Psalm 7:14

Psalm 7 is headed “Shiggaion of David, which he sang unto the LORD, concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite.” Shiggaion is usually taken to mark a passionate, deeply felt song. Cush is named nowhere else in Scripture. He was an enemy from Benjamin, the tribe of Saul, who spoke against David with false accusation or slander, perhaps while David was fleeing from Saul or later from Absalom. Another Benjamite, Shimei, cursed David as he fled from Absalom (2 Samuel 16:5–8).

The psalm opens with David’s cry, “O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me” (Psalm 7:1). He calls judgment down on himself if he has done the wrong he is charged with (Psalm 7:3–5), and then he asks God to act: “Arise, O LORD, in thine anger” (Psalm 7:6). Verse 11 states the truth about God that makes such a prayer possible. Everything after it, from God’s weapons to the wicked man’s pit, flows from that truth, and the last verse turns it into praise.

“If he turn not” makes all that follows depend on a condition. The “he” is the wicked man of verse 11. In this psalm that means David’s enemies, Cush first of all, and it reaches to anyone who keeps on in wickedness and refuses to turn from it. The verb shûwb means to turn back or return, and here it is the turning of repentance. Judgment falls on persistent rebellion, after God has given room to turn. “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (Psalm 103:8), and his patience still has an end. Jesus gave the same warning: “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

David then pictures God as a warrior getting ready for battle. To whet, lâṭash, is to hammer or sharpen an edge, the smith’s work of making a blade fit for use. The verb for bending the bow, dârak, means to tread, and it is used of the bow because an archer strung his bow, qesheth, by treading on it to bend it. A sharpened sword and a strung bow mean a fighter about to strike. Israel knew these preparations well, and Scripture often speaks of God in this way: “The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name” (Exodus 15:3). In the Song of Moses God says, “If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me” (Deuteronomy 32:41), and Isaiah says, “by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh” (Isaiah 66:15–16).

“Behold” calls us to look at the wicked man himself. “He travaileth with iniquity” uses châbal, a verb that can mean to wind tightly or bind, and also to writhe in pain, especially in childbirth. What he labours over is ʼâven, iniquity, a word that covers trouble, wickedness and vanity. He “hath conceived”, hârâh, to become pregnant, and what he carries is “mischief”, ʻâmâl, toil and wearing trouble that brings harm. Then he “brought forth”, yâlad, to bear or give birth, and the child is “falsehood”, sheqer. That word means a lie or deception, and it also means what is vain, a disappointment.

The picture shows that evil begins within. The wicked man nurses his plan inside himself, labours over it and brings it out into the world, and it is deliberate from first to last. James traces sin the same way: “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:14–15). Jesus said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:18–19).

After all his labour, what he bears is a lie. Since sheqer also carries the sense of vain and disappointing, the falsehood he brings forth deceives others and in the end comes to nothing for him as well. Paul writes, “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption” (Galatians 6:7–8). Jesus calls the devil “a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44), and he calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He is the Word made flesh, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In him believers put off “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” and put on “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:22–24).

“He made a pit, and digged it” names a bôwr, a pit, cistern, well or dungeon. Such pits were dug to trap wild animals or to catch an enemy, and a pit became a picture of a plot against another person. Châphar means to dig or delve, and with “made” it shows hard, deliberate work. Then he “is fallen into the ditch which he made”. The ditch is shachath, a different word, from a root meaning to sink, which elsewhere names ruin and the pit of the grave. The verse says “made” twice, and the hole that swallows him is the very one he made for someone else.

Scripture says this more than once. “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him” (Proverbs 26:27). “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it” (Ecclesiastes 10:8). Psalm 9 sings of the same justice. There the LORD “shall judge the world in righteousness” (Psalm 9:8), and “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken” (Psalm 9:15–16).

