1 (א) I will thank Jehovah with my whole heart; I will recount all Thy wonders. 2 I will be glad and exult in Thee; I will sing Thy name, Most High,
3 (ב) Because mine enemies turn back; They stumble and perish at Thy presence. 4 For Thou hast upheld my right and my suit; Thou didst seat Thyself on Thy throne, judging righteously.
5 (ג) Thou hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the wicked; Thou hast blotted out their name for ever and aye. 6 The enemy--they are ended, [they are] desolations for ever, And [their] cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory.
7 (ה) They [are perished], but Jehovah shall sit throned for ever; He hath prepared His throne for judgment. 8 And He--He shall judge the world in righteousness; He shall deal judgment to the peoples in equity.
9 (ו) And Jehovah shall be a lofty stronghold for the crushed, A lofty stronghold in times of extremity. 10 And they who know Thy name will put trust in Thee, For Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee, Jehovah.
11 (ז) Sing with the harp to Jehovah, sitting throned in Zion; Declare among the peoples His doings. 12 For He that makes inquisition for blood has remembered them; He has not forgotten the cry of the humble.
13 (ח) Have mercy on me, Jehovah; Look on my affliction from my haters, Thou who liftest me up from the gates of death 14 To the end that I may recount all Thy praises. In the gates of the daughter of Zion, I will rejoice in Thy salvation.
15 (ט) The nations are sunk in the pit they made; In the net which they spread their foot is caught. 16 Jehovah makes Himself known; judgment hath He done, Snaring the wicked by the work of his own hands. Higgaion; Selah.
17 (י) The wicked shall return to Sheol, All the nations who forget God 18 For not for ever shall the needy be forgotten, Nor the expectation of the afflicted perish for aye.
19 (ק) Arise, Jehovah: let not man grow strong; Let the nations be judged before Thy presence. 20 Appoint, Jehovah, terrors for them; Let the nations come to know that they are men.
Psalms vii. and ix. are connected by the recurrence of the two thoughts of God as the Judge of nations and the wicked falling into the pit which he digged. Probably the original arrangement of the Psalter put these two next each other, and Psalm viii. was inserted later.
Psalm ix. is imperfectly acrostic. It falls into strains of two verses each, which are marked by sequence of thought as well as by the acrostic arrangement. The first begins with Aleph, the second with Beth, and so on, the second verse of each pair not being counted in the scheme. The fourth letter is missing, and ver. 7, which should begin with it, begins with the sixth. But a textual correction, which is desirable on other grounds, makes the fifth letter (He) the initial of ver. 7, and then the regular sequence is kept up till ver. 19, which should begin with the soft K, but takes instead the guttural Q. What has become of the rest of the alphabet? Part of it is found in Psalm x., where the first verse begins with the L, which should follow the regular K for ver. 19. But there is no more trace of acrostic structure in x. till ver. 12, which resumes it with the Q which has already appeared out of place in ix. 19; and it goes on to the end of the alphabet, with only the irregularity that the R strain (x. 14) has but one verse. Verses with the missing letters would just about occupy the space of the non-acrostic verses in Psalm x., and the suggestion is obvious that the latter are part of some other psalm which has been substituted for the original; but there are links of connection between the non-acrostic and acrostic portions of Psalm x., which make that hypothesis difficult. The resemblances between the two psalms as they stand are close, and the dissimilarities not less obvious. The psalmist's enemies are different. In the former they are foreign, in the latter domestic. Psalm ix. rings with triumph; Psalm x. is in a minor key. The former celebrates a judgment as accomplished which the latter almost despairingly longs to see begun. On the whole, the two were most probably never formally one, but are a closely connected pair.