections of providence.” “Draw out the spear,” i.e., for attack. “Stop the way,” i.e., encounter and thwart the persecutor. “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” This appeal expresses the faith and hope of the believer. Nothing is so fitted to give courage as the sense of Jehovah’s presence and love. The cause of His people is His cause. He identifies Himself with them.
II. Salvation implies death to evil, and life to good (Psa_35:4-8). “The psalmist regards all men simply as they stand with God, and therefore divides them into those who accept His mercy, and those who are at enmity with Him. And his own enemies he regards solely as the enemies of God; so long as they continue in this frame of mind, he has no prayers for them, but that they may be disappointed in their ungodly designs. Such a result is the only one likely to bring them to a better mind. Plainly he views them as incorrigible offenders, who will never come to themselves but by the rough handling of adversity, if even by that. If they know anything of God, and still defy Him, it is obvious that nothing but the actual experience that He cannot be defied will bring them to repentance. And if that will not do it, he looks upon them as reprobates.”—Murphy. Carrying out the figure of Jehovah as a Man of War, the psalmist depicts with terrific force the discomfiture of His enemies.
1. Shameful defeat (Psa_35:4). They are not only arrested, but driven back in confusion. All their malicious efforts are frustrated. Their faces are covered with shame. So it was in a gracious sense with Saul of Tarsus, but, alas! it is seldom that defeat implies repentance.
2. Headlong rout (Psa_35:5). “Chaff” is the emblem of vanity (Psa_1:4), as “the Wind” is the emblem of judgment. In the previous psalm (Psa_34:7), the angel of the Lord is represented as the angel of mercy, here as the angel of judgment, presiding over the storm that sweeps away God’s enemies. There is a similar contrast in the story of Peter’s deliverance and Herod’s doom (Act_12:7).
3. Over-whelming ruin (Psa_35:6-8). The image seems that of an army broken and driven back in horrid rout, and confusion worse confounded. With such terrible scenes David as a soldier was not unfamiliar. “Let their way be dark and slippery.” Let it be dark, so that they cannot see, and slippery, so that they cannot find safe footing. How terrible the fate of God’s enemies, with no way of escape before, and the avenger pressing hard behind. Psa_35:7. “For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit.” The reference is to the artifices used for taking birds and beasts of prey. “Without cause,” “wantonly, gratuitously, unprovoked, and therefore prompted by mere malice.”—Alexander. This is their condemnation. Psa_35:8 indicates how the ruin of the wicked is self caused, and will come upon them at last sudden and awful, as the crash of a falling house.
III. Salvation demands everlasting gratitude and praise (Psa_35:9-10). “Neither revenge nor any other form of selfishness is the source of the soul’s joy, but only the Lord and His salvation. ‘All my bones.’ This is the vehement figure employed by a healthy and hearty gratitude. ‘Lord, who is like Thee.’ This verse amplifies the thought of the preceding one. ‘Delivering the humble.’ There is a union of justice and benevolence, which exhibits at the same time the strength and the charm of the moral government of God. The very same act delivers the oppressed, and defeats the oppressor.”—Murphy. “He would not be worthy of the name of man who should look calmly on the tyrant, the swindler, or the murderer, building up his fortunes on the misery and ruin of his fellowmen, and thwarting with cold, determined malignity every effort of the righteous and the benevolent to improve their condition. As little would he be worthy of the name of Christian, who could survey unmoved the efforts of unprincipled men, to hold the souls of their fellows in eternal darkness, and drag them back into the gulf of destruction, when others were helping them to glory, honour, and immortality. The first wish of the Christian for such persons is, that their hearts may be changed. He would fain save the persons, and in the spirit of his forgiving Master, he would welcome them to the mercy and the blessedness he himself has found. But come what may of themselves, the only wish he can have respecting their cause is, that it may utterly perish. And if they cling to the pernicious cause, in spite of every effort to show them its wickedness; and to impress them with its doom, if the cause, and the persons upholding it, become so indissolubly blended that the one cannot be destroyed without the other; why, then, in spite of sickly sentimentalism, it is the manly duty of God’s servant to call for the destruction of both; and it is with a holy satisfaction he is enabled to anticipate the fulfilment of his desire. No soft sympathy for doomed individuals who, in their determined wickedness, have scorned every warning, and resisted every appeal, shall hinder the servant of God from rejoicing when by their overthrow, millions are freed from fetters, and are enabled to set forward on a glorious career of light, liberty, and joy.”—W. G. Blaikie. God’s rescues not only call forth gratitude of His people on earth, but awaken the songs of heaven. As there is joy amongst the angels over one sinner that repenteth, so there are exulting alleluias over the overthrow of God’s enemies, and the final triumph of His kingdom (Rev_19:1-3).
