Psalm 11:6

Psalm 11 opens with trust set against fear: “In the LORD put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?” The wicked are fitting their arrows to the string to shoot at the upright, and the question comes, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:1–3). Verse 4 lifts the eyes from the earth to heaven, and everything after it is the reason David stays where he is. The foundations on earth may shake, but the throne he looks to stands.

The psalm carries David’s name. It names no occasion, though his life knew such times, when Saul hunted him and when Absalom rose against him. In Israel the king was expected to uphold justice and protect the weak. When rulers on earth failed, God’s people looked to the King in heaven, who judges perfectly, and that is where this psalm looks.

“The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven”. The word for temple, hêykâl, means a palace or temple, a large public building. Israel met God at the tabernacle and later at the temple in Jerusalem, the place he chose to dwell among his people: “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). Here the second line explains the first, in the way of Hebrew poetry, so the holy temple of this verse is God’s dwelling in heaven, the place of his holiness from which he rules.

The throne, kiççêʼ, is a seat, stool or throne. Strong’s connects it with a word meaning to cover, as a canopied seat. A throne in heaven means rule over everything beneath it, over every border, nation and building. John was shown that same throne: “behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne” (Revelation 4:2). Another psalm shows the same LORD enthroned in the heavens, watching over and judging the people of the earth (Psalm 2:4). So the LORD is near to his people and high over all at once, and the turmoil of verses 1–3 is happening under his rule.

God is spirit, and the psalm gives him eyes and eyelids so that we can grasp what he does. “His eyes behold” means that he sees everything: every act, every wrong done in secret and every hidden motive. “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3), and “the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

“His eyelids try” goes further. The verb bâchan means to test, especially metals, and more generally to investigate. The eyelids picture eyes narrowed for close and careful scrutiny, the way a refiner looks hard at metal to see what it really is. God says of himself, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways” (Jeremiah 17:10). Everything lies open before him, for “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13).

The ones he watches are “the children of men”, all people everywhere. The oppressed are seen, and the wicked will answer for what they do. The psalms call him the one who “shall judge the world in righteousness” (Psalm 9:8).

Verse 5 uses the same verb, bâchan: “The LORD trieth the righteous”. God’s eye on the righteous is the testing eye of verse 4, turned on his own people with a purpose. A test of metal shows what it is, and the picture behind the word is the assayer’s fire that separates the impurities from the silver or gold. “The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). Job held to the same hope in his suffering: “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

The second half of verse 5 sets the wicked beside the righteous, and the difference is stark. The word for violence, châmâç, means violence of body or of conduct: wrong, injustice and cruel treatment, the oppression that does harm and tramples justice. The verb in “him that loveth violence” is ʼâhab, to love or have affection for, and its object can be a person, a thing or a practice. Here the practice is violence. The man in view has taken cruelty to his heart and made it his way of life.

“His soul hateth” him. The word for hate, sânê, means strong aversion, opposition and rejection. The word for soul, nephesh, means a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person, so “his soul hateth” says that God himself, his whole self, is set against such a man. The prophet says it in his own words: the LORD “will not at all acquit the wicked” (Nahum 1:3). Scripture names other things the LORD hates (Proverbs 6:16–19), and Paul writes, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13).

Verse 6 says what God’s hatred of the wicked comes to: “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest”. God is the one acting, and “rain” pictures a downpour that covers everything and leaves the wicked exposed on every side.

Each image adds its own terror. The snare, pach, is a trap or net for catching animals, so the judgment comes suddenly and holds fast. Brimstone, gophrîyth, is sulphur, which burns easily, and with fire it recalls the day when “the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven” (Genesis 19:24). The word behind “horrible”, zalʻâphâh, means a scorching heat or a burning glow, of wind or of anger. Joined to the Hebrew word for wind, ruach, it describes a scorching wind, a storm of dreadful force that sweeps away every refuge.

Verse 7 opens with “For”, and it gives the reason beneath everything before it. “The righteous LORD” joins tsaddîyq, righteous, to Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the God who is faithful to his people. Righteousness is who he is, and he is himself the standard of what is just and right. Scripture calls him “a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

He “loveth righteousness”. The verb is ʼâhab again, the same verb as in verse 5. The wicked man loves violence, and the LORD loves righteousness, tsᵉdâqâh, which is moral rightness, justice and conformity to God’s standard. He delights in it in his own works and in the lives of people, and he upholds it in the world. “He loveth righteousness and judgment” (Psalm 33:5). That love is the ground of his hatred in verse 5 and his judgment in verse 6, and it is also the ground of David’s confidence.

The throne in heaven is where the risen Christ now sits, at God’s right hand, far above all rule and authority (Ephesians 1:20–22). There he reigns as King and serves as High Priest for his people. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22), so the eyes that behold and test the children of men are his eyes too. When he came the first time he came as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) to save, and his presence still laid bare the hearts of those who met him. The holy temple also finds its fullness in him and in his church, the people “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).

Jesus is the righteous one who was tested and found true. He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and he could say of his Father, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). At his baptism he came “to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), and the Father’s voice said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Here is the upright man on whom God’s face looks with perfect delight.

The cup of verse 6 is the cup Jesus prayed over in Gethsemane: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He drank it. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In that act God showed his justice and opened the way for the wicked to be made righteous by faith (Romans 3:23–26), so that “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Christ is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness” (1 Corinthians 1:30), and because we are in him, God’s face looks on us as it looks on the upright, and we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

For those who refuse him, verse 6 still stands as a warning. The same Jesus will return as the righteous Judge and King (Revelation 19:11–16), and Revelation ends the story of the unrepentant in “the lake of fire and brimstone” (Revelation 20:10–15). He is both the one who bore judgment for his people and the one who will carry it out.

When David was asked what the righteous can do with the foundations destroyed, these verses were his answer, and they are ours. The LORD is in his holy temple and his throne is in heaven, above everything that shakes on earth. His eyes see every hidden wrong and every faithful heart. The trials of his people come from his hand with a purpose, to prove and refine them. Violence and wickedness have an end that he has measured out, and even so he calls the wicked to turn and live.

Above all, the psalm shows who God is. He is righteous, he loves righteousness, and his face is turned toward the upright. In Christ, the one who drank the cup, that face is turned toward everyone who trusts him. That is enough to stand on when others say, “Flee as a bird to your mountain.”