Psalm 94:20

The answer to the psalmist’s question comes in the very next verse: “Unless the LORD had been my help.” The question gathers up everything Psalm 94 has said so far. It opens by calling on God, to whom vengeance belongs (Psalm 94:1), to lift himself up as the judge of the earth (Psalm 94:2). It describes proud men who break God’s people in pieces, kill the widow and the stranger, and tell themselves that God pays them no attention (Psalm 94:3–7). It answers them that the God who planted the ear and formed the eye surely hears and sees (Psalm 94:9), and it promises that the LORD will keep his people and his inheritance (Psalm 94:14). Then the psalmist looks around for someone to take his side, and in these last eight verses he finds that the LORD has been doing exactly that.

The verse says the same thing twice, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the second line makes the cry more urgent. To “rise up” is qûwm, the ordinary word for getting up or arising, which can also mean to establish or confirm. To “stand up” is yâtsab, to station oneself or take a stand, to place oneself somewhere and stay there. Together they picture someone getting up from where he sits and taking his place against the wicked on the psalmist’s behalf. The enemies are named twice as well. “Evildoers” comes from râʻaʻ, to spoil, to make bad or to do harm. “Workers of iniquity” joins pâʻal, to do or make, especially to practise something as a habit, with ʼâven, a word for trouble, emptiness and wickedness. These are people who practise harm as their way of life.

The psalm names no event and no king. It describes a time when the powerful used their position against the weak and thought themselves out of God’s reach. God’s law shows him doing justice for the fatherless and the widow and loving the stranger, and it charges his people to love the stranger too (Deuteronomy 10:18–19). The prophets called for judgment to run down as waters (Amos 5:24). When the psalmist asks who will rise up, the people who should have upheld that justice, the kings, judges and elders, are nowhere to be found, and so his eyes turn to God.

God is a righteous judge, angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11), and he acts whether or not a human champion steps forward. Isaiah tells of a day when the LORD saw that there was no man to step in, and his own arm brought salvation (Isaiah 59:15–16). The question also falls on God’s people, who are often the ones placed to stand up for the righteous. When they do, they stand in his strength and as his servants.

Verse 17 looks at what would have happened without God, and the answer is stark. The word lûlêʼ, “unless”, sets up the condition, and the rest of the verse gives the end he escaped: “my soul had almost dwelt in silence.” The LORD’s help, ʻezrâh, is aid, and in Scripture it is very often the aid that God gives. Here it is the one thing that stood between the psalmist and death.

“My soul” is napshi, from nephesh, which means a breathing creature, a life, a soul, a self or a person. The psalmist is speaking of his whole living self, his very life. “Silence”, dûwmâh, is stillness, and in Scripture it is a picture of death and the grave. The psalms speak of death as the place where God’s praise falls quiet: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” (Psalm 6:5). To come near the silence was to come near the end of his life and of his voice of praise among God’s people. “Almost”, mᵉʻaṭ, shows how close he came, within a step of it.

The danger was real and bodily, coming from the oppressors the psalm describes. Because nephesh is the whole self, God’s help kept him alive and also kept him from sinking into despair, where hope and praise give out. God preserves his people in body and in soul. He is “a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1), and his people can say with the psalmist, “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1–2). Paul knew the same thing when he was pressed beyond his strength in Asia and God delivered him from so great a death (2 Corinthians 1:8–10).

Verse 18 brings the rescue down to a single moment. “When I said, My foot slippeth” is the cry of a man losing his footing. The verb môwṭ means to totter, shake or slip, the instant before a fall. Scripture uses the picture for any kind of danger or distress: hard circumstances, despair, or a faith that is wavering. Another psalm uses the same words for the moment enemies wait for: “when my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me” (Psalm 38:16).

The psalmist was honest about his weakness, and at the moment he said it, God’s mercy took hold of him. “Thy mercy, O LORD” is cheçed, which Strong’s gives as kindness, lovingkindness, mercy and favour. It is God’s loyal, steadfast love toward his people, the love of a God who keeps his covenant, “a faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:9). Every verse of Psalm 136 ends with the refrain that this mercy endures for ever, and Jeremiah, grieving over a ruined city, wrote that the LORD’s compassions fail not and are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). The name the psalmist calls on is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, God’s covenant name, so his hope rests on who God has bound himself to be.

