1 Jehovah, hear my prayer, give ear to my supplications, In Thy faithfulness answer me, in Thy righteousness; 2 And enter not into judgment with Thy servant, For before Thee shall no man living be righteous. 3 For the enemy has pursued my soul, Crushed my life to the ground, Made me to dwell in dark places, like the dead of long ago.
4 Therefore my spirit wraps itself in gloom in me, Within me is my heart benumbed. 5 I remember the days of old, I muse on all Thy doings, On the work of Thy hands I brood. 6 I spread my hands to Thee, My soul is towards Thee like a thirsty land. Selah.
7 Make haste, answer me, Jehovah; my spirit faints; Hide not Thy face from me, Lest I become like those that descend into the pit. 8 Make me hear Thy loving-kindness in the morning, For in Thee do I trust; Make me know the way in which I should go, For to Thee do I lift my soul. 9 Deliver me from mine enemies, Jehovah, For to Thee do I flee for refuge. (?)
10 Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God; Let Thy good spirit lead me in a level land. 11 For Thy name's sake, Jehovah, quicken me; In Thy righteousness bring my soul out of all straits; 12 And in Thy loving-kindness cut off my foes, And destroy all who oppress my soul, For I am Thy servant.
This psalm's depth of sadness and contrition, blended with yearning trust, recalls the earlier psalms attributed to David. Probably this general resemblance in inwardness and mood is all that is meant by the superscription in calling it "a psalm of David." Its copious use of quotations and allusions indicate a late date. But there is no warrant for taking the speaker to be the personified Israel. It is clearly divided into two equal halves, as indicated by the Selah, which is not found in Books IV. and V., except here, and in Psalm cxl. The former half (vv. 1-6) is complaint; the latter (vv. 7-12), petition. Each part may again be regarded as falling into two equal portions, so that the complaint branches out into a plaintive description of the psalmist's peril (vv. 1-3), and a melancholy disclosure of his feelings (vv. 4-6); while the prayer is similarly parted into cries for deliverance (vv. 7-9), and for inward enlightenment and help (vv. 10-12). But we are not reading a logical treatise, but listening to the cry of a tried spirit, and so need not wonder if the discernible sequence of thought is here and there broken.
The psalmist knows that his affliction is deserved. His enemy could not have hunted and crushed him (ver. 3) unless God had been thereby punishing him. His peril has forced home the penitent conviction of his sin, and therefore he must first have matters set right between him and God by Divine forgiveness. His cry for help is not based upon any claims of his own, nor even on his extremity of need, but solely on God's character, and especially on the twin attributes of Faithfulness and Righteousness. By the latter is not meant the retributive righteousness which gives according to desert, but that by which He maintains the order of salvation established by His holy love. The prayer anticipates St. John's declaration that God is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins." That answer in righteousness is as eagerly desired as God's dealing on the footing of retributive justice is shrunk from. "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant" is not a prayer referring to a future appearance before the Judge of all, but the judgment deprecated is plainly the enmity of men, which, as the next verse complains, is crushing the psalmist's life out of him. His cry is for deliverance from it, but he feels that a more precious gift must precede outward deliverance, and God's forgiveness must first be sealed on his soul. The conviction that, when the light of God's face is turned on the purest life, it reveals dark stains which retributive justice cannot but condemn, is not, in the psalmist's mouth, a palliation of his guilt. Rather, it drives him to take his place among the multitude of offenders, and from that lowly position to cry for pardon to the very Judge whose judgment he cannot meet. The blessedness of contrite trust is that it nestles the closer to God, the more it feels its unworthiness. The child hides its face on the mother's bosom when it has done wrong. God is our refuge from God. A little beam of light steals into the penitent's darkness, while he calls himself God's servant, and ventures to plead that relation, though he has done what was unworthy of it, as a reason for pardon. The significant "For" beginning ver. 3 shows that the enemy's acts were, to the contrite psalmist, those of God's stern justice. Vv. 3_a_, _b_, are moulded on Psalm vii. 5, and _c_ is verbally identical with Lam. iii. 6. "The dead of long ago" is by some rendered _dead for ever_; but the translation adopted above adds force to the psalmist's sad description of himself, by likening him to those forgotten ones away back in the mists of bygone ages.