[PSALM IX.]
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.
There is nothing to discredit the Davidic authorship. The singer's enemies are "nations," and the destruction of these foreign foes is equivalent to "maintaining his cause." That would be language natural in the mouth of a king, and there were foreign wars enough in David's reign to supply appropriate occasions for such a song. The psalm falls into two parts, vv. 1-12 and 13 to end, of which the second substantially repeats the main thoughts of the first, but with a significant difference. In the first part the sequence is praise and its occasion (Aleph and Beth verses, 1-4), triumphant recounting of accomplished judgment (Gimel verses, 5, 6), confident expectation of future wider judgment (amended He and Vav pairs, vv. 7-10), and a final call to praise (vii. 12). Thus set, as it were, in a circlet of praise, are experience of past and consequent confidence of future deliverance. The second part gives the same order, only, instead of praise, it has prayer for its beginning and end, the two central portions remaining the same as in part I. The Cheth pair (vv. 13, 14) is prayer, the deliverance not being perfected, though some foes have fallen; the past act of accomplished judgment is again celebrated in the Teth pair (vv. 15, 16), followed, as before, by the triumphant confidence of future complete crushing of enemies (Yod strain, vv. 17, 18); and all closes with prayer (Qoph pair, vv. 19, 20). Thus the same thoughts are twice dwelt on; and the different use made of them is the explanation of the repetition, which strikes a cursory reader as needless. The diamond is turned a little in the hand, and a differently tinted beam flashes from its facet.
In the first pair of verses, the song rushes out like some river breaking through a dam and flashing as it hurries on its course. Each short clause begins with Aleph; each makes the same fervid resolve. Wholehearted praise is sincere, and all the singer's being is fused into it. "All Thy marvellous works" include the great deliverances of the past, with which a living sense of God's working associates those of the present, as one in character and source. To-day is as full of God to this man as the sacred yesterdays of national history, and his deliverances as wonderful as those of old. But high above the joy in God's work is the joy in Himself to which it leads, and "Thy name, O thou Most High," is the ground of all pure delight and the theme of all worthy praise.
The second stanza (Beth, vv. 3, 4) is best taken as giving the ground of praise. Render in close connection with preceding "because mine enemies turn back; they stumble and perish at [or from] Thy presence." God's face blazes out on the foe, and they turn and flee from the field, but in their flight they stumble, and, like fugitives, once fallen can rise no more. The underlying picture is of a battle-field and a disastrous rout. It is God's coming into action that scatters the enemy, as ver. 4 tells by its "for." When He took His seat on the throne (of judgment rather than of royalty), they fled; and that act of assuming judicial activity was the maintaining of the psalmist's cause.
The third pair of verses (Gimel, 5, 6) dwells on the grand picture of judgment, and specifies for the first time the enemies as "the nations" or "heathen," thus showing that the psalmist is not a private individual, and probably implying that the whole psalm is a hymn of victory, in which the heat of battle still glows, but which writes no name on the trophy but that of God. The metaphor of a judgment-seat is exchanged for a triumphant description of the destructions fallen on the land of the enemy, in all which God alone is recognised as the actor. "Thou hast rebuked"; and just as His creative word was all-powerful, so His destructive word sweeps its objects into nothingness. There is a grand and solemn sequence in that "Thou hast rebuked; ... Thou hast destroyed." His breath has made; His breath can unmake. In ver. 6 the rendering to be preferred is substantially that of the R.V.: "The enemy are ended, [they are] ruins for ever, and cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory." To take "enemy" as a vocative breaks the continuity of the address to God, and brings in an irrelevant reference to the former conquests of the foe ("Thou hast destroyed cities") which is much more forcible if regarded as descriptive of God's destruction of his cities. "Their memory" refers to the enemy, not to the cities. Utter, perpetual ruin, so complete that the very name is forgotten, has fallen on the foe.