“Held me up” is çâʻad, to support, hold up, strengthen, establish or comfort. God’s love reached him before he fell. The psalms promise this to the righteous man: “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand” (Psalm 37:24). God says the same through Isaiah, “I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10).

Verse 19 turns inward. “In the multitude of my thoughts within me” describes a mind crowded with thoughts. The word for those thoughts, sarʻaph, is given in Strong’s as a thought or cogitation, and in this setting they are the restless, troubled thoughts of a man who watches the wicked crush the weak and has nearly lost his own life to them. “Within me” places the struggle in his own heart.

Into that crowd come “thy comforts”. The word tanchûwm means consolation or comfort, and it stands in the plural here, the many consolations that God gives. It is related to nacham, to comfort. The comforts are God’s own, and they meet the psalmist where his thoughts are. Their effect is that they “delight my soul”. The verb shâʻaʻ means to look upon something with pleasure, to please or delight, and the soul here is again nephesh, the psalmist’s whole self. God’s comforts made him glad, right in the middle of his trouble.

Scripture says the same of God from beginning to end. David says that in the valley of the shadow of death the LORD’s rod and staff comfort him (Psalm 23:4). Another psalmist asks his downcast soul why it is disquieted, and tells it to hope in God (Psalm 42:11). Isaiah promises perfect peace to the one whose mind is stayed on God (Isaiah 26:3). Paul calls him “the God of all comfort”, who comforts us in all our trouble so that we can comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3–4), and he tells believers to bring their cares to God in prayer, with the promise that the peace of God will keep their hearts and minds (Philippians 4:6–7). Jesus left his own peace with his disciples (John 14:27).

Verse 20 asks a question that expects the answer every believer already knows: “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” The psalmist asks it to make the gulf between God and corrupt power plain. “Throne” is kiççêʼ, a seat, stool or throne, and Strong’s describes it as a canopied seat of royalty. Here it stands for rule, the seat from which power is used. “Iniquity” in this verse translates a different word from the “iniquity” of verse 16. It is havvâh, which means desire, and also ruin or calamity. This is a throne whose rule brings ruin on the people under it.

“Have fellowship” means to be joined with God as his partner or ally. The rulers of the psalm want God’s name on their side, and the psalm declares that he will never give it. Habakkuk says to God, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13), and Moses sang of the Rock whose work is perfect, a God of truth, just and right (Deuteronomy 32:4).

The second line names what makes this throne so dangerous. It “frameth mischief by a law.” The verb yâtsar means to mould or form, as a potter shapes clay, and the picture is of rulers carefully shaping harm and giving it the form of a statute. The law, chôq in the Hebrew, was given by God to establish righteousness and protect the weak, so a throne that makes oppression legal turns God’s gift against the very people it was meant to protect. Proverbs says that a throne is established by righteousness (Proverbs 16:12). Isaiah pronounces woe on those who decree unrighteous decrees to turn aside the needy from judgment (Isaiah 10:1–2), and Amos condemns those who turn judgment to wormwood (Amos 5:7). What a ruler makes legal can still be wicked in God’s sight.

Verse 21 shows what the corrupt throne does. “They gather themselves together” is gâdad. The word can mean to cut or gash oneself, and it can mean to crowd together or gather in troops, which is its sense here. The gathering itself is neutral, and the words that follow, “against the soul of the righteous”, make it hostile. These men band together with one aim. Their target is the nephesh of the righteous, the same word as “my soul” in verses 17 and 19, which here means the life of the righteous man.

“And condemn the innocent blood” brings the scene into a courtroom. The verb râshaʻ means to be guilty, to act wickedly, or to declare someone guilty, and here it is the verdict. “Innocent blood” stands for innocent people and their lives, so the phrase means that they pronounce the blameless guilty and send them to their deaths. It is murder carried out through a trial, by the very kind of law verse 20 described. God’s law took great care to keep innocent blood from being shed in the land (Deuteronomy 19:10), and “hands that shed innocent blood” are among the things the LORD hates (Proverbs 6:17).

Righteous people are often the targets of such schemes because they stand in the way of them. The psalms are honest about this: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).

Verse 22 begins with “But”, and that word turns the whole passage. Against all the power of the wicked the psalmist sets one fact: “But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.” He names God twice, first as Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD of the covenant, and then as Elohim, “my God”. The word “my” comes three times in the verse, and it makes this a personal confession. This God is his.

