Day 165, Psalms 6-12

Psalm 6
O Lord, Deliver My Life

TO THE CHOIRMASTER: WITH STRINGED INSTRUMENTS; ACCORDING TO THE SHEMINITH.
A PSALM OF DAVID

O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord–how long?

Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?

I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.

Depart from me, all your workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

*A Prayer in time of severe illness, an occasion seized upon by David’s enemies to vent their animosity. In early Christian liturgical tradition it was numbered with the seven penitential psalms (the others: Ps 32; 38; 51; 102; 130; 143).

Psalm 7
In You Do I Take Refuge

A SHIGGAION OF DAVID, WHICH HE SANG TO THE LORD
CONCERNING THE WORDS OF CUSH, A BENJAMINITE.

O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust.

Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgement.
Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.

The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous–
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies.
He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the holes that he has made.
His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.

I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

*An appeal to the Lord’s court of justice when enemies attack.

Psalm 8
How Majestic Is Your Name

TO THE CHOIRMASTER: ACCORDING TO THE GITTITH.
A PSALM OF DAVID

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also all the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

*In praise of the creator (not of man–as is evident from the doxology that encloses it) out of wonder over his sovereign ordering of the creation. Genesis 1 clearly provides the spectacles, but David speaks out of his present experiences of reality (perhaps on a bright, clear night when the vast host of the heavenly lights, stretching from horizon to horizon, erased from his musings small everyday affairs and engaged his mind with deeper thoughts). Two matters especially impressed him: (1) the glory of God reflected in the starry heavens, and (2) the astonishing condescension of God to be mindful of puny man, to crown him with glory almost godlike and to grant him lordly power over his creatures.

Psalm 9
I Will Recount Your Wonderful Deeds

TO THE CHOIRMASTER: ACCORDING TO MUTH-LABBEN.
A PSALM OF DAVID

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name,
O Most High.

When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.
For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgement.

You have rebuked the nations,
you have made the wicked perish;
you have blotted out their name forever and ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
their cities you rooted out;
the very memory of them has perished.

But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
and he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness.

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the people his deeds!
For he who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

Be gracious to me, O Lord!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.

The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
The Lord has made himself known;
he has executed judgement;
the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.

The wicked shall return to Sheol,
all the nations that forget God.

For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.

Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
Put them in fear, O Lord!
Let the nations know that they are but men!

*That Psalm 9 and 10 were sometimes viewed (or used) as one psalm is known from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT). Whether they were originally composed as one psalm is not known, though a number of indicators point in that direction. Psalm 9 is predominantly praise (by the king) for God’s deliverance from hostile nations (the specific occasion is unknown, but since there is no reference to victories on the part of Israel, God’s destruction of the nations may have come by other means). It concludes with a short prayer for God’s continuing righteous judgements on the haughty nations.

Psalm 10
Why Do You Hide Yourself?

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face,
he will never see it.”

Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into you hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.

The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart;
you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may
strike terror no more.

*A prayer for rescue from the attacks of unscrupulous men–containing a classic OT portrayal of “the wicked.”

Psalm 11
The Lord Is in His Holy Temple

TO THE CHOIRMASTER.
OF DAVID.

In the Lord I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
“Flee like a bird to your mountain,
for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”

The Lord is in his holy temples;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
The Lord tests the righteous,
but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Let him rain coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur and a scorching wind
shall be the portion of their cup.
For the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.

*A confession of confident trust trust in the Lord’s righteous rule, at a time when wicked adversaries seem to have the upper hand.

Psalm 12
The Faithful Have Vanished

TO THE CHOIRMASTER: ACCORDING TO THE SHEMINITH.
A PSALM OF DAVID.

Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from
among the children of man.
Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a
double heart they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”

“Because the poor are plundered,
because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.

You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

*A prayer for help when it seems that all men are faithless and every tongue false.