[PSALM XXXV.]
1 Plead my cause, Jehovah, with those who plead against me;
Fight with those who fight with me.
2 Grasp target and shield,
And stand up in my help,
3 And unsheathe lance and battle-axe (?) against my pursuers;
Say to my soul, Thy salvation am I.
4 Be the seekers after my life put to shame and dishonoured;
Be the plotters of my hurt turned back and confounded
5 Be they as chaff before the wind,
And the angel of Jehovah striking them down!
6 Be their path darkness and slipperiness,
And the angel of Jehovah pursuing them!
7 For without provocation have they hidden for me their net;
Without provocation have they dug a pit for my life.
8 May destruction light on him unawares,
And his net which he hath hidden snare him;
Into destruction (the pit?)—may he fall therein!
9 And my soul shall exult in Jehovah,
Shall rejoice in His salvation.
10 All my bones shall say, Jehovah, who is like Thee,
Delivering the afflicted from a stronger than he,
Even the afflicted and poor from his spoiler?
11 Unjust witnesses rise up;
Of what I know not they ask me.
12 They requite me evil for good—
Bereavement to my soul!
13 But I—in their sickness my garment was sackcloth,
I afflicted my soul by fasting,
And my prayer—may it return again (do thou return?) to my own bosom.
14 As [for] my friend or brother, I dragged myself about (bowed myself down?);
As one mourning for a mother, I bowed down (dragged myself about?) in squalid attire.
15 And at my tottering they rejoice and assemble themselves;
Abjects and those whom I know not assemble against me;
They tear me, and cease not,
16 Like the profanest of buffoons for a bit of bread,
Gnashing their teeth at me.
17 Lord, how long wilt Thou look on?
Bring back my soul from their destructions,
My only one from the young lions.
18 I will praise Thee in the great congregation;
Among people strong [in number] will I sound Thy praise.
19 Let not my enemies wrongfully rejoice over me,
Nor my haters without provocation wink the eye.
20 For it is not peace they speak,
And against the quiet of the land they plan words of guile.
21 And they open wide their mouth against me;
They say, Oho! Oho! our eyes have seen.
22 Thou hast seen, Jehovah: be not deaf;
Lord, be not far from me!
23 Arouse Thyself, and awake for my judgment,
My God and my Lord, for my suit!
24 Judge me according to Thy righteousness, Jehovah, my God,
And let them not rejoice over me.
25 Let them not say in their hearts, Oho! our desire!
Let them not say, We have swallowed him.
26 Be those who rejoice over my calamity put to shame and confounded together!
Be those who magnify themselves against me clothed in shame and dishonour!
27 May those who delight in my righteous cause sound out their gladness and rejoice,
And say continually, Magnified be Jehovah,
Who delights in the peace of His servant.
28 And my tongue shall meditate Thy righteousness,
All day long Thy praise.
The psalmist's life is in danger. He is the victim of ungrateful hatred. False accusations of crimes that he never dreamed of are brought against him. He professes innocence, and appeals to Jehovah to be his Advocate and also his Judge. The prayer in ver. 1 a uses the same word and metaphor as David does in his remonstrance with Saul (1 Sam. xxiv. 15). The correspondence with David's situation in the Sauline persecution is, at least, remarkable, and goes far to sustain the Davidic authorship. The distinctly individual traits in the psalm are difficulties in the way of regarding it as a national psalm. Jeremiah has several coincidences in point of expression and sentiment, which are more naturally accounted for as reminiscences by the prophet than as indications that he was the psalmist. His genius was assimilative, and liked to rest itself on earlier utterances.
The psalm has three parts, all of substantially the same import, and marked off by the conclusion of each being a vow of praise and the main body of each being a cry for deliverance, a characterisation of the enemy as ungrateful and malicious, and a profession of the singer's innocence. We do not look for melodious variations of note in a cry for help. The only variety to be expected is in its shrill intensity and prolongation. The triple division is in accordance with the natural feeling of completeness attaching to the number. If there is any difference between the three sets of petitions, it may be observed that the first (vv. 1-10) alleges innocence and vows praise without reference to others; that the second (vv. 11-18) rises to a profession not only of innocence, but of beneficence and affection met by hate, and ends with a vow of public praise; and that the final section (vv. 19-28) has less description of the machinations of the enemy and more prolonged appeal to Jehovah for His judgment, and ends, not with a solo of the psalmist's gratitude, but with a chorus of his friends, praising God for his "prosperity."