EVIL FOR GOOD
(Psa_35:11-18.)
I. Innocence calumniated (Psa_35:11). “Unjust witnesses.”—Delitzch. “Unscrupulous witnesses.”—Perowne. These were men accustomed to violence and deceit. They wished to ruin David, and as they could not accuse him truly, they had no scruple in accusing him falsely. They even endeavoured to wring from him a confession of crimes, which he had not only not committed, but of which he had no knowledge. “To please Saul, there were always men to be found mean enough to impeach David.”—Spurgeon. Such things are still done.
II. Goodwill repaid with bereavement (Psa_35:12). There was nothing but kindness on David’s part, but his enemies returned evil for good (cf. Saul, 1Sa_24:17). They had no pity. Their conduct wounded him deeply. “Spoiling of soul,” i.e., bereaving my soul. “David sent his parents to the king of Moab for safety; he was severed from Michal his wife and from Jonathan his friend, and he was estranged not only from Saul, but from all his court.”—Murphy. “Very touching are the words, ‘My soul is bereaved,’ I am alone in the world; I who have ever sought to help the friendless and comfort the afflicted, and who prayed so earnestly for others, am forsaken of all.”—Perowne.
III. Brotherly kindness requited with hatred (Psa_35:13-14). “The general idea is, that he displayed the deepest sympathy with their distresses. This idea is expressed by figures borrowed from the oriental mourning usages. Sackcloth, fasting, and prayer, are particularly mentioned.”—Alexander.
“Yet I,” emphatic in contrast with their selfishness.
“Sackcloth,” the raiment of sympathy and sorrow.
“Fasting,” the idea of overpowering compassion. “My prayer returned,” “was again and again repeated on their behalf. ‘In my bosom,’ in the silent aspirations of my heart.”—Murphy “As one that mourneth for his mother, I went softly about in mourning attire.” Delitzch. The loss of a mother is held in the East as the saddest of all bereavements. “How few professors in these days have such bowels of compassion; and yet under the Gospel there should be far more tender love than under the law. Had we more hearty love to mankind, and care for its innumerable ills, we might be far more useful; certainly we should be infinitely more Christlike. ‘He prayeth best, who loveth best.’ “—Spurgeon.
IV. Misfortune met with derision (Psa_35:15). “But in mine adversity.” Whether his affliction was in body or outward condition, it was made the occasion of scorn instead of comfort, and that by the most abject. “At my halting, when I leaned to one side from the upright posture of prosperity. When they saw the first change in the countenance of Saul towards him, their envy was gratified.”—Murphy.
“When I limped, cripples mocked at me, i.e., those who were themselves contemptible treated me with contempt. ‘I did not know it.’ It was done behind my back, and while I was entirely unsuspicious. ‘They rent or tore me’ by their slanders.”—Alexander.
