1 Be gracious to me, O God; for man would swallow me up: All day the fighting oppresses me. 2 My liers-in-wait would swallow me up all the day: For many proudly fight against me. 3 [In] the day [when] I fear, I will trust in Thee. 4 In God do I praise His word: In God do I trust, I will not fear; What can flesh do to me?
5 All day they wrest my words; All their thoughts are against me for evil. 6 They gather together, they set spies, They mark my steps, Even as they have waited for my soul. 7 Shall there be escape for them because of iniquity? In anger cast down the peoples, O God. 8 My wanderings hast Thou reckoned: Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle; Are they not in Thy reckoning? 9 Then shall my enemies turn back in the day [when] I call: This I know, that God is for me (_or_ mine). 10 In God will I praise the word: In Jehovah will I praise the word. 11 In God have I trusted, I will not fear; What can man do to me?
12 Upon me, O God, are Thy vows: I will requite praises to Thee. 13 For Thou hast delivered my soul from death: Hast Thou not delivered my feet from stumbling? That I may walk before God in the light of the living.
The superscription dates this psalm from the time of David's being in Gath. Probably his first stay there is meant, during which he had recourse to feigned insanity in order to secure his safety. What a contrast between the seeming idiot scrabbling on the walls and the saintly singer of this lovely song of purest trust! But striking as the contrast is, it is not too violent to be possible. Such heroic faith might lie very near such employment of pardonable dissimulation, even if the two moods of feeling can scarcely have been contemporaneous. Swift transitions characterise the poetic temperament; and, alas! fluctuations of courage and faith characterise the devout soul. Nothing in the psalm specially suggests the date assigned in the superscription; but, as we have already had occasion to remark, that may be an argument for, not against, the correctness of the superscription.
The psalm is simple in structure. Like others ascribed to David during the Sauline period, it has a refrain, which divides it into two parts; but these are of substantially the same purport, with the difference that the second part enlarges the description of the enemies' assaults, and rises to confident anticipation of their defeat. In that confidence the singer adds a closing expression of thankfulness for the deliverance already realised in faith.
The first part begins with that significant contrast which is the basis of all peaceful fronting of a hostile world or any evil. On one side stands man, whose very name here suggests feebleness, and on the other is God. "Man" in ver. 1 is plainly a collective. The psalmist masses the foes, whom he afterwards individualises and knows only too well to be a multitude, under that generic appellation, which brings out their inherent frailty. Be they ever so many, still they all belong to the same class, and an infinite number of nothings only sums up into nothing. The Divine Unit is more than all these. The enemy is said to "pant after" the psalmist, as a wild beast open-mouthed and ready to devour; or, according to others, the word means to _crush_. The thing meant by the strong metaphor is given in ver. 1 _b_. 2; namely, the continual hostile activity of the foe. The word rendered "proudly" is literally "on high," and Baethgen suggests that the literal meaning should be retained. He supposes that the antagonists "held an influential position in a princely court." Even more literally the word may describe the enemies as occupying a post of vantage, from which they shower down missiles.