Verse 16 says it again in plain terms. “His mischief” is ʻâmâl, the same word as the mischief he conceived in verse 14, so what he carried inside comes back on him. “Shall return” is shûwb, the same verb as “turn” in verse 12. The man who would not turn finds his own mischief turning back on him. “His violent dealing” is châmâç, violence, wrong and cruelty, the harm actually done to others. “Pate” is an old English word for the crown of the head, and the head stands for the man himself, so the harm he planned lands on him. The two lines say the same thing in different words, and the repetition makes it sure.

Israel’s law set punishment to fit the offence, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exodus 21:23–25), and here God himself sees that the plotter receives what he planned. Verses 12 and 13 speak of God’s weapons and verses 14 to 16 of the wicked man’s own evil, and both are God’s judgment. The ditch is part of what God does with the man who will not turn.

The psalm that began in distress ends in praise, the path many psalms take, as Psalm 13 does, and as David’s song of deliverance in Psalm 18 celebrates. “I will praise” is yâdâh, to praise, give thanks or confess. Strong’s traces it to holding out the hand, and so to worship with hands held out. It is open, public praise of who God is and what he does.

David will praise the LORD “according to his righteousness”. The word is tsedeq, rightness, righteousness and justice, in conduct and in judgment. David’s praise is measured by the righteousness this psalm has described, the Judge who sees the righteous, opposes evil and turns the plotter’s mischief back on him. In the Psalms God’s righteousness also includes his faithfulness to his promises and his saving acts for his people, so David’s praise looks to his own deliverance as well as to the judgment of the wicked. Moses sang, “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4). The psalms say that “righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne” (Psalm 97:2), “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face” (Psalm 89:14), and “He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD” (Psalm 33:5). In heaven the redeemed sing, “just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints” (Revelation 15:3–4).

“Sing praise” is zâmar, praise in song, often with instruments. It is sung to “the name” of the LORD, shêm, which stands for his revealed character, his honour and his renown. “Most high” is ʻelyôwn, a word meaning high or upper, which as a title of God is rendered Most High. It sets God above every earthly power and circumstance, so the God David appeals to is able to judge and to save. “For thou, LORD, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods” (Psalm 97:9). The same title stands in the proud boast “I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14), the claim to a place that belongs to God alone.

David makes his vow before the answer has come, trusting God’s character while the threat is still real. Habakkuk does the same when every crop has failed: “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17–19).

The Judge of Psalm 7 is the God who has committed judgment to his Son. “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22), and Jesus is “ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead” (Acts 10:42). John sees him with “a sharp twoedged sword” going out of his mouth (Revelation 1:16), the word that judges, and Jesus spoke of the day when he will sit on his throne and judge the nations (Matthew 25:31–46).

At his first coming he came to save, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). The cross is where God’s anger with the wicked and his love for sinners meet. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” and God set forth Christ so “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:23–26). Isaiah says, “the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed,” and “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6). “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). The mischief and violence of the world came down on the head of the one righteous man, so that those who trust him are spared.

The pit of verse 15 has its fullest turn at the cross. The powers of darkness plotted Christ’s death, and the cross became their defeat: “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). The grave could not hold him, and believers sing, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55–57). God judged in his Son’s favour when he raised him, and Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4).

So the passage points to Christ in two ways. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) for all who turn, and he is “the Lion of the tribe of Juda” (Revelation 5:5) who will judge those who refuse. God “hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9–11), and all creation will join David’s song: “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever” (Revelation 5:13).

Psalm 7 ends with David’s accusers still about him, and with David singing. He has put his cause in God’s hands, and the God he has described is enough. He is a Judge who sees the righteous, who is angry with evil every day, who gives the wicked room to turn, and whose justice brings the plotter’s mischief down on his own head. That frees the wronged from carrying out their own revenge, and it gives them reason to praise before the verdict is announced.

The same verses hold out a warning with an open door. “If he turn not” means that turning is still possible, and Christ, who bore God’s judgment on the cross, is the way back for everyone who turns. Those who are in him stand before the Judge of all the earth clothed in his righteousness, and with David they sing praise to the name of the LORD most high.