V. Piety made the subject of ribaldry and scorn (Psa_35:16). The language here is obscure. Perowne translates “with them that are profane in their outlandish mockings.” Delitzch, “after the manner of common parasites.” Alexander, “with worthless mockers for bread.” The reference seems to be to hangers on at the tables of the rich (lit. “cake-mockers”), who were wont for hire or a “bit of bread,” to play the buffoon, and to make entertainment for the guests. Piety would be a common subject for their mockery. Thus it has been often in the world. There have been historians who have sneered at things sacred. There have been novelists who have ridiculed evangelical religion. There have been poets who have prostituted their genius to make piety the sport of fools. Even to this day there are men so base, that to gratify their patrons, in a word, “for a bit of bread” they will sell the truth, mock at purity, and cast contempt on all that is holy and God-like.
“Very forcibly might our Lord have used the words of these verses! Let us not forget to see the despised and rejected of men here painted to the life. Calvary and the ribald crew around the cross seem brought before our eyes.”—Spurgeon.
Psa_35:17-18. “The sufferer’s appeal to the Lord.” “Lord.” Adonai, the governor who is bound to administer justice. “How long” (Psa_6:3-10). This is the expostulation of the sufferer under persecution. How often has it been uttered!
“From their destructions,” their destructive intents and endeavours. “My only one” (Psa_22:20).
“Young lions” (Psa_34:10), in human shape. Psa_35:18. “I will thank.” Confess Thy name, especially Thy goodness. “A mighty people.” Mighty for their numbers, and their communion with God.—Murphy.
THE CAUSELESS HATES
(Psa_35:19-28.)
I. His character (Psa_35:19-22). He is described as false, “false enemies;” as spiteful, “my haters without cause,” i.e., “out of sheer spite.”—Alexander. (Psa_7:4; Psa_25:3; cf. Joh_15:25), As turbulent. “For they speak not peace, but they devise words of deceit against the quiet in the laud,” i.e., “the land of promise, considered as the home of God’s chosen people, who, as its rightful proprietors, are characteristically peaceful, and averse to all strife and disorder.”—Alexander. He is further described as adding insult to injury (Psa_35:21). “The gaping mouth, insulting laugh, and glaring eye, are the rude indications of malice.”—Murphy. Thus his enemies hated Daniel (Dan_6:4), thus Haman hated Mordecai (Est_3:5-6), thus the ten brethren hated Joseph. Every conscious malicious effort strengthens the unholy passion. “Whom we have injured we are sure to hate.” There is a fiendish joy in the discovery of any fault which may afford some excuse for the conduct pursued (Mic_7:8).
In having without a cause, they may be said not merely to hate truth and goodness, but to hate God Himself. It is the spirit of hell (cf. Joh_15:18-25; 1Jn_2:9; 1Jn_3:15; 1Jn_4:20).
II. His righteous doom (Psa_35:22-26). There is here a twofold and earnest appeal to God for judgment. He is regarded—
1. As a silent witness. “Thou hast looked on, O Lord, be not silent.” Mine enemies “are not the only witnesses of my distress, for Thou, Lord, likewise seest, and hast long seen it. Seeing it, therefore, be no longer silent.”—Alexander.
2. As an almighty friend. “O Lord, be not far from me.” Be my shield and helper. The sense of God’s nearness gives comfort and courage.
3. As a righteous judge (Psa_35:23-24). “Do me justice, clear me from aspersion, grant an attestation of my innocence, in the exercise and exhibition of Thine own essential rectitude, and in accordance with that covenant relation which exists between us; and thus in the most effectual manner take away from my malignant enemies all pretext and occasion for exulting in my overthrow, or otherwise triumphing at my expense.”—Alexander.
Psa_35:25-26. The appeal to God is renewed, showing the necessary result of judgment in the confusion and disgrace of the wicked, and the exaltation of the righteous.
“Here is the eternal result of all the laborious and crafty devices of the Lord’s enemies. God will make little of them, though they magnified themselves. He will shame them for shaming His people, bring them into confusion for making confusion, pull off their fine apparel, and give them a beggarly suit of dishonour, and turn all their rejoicing into weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Truly the saints can afford to wait.”—Spurgeon.
