Psalm 50:16

Psalm 50, a psalm of Asaph, is set as a courtroom. God appears in glory and calls heaven and earth to witness as he judges his people. In the first part of the psalm (Psalm 50:1–15) he speaks to worshippers who bring sacrifices as though he needed them. “I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me,” he says (Psalm 50:8), and he reminds them that “every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:9–12). What he asks of them is thanks, kept vows and trust in trouble: “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me” (Psalm 50:14–15).

At verse 16 the KJV marks a new paragraph, and the charge grows heavier. The people addressed in Psalm 50:16–23 know God’s law well enough to recite it, and they live in open defiance of it. God names their sins one after another in verses 17 to 20. In verse 21 he tells them why they dared to live this way and what he is about to do.

“What hast thou to do to declare my statutes” is a challenge whose answer is plain. A life of unrighteousness disqualifies a man from proclaiming God’s righteous decrees, and the words he speaks, however pious they sound, are empty. The verb çâphar, “declare”, is the word for counting and numbering, and in the form used here it means to recount, tell or declare. It pictures someone reciting God’s statutes, telling them over or teaching them. The word for statutes, chôq, means an enactment, something God has appointed. Declaring God’s law is a good thing in itself. God’s charge falls on a mouth that recites his law over a life that breaks it.

“Or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth” says the same thing again with a picture. The covenant, bᵉrîyth, is a compact or binding agreement, here the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai, with its blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The word has long been connected with cutting, from the old way of making a covenant by passing between the pieces of a slain animal, though its origin is uncertain. To take the covenant in one’s mouth is to speak it with the lips: to profess it, recite its terms, perhaps teach it. “Mouth” is peh, and the same word comes back in verse 19, where these people give their mouth to evil. The mouth that speaks the covenant is the mouth they send out to do harm.

The psalm that follows gives God’s desire: “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom” (Psalm 51:6). Proverbs says that even the prayer of one who turns his ear from hearing the law is an abomination (Proverbs 28:9). Jesus warns those who call him “Lord, Lord” and leave his Father’s will undone (Matthew 7:21), and Paul writes of people who “profess that they know God; but in works they deny him” (Titus 1:16). The prophets brought the same charge. Isaiah hears God ask, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” as he sets true worship against empty ritual (Isaiah 1:10–17), and in Amos God rejects worship cut off from justice and calls for justice to roll down like waters (Amos 5:21–24).

Verse 17 lays bare the root of it. “Seeing thou hatest instruction” describes the heart, and “castest my words behind thee” describes what that heart does, so the second line fills out the first.

The verb sânêʼ means to hate, with personal and active hostility. What they hate is mûwçâr, which properly means chastisement, and then reproof, warning, instruction and restraint. It covers discipline and correction as well as teaching, the whole way God trains the character and conduct of his people. Proverbs describes the LORD’s discipline as a father’s: “My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:11–12). To hate it is to resist the very means God uses to correct and mature his people, and behind that hatred stands a pride that refuses to be taught. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).

To cast is shâlak, to throw or hurl something away, often with some degree of rejection. What they throw is God’s dâbâr, his word or speech, which here means his commandments and revealed will. They throw it ʼachar, behind, a word whose proper sense is the hind part. Throwing something over your shoulder is a picture of contempt. The one who does it turns his back on God’s words and refuses to let them guide his life.

These were the words Israel was meant to keep closest. Moses told the people to love the LORD, to have his words in their hearts and to teach them to their children, to “talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:4–7). Another psalm says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). So to throw God’s words behind was rebellion against the covenant that made Israel who they were. God values obedience above every offering, for “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22), and Jesus speaks of people who honour God with their lips while their heart is far from him (Matthew 15:8–9).

In verse 18 God names deeds. “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him”: the man accused saw the theft, and it pleased him. The verb râʼâh is the ordinary word for seeing. The verb behind “consentedst”, rāṣâh, means to be pleased with, to accept favourably, to approve. “And hast been partaker with adulterers”: the word chêleq means a portion, share or allotment, so the partaker has taken his share with them.

Theft and adultery break two of the commandments given at Sinai (Exodus 20:14, Exodus 20:15). They wrong a neighbour, tear at the life of the whole community and break covenant with the LORD, and God’s people were called to be holy and set apart from them.

“Thou givest thy mouth to evil”: the verb is shâlach, to send or send out, so the mouth is sent out to do raʻ, evil, a word that covers whatever is bad, moral wickedness and harm alike. The words are aimed at wicked ends on purpose, whether as slander, gossip or false witness.