The most striking features of the first part are the boldness of the appeal to Jehovah to fight for the psalmist and the terrible imprecations and magnificent picture in vv. 5, 6. The relation between the two petitions of ver. 1, "Plead with those who plead against the" and "Fight with them that fight against me," may be variously determined. Both may be figurative, the former drawn from legal processes, the latter from the battle-field. But more probably the psalmist was really the object of armed attack, and the "fighting" was a grim reality. The suit against him was being carried on, not in a court, but in the field. The rendering of the R.V. in ver. 1, "Strive with ... who strive against me," obscures the metaphor of a lawsuit, which, in view of its further expansion in vv. 23, 24 (and in "witnesses" in ver. 11?), is best retained. That is a daring flight of reverent imagination which thinks of the armed Jehovah as starting to His feet to help one poor man. The attitude anticipates Stephen's vision of "the Son of man standing," not throned in rest, but risen in eager sympathy and intent to succour. But the panoply in which the psalmist's faith arrays Jehovah, is purely imaginative and, of course, has nothing parallel in the martyr's vision. The "target" was smaller than the "shield" (2 Chron. ix. 15, 16). Both could not be wielded at once, but the incongruity helps to idealise the bold imagery and to emphasise the Divine completeness of protecting power. It is the psalmist, and not his heavenly Ally, who is to be sheltered. The two defensive weapons are probably matched by two offensive ones in ver. 3. The word rendered in the A.V. "stop" ("the way" being a supplement) is more probably to be taken as the name of a weapon, a battle-axe according to some, a dirk or dagger according to others. The ordinary translation gives a satisfactory sense, but the other is more in accordance with the following preposition, with the accents, and with the parallelism of target and shield. In either case, how beautifully the spiritual reality breaks through the warlike metaphor! This armed Jehovah, grasping shield and drawing spear, utters no battle shout, but whispers consolation to the trembling man crouching behind his shield. The outward side of the Divine activity, turned to the foe, is martial and menacing; the inner side is full of tender, secret breathings of comfort and love.
The previous imagery of the battle-field and the Warrior God moulds the terrible wishes in vv. 4-6, which should not be interpreted as having a wider reference than to the issue of the attacks on the psalmist. The substance of them is nothing more than the obverse of his wish for his own deliverance, which necessarily is accomplished by the defeat of his enemies. The "moral difficulty" of such wishes is not removed by restricting them to the special matter in hand, but it is unduly aggravated if they are supposed to go beyond it. However restricted, they express a stage of feeling far beneath the Christian, and the attempt to slur over the contrast is in danger of hiding the glory of midday for fear of not doing justice to the beauty of morning twilight. It is true that the "imprecations" of the Psalter are not the offspring of passion, and that the psalmists speak as identifying their cause with God's; but when all such considerations are taken into account, these prayers against enemies remain distinctly inferior to the code of Christian ethics. The more frankly the fact is recognised, the better. But, if we turn from the moral to the poetic side of these verses, what stern beauty there is in that awful picture of the fleeing foe, with the angel of Jehovah pressing hard on their broken ranks! The hope which has been embodied in the legends of many nations, that the gods were seen fighting for their worshippers, is the psalmist's faith, and in its essence is ever true. That angel, whom we heard of in the previous psalm as defending the defenceless encampment of them that fear Jehovah, fights with and scatters the enemies like chaff before the wind. One more touch of terror is added in that picture of flight in the dark, on a slippery path, with the celestial avenger close on the fugitives' heels, as when the Amorite kings fled down the pass of Beth-horon, and "Jehovah cast great stones from heaven upon them." Æschylus or Dante has nothing more concentrated or suggestive of terror and beauty than this picture.
The psalmist's consciousness of innocence is the ground of his prayer and confidence. Causeless hatred is the lot of the good in this evil world. Their goodness is cause enough; for men's likes and dislikes follow their moral character. Virtue rebukes, and even patient endurance irritates. No hostility is so hard to turn into love as that which has its origin, not in the attitude of its object, but in instinctive consciousness of contrariety in the depths of the soul. Whoever wills to live near God and tries to shape his life accordingly may make up his mind to be the mark for many arrows of popular dislike, sometimes lightly tipped with ridicule, sometimes dipped in gall, sometimes steeped in poison, but always sharpened by hostility. The experience is too uniform to identify the poet by it, but the correspondence with David's tone in his remonstrances with Saul is, at least, worthy of consideration. The familiar figures of the hunter's snare and pitfall recur here, as expressing crafty plans for destruction, and pass, as in other places, into the wish that the lex talionis may fall on the would-be ensnarer. The text appears to be somewhat dislocated and corrupted in vv. 7, 8. The word "pit" is needless in ver. 7 a, since snares are not usually spread in pits, and it is wanted in the next clause, and should therefore probably be transposed. Again, the last clause of ver. 8, whether the translation of the A.V. or of the R.V. be adopted, is awkward and feeble from the repetition of "destruction," but if we read "pit," which involves only a slight change of letters, we avoid tautology, and preserve the reference to the two engines of craft: "Let his net which he spread catch him; in the pit—let him fall therein!" The enemy's fall is the occasion of glad praise, not because his intended victim yields to the temptation to take malicious delight in his calamity (Schadenfreude). His own deliverance, not the other's destruction, makes the singer joyful in Jehovah, and what he vows to celebrate is not the retributive, but the delivering, aspect of the Divine act. In such joy there is nothing unworthy of the purest forgiving love to foes. The relaxation of the tension of anxiety and fear brings the sweetest moments, in the sweetness of which soul and body seem to share, and the very bones, which were consumed and waxed old (vi. 3, xxxii. 3), are at ease, and, in their sense of well-being, have a tongue to ascribe it to Jehovah's delivering hand. No physical enjoyment surpasses the delight of simple freedom from long torture of pain, nor are there many experiences so poignantly blessed as that of passing out of tempest into calm. Well for those who deepen and hallow such joy by turning it into praise, and see even in the experiences of their little lives tokens of the incomparable greatness and unparalleled love of their delivering God!