Psa_35:27-28. “The psalmist is assured of a favourable answer to his appeal, and therefore betakes himself to thanksgiving. ‘Let them shout and be glad that delight in my righteousness,’ i.e., that desires to see justice done to me. He calls upon his friends, as well as himself, to praise the Lord for the justice of His government”.—Murphy.
THE RETURN OF PRAYER
Psa_35:13. This word is obscure. Some understand it of posture (1Ki_18:42); others of inward prayer; others of repeated prayer, and others of ineffectual prayer. Perowne says, “I prefer rendering, ‘And my prayer, may it return into mine own bosom.’ The prayer I offered for them is a prayer I might have offered for myself. So true a prayer was it, so full of love, that I could wish nothing more than that the blessings I asked for them, should be vouchsafed to me” (cf. Mat_10:13; Luk_10:6).
Prayer may return in different ways.
I. Unheard. The priests of Baal cried in vain, so with the hypocrite and the formalist; so with the man who prays from hate and not from love.
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
—Shakespeare.
II. Unanswered. Not that God does not hear, or hearing does not care, or caring cannot help, but that for reasons known to Himself. He withholds what is asked. Perhaps the time is not come or the petitioner is not fit to receive the blessing, or it may be better to refuse than to grant the request. God gave Israel a king when they wanted one, but it was in His wrath
(1. Sam. Psa_8:7-9); Hos_13:11). God refused to relieve Paul from the thorn in the flesh, though he besought Him thrice, but it was in love. He gave him better than he asked (2Co_12:9).
III. Bringing benedictions. Others, and ourselves also, are benefited (Job_42:10). Intercessions not only binds us more to God, but brings us nearer our brethren. It is an antidote to selfishness and hate. It fills the heart with love.
“For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain;
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves, and those who call them friend!
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
—Tennyson.
BEHAVING AS A FRIEND
Psa_35:14. This implies—
I. Kind consideration. There are differences. All depends on the spirit (cf. Satan, Job_1:8, and God Pa Psa_31:7). Mark the Priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan (Luk_10:30-36).
II. Generous sympathy. Observation without sympathy is torture. But how sweet is true sympathy. It is like cold water to a thirsty soul. It is like balm to a bleeding heart. It is the man who sympathises that can help. Others may be dull, but he is quick to see. Others may stand by silent and powerless, but he knows, as if by intuition, how to speak a word in season. His very presence is an inspiration (cf. Job_6:14; 1Sa_23:16).
III. Self-denying service. Love is the essence of friendship. Sacrifice is the highest form of love (cf. Joh_15:13; 1Jn_3:18; Rom_5:8). A Moravian missionary sold himself to slavery, that he might win the love and trust of the slaves. The appeals of others they might scorn, but their hearts were opened to the man who had thus proved himself their friend.
IV. Constancy in love and devotion (Pro_17:17; Pro_27:6; Psa_141:5).
“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds;
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! it is au ever fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star of every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”
—Shakespeare.
“The noblest friendship ever shown,
The Saviour of the world makes known.”
—Cowper.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 The appeal of the righteous for righteous judgment upon…
The appeal of the righteous for righteous judgment upon the persecutor.
[A psalm] of David.
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The thirty-fifth psalm gives us that of which the Lord speaks in the gospel of Luke (Luk 18:1-8), the cry of God’s elect, suffering since Abel’s time, at the hand of the persecutor, and for which judgment yet will be poured out. Often a voiceless cry, sometimes exchanged, as in Stephen’s case, and the many of Christian times of which he was the protomartyr, for the prayer, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge!" it finds at last full expression at the lips of the Jewish remnant of the last days. The long-suffering of God is then fast running out, and the prayer is in full harmony with the mind of God. In this psalm it is a fully argued plea, and one which He admits and acts upon. It shows how fully God’s judgment is in sympathy with all that is good and true, in the unequal conflict between good and evil in a fallen world, and in the interests of the earth itself, to destroy those that destroy it (Rev 11:18).