“And thy tongue frameth deceit”: tsâmad means to link, fasten or join, and figuratively to contrive, so the tongue fastens deceit together. Mirmâh is fraud, craft, guile or treachery, a deception meant to mislead or harm. The two lines say one thing twice with the second sharper, and mouth and tongue stand for the whole of a man’s speech, which shows what is in his heart.

Verse 20 brings the lies home to the family. “Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother”: yâshab is the ordinary verb for sitting down and dwelling, and here it pictures a man settled at his ease as he talks against his brother, a habit he is comfortable with. The verb for speaking, dâbar, means to speak, to mention or to tell, and the hostile sense comes from “against”.

“Thou slanderest thine own mother’s son”: the word behind “slanderest” is dophîy, which Strong’s gives as a stumbling-block and traces to a root meaning to push over. The slanderer’s words trip up his brother and push down his good name, at a time when a man’s honour and standing in the community counted for a great deal.

“Brother” can mean any fellow Israelite. “Thine own mother’s son” narrows it to a full brother, the closest tie of blood, so the second line climbs higher than the first. The slanderer betrays the very people he is most bound to love. This is the false witness forbidden at Sinai (Exodus 20:16), and Proverbs calls the man who utters a slander a fool (Proverbs 10:18). A man who offers sacrifice and then sits slandering his own brother shows that his worship is empty.

“These things hast thou done”: God saw all of it, the contempt for his word, the theft, the adultery, the deceit and the slander of verses 17 to 20. “And I kept silence.” The verb chârash here means to be silent, to hold one’s peace, to let alone. Strong’s connects this sense with a verb meaning to engrave or plough, by way of the idea of secrecy, and other lexicons list it as a separate verb.

The silence ends with “but”. God will reprove them, yâkach, a verb that means to decide, to rebuke, to correct, to convince or to convict. In a court it is the word for proving a man in the wrong. He will also “set them in order”, ʿârak, which means to set in a row, to arrange, to put in order, as a case is laid out before a judge. “Them” is a word the translators supplied, and it stands for the deeds of verses 17 to 20. God will line up their sins one by one before their eyes, where they must face them, and he will correct their false idea of him at the same time. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13), and every person will give account to him.

Even this reproof comes with mercy close behind. The psalm ends with a call to repent and a promise of salvation to those who offer God true worship (Psalm 50:22–23).

The New Testament shows the answer to these verses in Jesus. He is the Word made flesh (John 1:1–14), the Son by whom God “hath in these last days spoken unto us” (Hebrews 1:1–3). He declared God’s statutes with authority and lived them without blemish, and every word from his mouth was true. Yet “he came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11), and the old casting away of God’s words became the rejection of the Word himself. He taught that whoever hears his sayings and does them builds on rock, and whoever hears and does them not builds on sand (Matthew 7:24–27).

He exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day, who kept outward forms and spoke of God’s law while their hearts were corrupt: “ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27–28). He took no part with sinners in their sin, and he still gave grace to sinners and called them to repentance, as he did with the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1–11). Slandered and falsely accused, “when he was reviled, reviled not again” (1 Peter 2:23).

He is the Lamb of God (John 1:29), made sin for us “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Through his sacrifice the new covenant comes, in which God writes his law on the heart, promised in Jeremiah 31:33 and given in Christ (Hebrews 8:10). It is God “which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13), so believers are to count themselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God” (Romans 6:1–14). They put away lying and speak truth with their neighbour (Ephesians 4:25), let their words build others up (Ephesians 4:29), and love one another as he loved them (John 13:34–35). Those who continue in his word are his disciples, and the truth makes them free (John 8:31–32), and the Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

Christ also answers the error of verse 21, because he shows us who God truly is: “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), for he is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). God’s patience is seen in him, for God sent his Son into the world “that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). The same Son is the Judge, to whom the Father has committed all judgment (John 5:22), and before his throne the dead are judged “according to their works” (Revelation 20:11–15). There every hidden deed will be set in order.

These verses show a God who listens to what his people say about him and looks at how they live. His statutes are holy, and he will have his covenant spoken by lives that keep it. He sees the thief’s accomplice as well as the thief and hears every word spoken against a brother. He keeps silence over sin for a time, and that silence is goodness meant to lead to repentance. He is holy and unlike us in our sin, and he says so plainly. When he speaks at last, everything stands in order before the eyes of the one he judges. And the same God, in Christ, writes his law on the heart and gives his people a mouth that speaks truth, so the prayer of the next psalm for “truth in the inward parts” is one he delights to answer.