1 (א) I will bless Jehovah at all times, Continually shall His praise be in my mouth. 2 (ב) In Jehovah my soul shall boast herself, The humble shall hear and rejoice. 3 (ג) Magnify Jehovah with me, And let us exalt His name together.
4 (ד) I sought Jehovah and He answered me, And from all my terrors did He deliver me. 5 (ה) They looked to Him and were brightened, (ו) And their faces did not blush. 6 (ז) This afflicted man cried and Jehovah heard, And from all his distresses saved him. 7 (ח) The angel of Jehovah encamps round them that fear Him, And delivers them. 8 (ט) Taste and see that Jehovah is good; Happy the man that takes refuge in Him. 9 (י) Fear Jehovah, ye His holy ones; For there is no want to them that fear Him. 10 (כ) Young lions famish and starve, But they that seek Jehovah shall not want any good.
11 (ל) Come [my] sons, hearken to me; I will teach you the fear of Jehovah. 12 (מ) Who is the man who desires life, Who loves [many] days, in order to see good? 13 (נ) Keep thy tongue from evil, And thy lips from speaking deceit. 14 (ס) Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it. 15 (ע) The eyes of Jehovah are toward the righteous, And His ears are towards their loud cry. 16 (פ) The face of Jehovah is against the doers of evil To cut off their remembrance from the earth. 17 (צ) The righteous cry and Jehovah hears; And from all their straits He rescues them. 18 (ק) Jehovah is near to the broken in heart, And the crushed in spirit He saves. 19 (ר) Many are the afflictions of the righteous; But from them all Jehovah delivers him. 20 (ש) He keeps all his bones, Not one of them is broken. 21 (ת) Evil shall slay the wicked; And the haters of the righteous shall be held guilty. 22 (פ) Jehovah redeems the soul of His servants; And not held guilty shall any be who take refuge in Him.
The occasion of this psalm, according to the superscription, was that humiliating and questionable episode, when David pretended insanity to save his life from the ruler of Goliath's city of Gath. The set of critical opinion sweeps away this tradition as unworthy of serious refutation. The psalm is acrostic, therefore of late date; there are no references to the supposed occasion; the careless scribe has blundered "blindly" (Hupfeld) in the king's name, mixing up the stories about Abraham and Isaac in Genesis with the legend about David at Gath; the didactic, gnomical cast of the psalm speaks of a late age. But the assumption that acrostic structure is necessarily a mark of late date is not by any means self-evident, and needs more proof than is forthcoming; the absence of plain allusions to the singer's circumstances cuts both ways, and suggests the question, how the attribution to the period stated arose, since there is nothing in the psalm to suggest it; the blunder of the king's name is perhaps not a blunder after all, but, as the Genesis passages seem to imply, "Abimelech" (the father of the King) may be a title, like Pharaoh, common to Philistine "kings," and Achish may have been the name of the reigning Abimelech; the proverbial style and somewhat slight connection and progress of thought are necessary results of acrostic fetters. If the psalm be David's, the contrast between the degrading expedient which saved him and the exalted sentiments here is remarkable, but not incredible. The seeming idiot scrabbling on the gate is now saint, poet, and preacher; and, looking back on the deliverance won by a trick, he thinks of it as an instance of Jehovah's answer to prayer! It is a strange psychological study; and yet, keeping in view the then existing standard of morality as to stratagems in warfare, and the wonderful power that even good men have of ignoring flaws in their faith and faults in their conduct, we may venture to suppose that the event which evoked this song of thanksgiving and is transfigured in ver. 4 is the escape by craft from Achish. To David his feigning madness did not seem inconsistent with trust and prayer.