Psalm 140:12

Psalm 140 is a prayer for deliverance. David describes enemies whose words are like a serpent’s venom and whose plots are like hidden snares laid by a hunter (Psalm 140:1–5). He turns to God again and again as his refuge and asks him to judge those who seek his downfall (Psalm 140:6–12), and in verse 12 the pleading gives way to a plain statement of what he knows. He says it while the danger is still present, and his certainty rests on who the LORD is. The psalm may come from the years when Saul pursued him, or from Absalom’s rebellion later on.

The verb is yâdaʻ, a broad word whose root sense is to find something out by seeing, and which covers observing, recognising and caring as well as knowing. In “I know” it carries a settled conviction, the kind that grows from knowing God’s character and what he has already done. It is the same trust David speaks of when he calls the LORD his light and his salvation (Psalm 27:1). This confidence is the ground on which all his other prayers in the psalm stand, and it sets God’s righteousness against every scheme of the wicked.

The one David trusts is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant God of Israel, faithful to his people and able to do all that he promises.

The language of the verse belongs to a court of law. “Maintain the cause” is in Hebrew ʻâsâh dîyn. The verb ʻâsâh is the broadest word for doing or making, and joined here to a case at law it means that the LORD will carry the case through to its end. The noun dîyn is judgment in the legal sense: a suit, a sentence, a cause brought before a tribunal, and by extension strife. The afflicted man’s case is what stands before the court, and God takes it up as both his advocate and his judge, so that the verdict goes in his favour.

The second line says it again in other words. “The right” is mishpâṭ, a noun from the verb shâphaṭ, to judge. It means a verdict pronounced by a judge, and from there justice itself, and it also means a person’s right, what belongs to him by law or by custom. So the verse pairs the cause with the right and the afflicted with the poor, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the second line fills out the first. God hears the case of the weak, and he also sees that they receive what is theirs.

This is how Scripture speaks of God throughout. He judges the world in righteousness (Psalm 9:8), and the prophets looked ahead to a day when he would restore those who had been wronged (Isaiah 61:1–3). David’s “I know” rests on that character.

Verse 13 opens with “Surely”, and the word carries the certainty of verse 12 into a promise. David states as settled that the righteous will give thanks, and their thanks is the answer to the justice he has just described.

The righteous, tsaddîyq, are the just and the innocent, those whose lives conform to God’s standard, in heart as well as in conduct. In this psalm they are the people the wicked have persecuted without cause, whose integrity the LORD sees and upholds.

To give thanks is yâdâh, which means to praise, to give thanks, or to confess, acknowledging openly what God is and what he has done. Strong’s traces it to a root about holding out the hand. It is thanks spoken before others as an act of worship.

They give thanks “unto thy name”. God’s name, shêm, stands for God himself as he has made himself known: his character, his reputation and all he has shown of himself. To thank his name is to thank him for who he is as well as for what he has done, and above all for his rescue. David ends another psalm of danger by giving thanks to the LORD for his righteousness (Psalm 7:17), and he vows elsewhere to bless the LORD at all times (Psalm 34:1).

The second line of verse 13 matches the first. The upright, yâshâr, are the righteous again under another name, people whose lives are straight and sincere before God. They will dwell, yâshab, which speaks of a settled and secure home with him, lasting where a visit would end.

“In thy presence” is in Hebrew ‘et-pânêykâ, “before thy face”, built on pânîym, the face. That noun is plural in form and always used as a singular, and its senses of front and presence grow out of the face itself. To dwell before God’s face is to live near him, in his favour, under his protection and in his fellowship.

In Israel, dwelling in God’s presence called to mind the worship of his house and the privilege of the priests who served there. David longed to “dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life” (Psalm 27:4), and in the same psalm his heart answers God’s call to seek his face (Psalm 27:8). In God’s presence is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11), and the shepherd psalm ends with dwelling in the house of the LORD for ever (Psalm 23:6).

Earlier in the psalm David has spoken of the downfall of the wicked, and here he sets the end of the righteous beside it, just as the first psalm sets the way of the ungodly against the way of the righteous (Psalm 1:4–6). The whole of Scripture moves toward this verse, from the garden where God walked with man to the new Jerusalem, where the dwelling of God is with men (Revelation 21:3).

Jesus took up the cause of the poor in his ministry. He read Isaiah’s words about good news for the poor, freedom for captives, sight for the blind and liberty for the oppressed, and took them as his own mission (Luke 4:18–19). He healed the sick, fed the hungry and confronted the oppression of his day.

He also became the afflicted one himself. He suffered injustice on the cross as the Servant of Isaiah 53:3–7, and God maintained his cause and his right when he raised him, declaring him the Son of God with power by the resurrection (Romans 1:4). When he returns he will establish God’s kingdom in full, and the cause of the afflicted and the right of the poor will be upheld for ever.

Verse 13 points to him as well. He is the Righteous One and the Upright One, who did no sin (1 Peter 2:22), and his whole life gave thanks to the Father’s name, ending in the obedience by which he glorified the Father and finished the work he was given (John 17:4). Through him sinners who were far from God are made righteous and brought near by his blood (Ephesians 2:13). Jesus promised to come and make his dwelling with those who love him and keep his word (John 14:23), and the Holy Spirit now lives in believers, whose bodies are his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). So the promise that the upright will dwell in God’s presence is already true for those in Christ, and it will be complete when God wipes away all tears and there is no more death, sorrow or pain (Revelation 21:4).

These two verses give the afflicted a place to stand. Anyone who has been wronged with no one to plead for them has the LORD as advocate and judge, and his verdict will come. They show us who God is: a judge who takes the side of the weak, whose name is worth every word of thanks, and who wants his people to live near him. Because he defends the poor, those who know him come to share his care for them. And the story ends where this psalm ends, in thanksgiving and a home before his face.