1. The whole psalm is thus a cry, but especially the first part is purely this, an appeal to power in their behalf. The argument comes later in the character and acts of those against whom judgment is sought. The cry is, however, measured carefully, and the numerical structure is as marked as elsewhere. "Strive, Jehovah, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me:" give them treatment congruous to their own behavior. Then we see how needed is the help he craves: for his first thought is of "shield and buckler "of course, to be interposed between him and his foes. But he soon advances to offensive weapons, and seeks Jehovah to stand in the way, with leveled spear between him and his pursuers: to be Himself his salvation. All that God is would thus be pledged in his behalf. Then he is free to think more of the enemies, first of all praying for their prostration and overthrow; then chased by the angel of Jehovah as the wind chases the chaff; finally that their way as thus pursued may be dark and slippery, so that they will fall and rise no more.
2. Now he brings his plea for their destruction: first, the causelessness of their plots against him, their net hid carefully in the pit into which he is to fall; then, that it will only be to let their own trap catch them -themselves to be the cause of their own destruction: for which none surely will be to blame but they themselves. Jehovah will thus become the exultation of his soul, and that as found in the experience of one needy and afflicted, having no other helper. The righteous and the wicked, God and his creature man, will thus be all in their right place. The plea, brief as it is, has thus in it all the elements of successful prayer.
3. But, while these are the principles, the case needs to be more fully stated; and this is done in the two sections that follow: here, in behalf of the saint; while in the next, that of the sinner alone is in question. And here again, first, personal righteousness is affirmed: unrighteous witnesses -literally, witnesses of violence, violently wresting things to make out their charges -laid against him things of which his conscience was entirely free. Instead of this, he was conscious only of good that he had done them, which they now recompensed with evil, so that his soul stood alone, bereft of the support it might have counted on from it. Then he shows what in reality had been his state towards them, and that before God Himself. When they were sick, he had fasted and prayed, even in sackcloth. He had mourned them as for friends -yea, brother or mother. And now, at the least sign of evil upon his part, the tongues of evil rang out against him, wholly unprepared for it; and with mocking parasites, they gnashed their teeth -in vain, for God had set them their limit. (This is what the gnashing of the teeth, I think, implies, as the numeral does, -a limit against which they chafed: conscious, as it were, of the fence not permitted them to pass, although invisible, which God had put round His beloved.)
This is the case on his side, in attestation of his integrity, which he thus spreads out and puts into the Lord’s hand as supreme, urging whether He can any longer be content, knowing it all, merely to look on. There had been indeed a limit: was it not ready now to be overstepped? "Rescue my soul," he cries, "from their destructions! my only one from the lions!" It is the cry of the twenty-second psalm (ver. 20) again: the cry of the chief Sufferer wrung out of others here, as we find features like His in other parts of this description. Is it not intended to remind us that God is Himself linking in this His Well-beloved with these also beloved? putting upon them, as it were, the frankincense of the meat-offering? And so the Priest-Angel of the Apocalypse (Rev 8:2-5) adds to the prayers of the saints the incense, which find answer then in the judgments by which the earth is to be cleansed and made ready for the coming blessing. Here, too, the blessing is looked on to, the "great congregation" and the "much people" before whom redeemed Israel shall celebrate the God who has come in for them. And this is another link with the twenty-second psalm (ver. 25).
4. Now follows the more distinct statement of the sin that calls for judgment, to which, we shall see in the next section, the judgment exactly answers. First, once more, the causeless hatred of the righteous, which, being causeless, has in fact its cause in their righteousness itself. For righteousness, therefore, must the judgment come: evil must not be permitted to rejoice over it.
Next comes the sin against peace, -the spirit of conflict and war which has so long possessed itself of the earth and cursed it. To those of such a spirit, the quiet in the land would be themselves the cause of opposition. But the Prince of peace comes, who is to restore peace.
