Bible Commentaries

Psalm 7:1).

A direct appeal to heaven without any intervention. This bodes well for the young suppliant. Though a king be set against him he will cleave the king in two; his sword shall go right through helmet and skull and body. He wins who speaks in this tone. To what God does he appeal?—"my God." What does he offer his God?—"my trust." There is a grand simplicity in this worship. This is not literary praise; it is the praise of the rising, inspired, troubled, but confident heart. We pray when we are in sorrow—somewhat jerkingly, incoherently, impetuously, but it is all prayer; and sometimes when the quiet days come we gather up our rough and jagged sentences, often apparently so unrelated one to the other, and make music of them. The words that are startled out of the soul are words that might never flow from the artistic pen, but they will bear to be kept, to be looked upon in after days, and to be brought into reconciliation and harmony; and then we prize them as men prize the very throbbing of the heart.

Why pray so loudly, clearly, and distinctly? Because the enemy is mighty, and he may "tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver" ( Psalm 7:2). If it be a question merely between man and Psalm 7:3-7).

A wonderful image is this of "palming" iniquity. The conjurer lives by palming; the conjurer's occupation would be gone if we could palm as well as he. We know not that there is something in his great hand; on the contrary, he so plays with it and displays it that the idea never occurs to us that there is anything inside it: but for days he has studied how to hold the piece of paper or the thing he is playing with; it is there, but nobody knows it. So the Psalmist says,—I am not palming iniquity, hiding it in the hollow of my hand, and then lifting up my hand as if in prayer; there is my hand, open; any man may touch it, and if he can find evil in that palm then let him strike, then let him crush me with just penalty. That is a grand appeal, and it is possible to every man. But who could bear to have both hands laid open and all the fingers separated that there might be nothing hidden? Such hands may be lifted up in prayer. Who shall approach unto the hill of the Almighty and come nigh before God with prevailing intercession? "He that hath clean hands." Here again is youthful frankness, youthful confidence. Were not we better in our youth than we are in our advancing life? Was there not a time when the dewy rose typified our moral beauty and purity? Were we not once conscious of having wronged no man? But is not life a growing complication? and when we have not done the straight and direct wrong, have we not in some way gone round about and come in from a great distance and related ourselves to some form of injustice, unkindness, wickedness? These are searching questions; they bring the soul up to judgment, and they allow the soul to pass sentence on itself. Who would not be young again? Who would not accept the poet's suggestion to go back by his yesterdays and die a little child? We love to hear David's young eloquence. He has no doubt of his integrity in this particular matter. Not only Psalm 7:7).

David had no difficulty in invoking a tremendous punishment upon his enemies. But the language must be judged by the times in which it was employed. Not only Psalm 7:17)

The psalm comes in with a tone of sorrow and loneliness, but it goes out with cymbals and dances, and songs and utterances of triumph. We thought in the earlier part of the psalm that David had never sung in his life, or if he had, he certainly would never sing again. He seems to write himself out of his misery, as men now pray themselves out of their trouble. When the prayer begins, the listener says, "How heavily loaded is that heart with sorrow! Surely that life is distressed beyond all possibility of recovery! Oh how sad and mournful and pensive the utterance of that heart!" And lo! the man talks over his case with God, goes into critical detail about it, mentions everything he can recollect; and the tone subtly changes all the while, and behold, at the last, the man is singing: the prayer has blossomed into a Psalm 7:10

This follows the previous text with remarkable propriety. The text might read, "My shield is upon God;" in other words, God is my shield-bearer.