“Defence” is misgâb, a high place or stronghold, a fortress set up out of the enemy’s reach. “Rock” is tsûwr, a rock or cliff, and it is one of Scripture’s titles for God himself. “Refuge” is machăçeh, a shelter. Put together, “the rock of my refuge” is a rock to hide in, solid and lasting. Psalm 94 sits among the psalms that celebrate the LORD’s reign as king, and this verse shows what his reign means for one oppressed man: a high, safe place. David piles up the same pictures, “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer” (Psalm 18:2), and Proverbs says, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

Verse 23 is the psalm’s last word, and it is a sure one: “And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.” “Iniquity” here is ʼâven, the same word as the “workers of iniquity” in verse 16. The iniquity they worked against others comes back upon their own heads. “Wickedness” is raʻ, evil, both the evil men do and the harm it brings. The verse twice says “their own”, so the judgment fits what they did.

God is the one who acts. He brings their iniquity upon them, and the result is his judgment, which he carries out. Abraham asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25), and the whole of Scripture answers yes. Whatever a man sows, that he will reap (Galatians 6:7). Those who reject wisdom eat the fruit of their own way (Proverbs 1:31). God renders to every man according to his deeds (Romans 2:6), and it is righteous with him to repay with trouble those who trouble his people (2 Thessalonians 1:6). Israel’s covenant had already set out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28).

“Cut them off” is tsâmath, to root out, destroy or bring to an end. The phrase “cut them off” stands twice in this verse, and the second time it comes with the full name, “the LORD our God”. The repetition makes the end of the wicked certain. The word “our” also shows that the psalm, which spoke of “me” through most of this passage, closes by speaking for all God’s people. The God of verse 1, to whom vengeance belongs, will finish what the psalm asked of him.

The question of verse 16, who will rise up for me, is answered most fully in Jesus Christ. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15), and God raised him up, because death could not hold him (Acts 2:24). He will sit as judge of all nations and separate the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31–46). Meanwhile he is at the right hand of God, interceding for his people (Romans 8:34), and at the end he will wipe away every tear, and there shall be no more death or sorrow (Revelation 21:4).

Verse 21 came true of him in every detail. He is “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). The chief priests and elders gathered together and consulted how to take him by subtilty and kill him (Matthew 26:3–4). They sought false witness against him (Matthew 26:59–60), and when Pilate said, “I find no fault in this man” (Luke 23:4), they answered with the law of verse 20 turned against the innocent: “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die” (John 19:7). Pilate delivered him to be crucified (John 19:16). He did no sin, and he bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:22–24). The one condemned came to minister and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). And the God who brings iniquity upon the wicked in verse 23 made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The help of verse 17 and the mercy of verse 18 reach us through him. The wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23). He is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in him shall live, though he die (John 11:25–26). He ever lives to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25). He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, having been tempted in all points like us, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and in him we have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7). Those who receive him are rooted and built up in him (Colossians 2:6–7), “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Peter 1:5), and he is able to keep them from falling (Jude 1:24). Their hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast (Hebrews 6:19).

The comforts of verse 19 come through him too. He knew the heaviest weight of soul in Gethsemane, where he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38). He calls, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), and he promised another Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to be with his people for ever (John 14:16).

The rock of verse 22 is the rock on which he builds his church, and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). In him there is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1), and the psalm’s old blessing stands: “Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:12). He is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever (Hebrews 13:8). The judgment of verse 23 is in his hands as well. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world by him (Acts 17:31), and the dead will stand before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15). Then come new heavens and a new earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).

These eight verses begin with a man looking around for a defender and end with him resting in God. Along the way he tells us what he found. The LORD was his help when he stood at the edge of death. God’s loyal love caught him at the moment his foot slipped. God’s comforts reached the crowd of thoughts in his own heart and made him glad. And when the powerful made wrong into law and turned the courts against the innocent, God stood apart from them, a high stronghold for the man they hunted and a judge who would bring their iniquity home to them.

The psalm gives all of this in the first person, as one man’s testimony, and closes with “the LORD our God”, so that every believer may say it after him. The God of this psalm sees what is done to his people, he holds them up, he comforts them, and he will put every wrong right. He is the rock of our refuge.