Next comes the sin against reality, -here still in the form of opposition to the righteous. But this is linked with all the falsehood elsewhere, the spirit that puts evil for good and good for evil, and miscalls and confuses things all over the world.
Now comes the appeal to Him who knows the reality of things. -whose Presence makes all things at once come to their true form. "Keep not silence: be not far from me! Stir up Thyself and awake for my right: for my cause, my God and my Lord!"
5. The appeal for judgment extends through all the remainder of the psalm, and characterizes this last section, which the twenty-third verse only leads on to, after a manner very common all through this series, and which has been remarked upon before. The appeal here is, first of all, in behalf of righteousness; then for deliverance from those who were just ready to rejoice as having swallowed up the object of their enmity; then for shame and dishonor to be put where they belong, that is, upon the foes of righteousness. And then, as it seems to me, Israel being manifestly the speaker, it is urged that the nations should be made to rejoice in delivered Israel’s joy, as we know they will do. While they themselves, the people of God once more, and with no temporary return to God as so often before, will talk of His righteousness and of His praise all the day long.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 This is a prayer for the defeat and destruction…
This is a prayer for the defeat and destruction of malignant enemies, whom the Psalmist has formerly befriended, and who now treat him with ungrateful cruelty. The circumstances are partly similar to those of David's persecution by Saul, but no prominent individual is mentioned as hostile, and David's attitude to Saul was more forgiving than that of the Psalmist towards those of whom he complains. The Ps., like Psalms 31, has many resemblances to the book of Jeremiah, and some ascribe it to that prophet's time. For a discussion of the vindictive tone of such Pss. see Intro. There are three sections—a prayer for the confusion of the writer's enemies (Psa_35:1-10), an account of their wickedness (Psa_35:11-18), and a further appeal for the vindication of the right (Psa_35:19-28).
1. Plead my cause] 'strive thou,' as in a court of law: see Psa_35:23.
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5, 6. The angel of the lord] see on Psa_34:7.
13. My prayer returned] better, 'shall return.' The blessing, withheld from the unworthy, will come back to the Psalmist himself: cp. Luk_10:6.
15. Abjects] the most worthless outcasts: see Job_30:1, Job_30:8; And I knew it not] RM 'and those whom I knew not.'
16. With hypocritical mockers, etc.] RV 'like the profane mockers in feasts'—buffoons and parasites, who get a place at table in return for entertaining the guests with scurrilous jokes.
17. My darling] equivalent to 'my soul': see on Psa_22:20.
18. In the great congregation] The Psalmist looks for a public vindication of his cause.
19. Wink with the eye] here a sign of triumphant malice. That hate me without a cause] quoted by our Lord, and applied to Himself in Joh_15:25.
20. Them that are quiet in the land] the same as the 'poor' or 'meek'—the humble and patient righteous.
21. Opened their mouth] in contempt. Hath seen it] i.e. the fulfilment of their wicked desires.
23. My judgment] the vindication of my just cause.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 (See Scofield "Isa 59:20"). See Scofield "Exo 14:30".
redeemeth
(See Scofield "Isa 59:20"). See Scofield "Exo 14:30".
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Psalm 35
Psalm 35
The Cry for Justice and Divine Help
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1. The cry of distress (Psa 35:1-10)
2. The contrast? (Psa 35:11-18)
3. Prayer for vindication and victory (Psa 35:19-28)
This Psalm introduces us again to the suffering of the righteous, giving another prophetic picture of the distress of the remnant. When David composed this Psalm we do not know. But He casts himself completely on the Lord and calls to Him for help and vindication. Thus the godly have always done when surrounded by the enemies who persecuted them. The condition of the godly when violence is in the earth during the time of Jacob’s trouble is here fully pictured, and their prayers prewritten by the Spirit of God. They look to Him to fight against their enemies, so that they may be confounded and put to shame, that they might be like the chaff before the wind, driven away. These are imprecatory petitions, such as a Christian is not authorized to pray, but these petitions will be perfectly justified in those final days, when judgment is decreed upon the enemies of God. The godly act in righteousness towards the wicked, but they reward evil for good, showing that they are ripe for judgment. And therefore their plea, “How long, O Lord, wilt Thou look on?” (Psa 35:17) “Rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions.” This reminds us of the Twenty-second Psalm where this expression applies to our Lord. The remnant suffers with Him. And then their faith looks forward to the time of vindication and victory.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Prayer against the Godless.
Prayer against the Godless.
A psalm of David, invoking God’s aid against the ungodly, contrasting the hypocrisy, cunning, and malice of the wicked with the integrity and generosity of the righteous, on whose side he himself serves as example.
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Imprecations upon the Wicked
v. 1. Plead my cause, as in court proceedings, O Lord, with them that strive with me, impleading him for alleged wickedness; fight against them that fight against me, carrying their hatred to the point of making war on him.
v. 2. Take hold of shield and buckler, the smaller one being used to protect the head, the larger to shelter the whole body, and stand up for mine help, to defend him against his enemies.
v. 3. Draw out also the spear, as a weapon both of defense and of offense, and stop the way against them that persecute me, so that they cannot proceed. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation, an assurance on the part of God that He would deliver and save His servant, sustaining him in this extremity.
v. 4. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul; let them be turned back, in abject retreat, and brought to confusion that devise my hurt, planning evil against him. The heaping of words signifying the failure of the hopes and undertakings of the wicked shows that David prays for the utter frustration of all their intentions, for their complete overthrow.
v. 5. Let them be as chaff before the wind, scattered to the four corners of the earth; and let the Angel of the Lord chase them, Jehovah Himself, in the person of this Angel, thrusting them down and destroying them.
v. 6. Let their way be dark and slippery, literally, "darkness and slipperiness," where they could not even see nor get a good foothold as they fled from their punishment; and let the Angel of the Lord persecute them, pursuing them as He did the Egyptians when He terrified them in the Red Sea.
v. 7. For without cause, without provocation on the part of David, while he was entirely innocent, have they hid for me their net in a pit, (which) without cause they have digged for my soul. That was David’s complaint, that his enemies were hunting and pursuing his soul, his life, using every possible means for his destruction.
v. 8. Let destruction come upon him at unawares, devastation striking all the enemies of David and Jehovah before they realized their danger; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself; into that very destruction let him fall, destroyed by the very punishment which he had intended for the righteous. This overthrow of the ungodly power would be followed by the joy of triumphant faith.
v. 9. And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord, who by His revenge vindicated the cause of the righteous; it shall rejoice in His salvation, in the deliverance from their wiles which he had experienced.
v. 10. All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto Thee, his body joining with his soul in praising the Lord, which deliverest the poor, the humble righteous person, from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him? Cf Psa 10:2. Note that a believer may well pray for the destruction of the wicked if he places the execution of the vengeance entirely in God’s hands.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 General Information:
General Information:
Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: Poetry and Parallelism)
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A psalm of David
Possible meanings are 1) David wrote the psalm or 2) the psalm is about David or 3) the psalm is in the style of David's psalms.
Grab your small shield and large shield ... your spear and battle ax
These phrases describe God as a warrior who is preparing himself for battle. (See: Metaphor)
small shield and large shield
these are defensive weapons
spear and battle ax
these are offensive weapons
those who chase me
Possible meanings are 1) these enemies are literally chasing the writer or 2) this is a metaphor for people who are enemies of the writer. (See: Metaphor)
say to my soul
This refers to the writer. AT: "say to me" (See: Synecdoche)
I am your salvation
This can be stated without the abstract noun. AT: "I am your savior" or "I will save you" (See: Abstract Nouns)
translationWords
psalm
David
Yahweh
shield
raise
spear
ax
soul
save
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 Ps 35 In this lament, the Lord’s troubled servant…
Ps 35 In this lament, the Lord’s troubled servant calls for God to see his circumstances and vindicate him.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.