"To the choirmaster: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5 “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man."
Psalm 12
At 5 we have the answer of God to the cry of the oppressed, in words of wonderful assurance, which can be applied both as a general principle of the gospel of grace and as a particular instance of God's gracious intervention on behalf of His people. Indeed, the one depends on the other, for it is because God is a God Who intervenes and arises for the salvation of His people that He can and does intervene on their behalf in all less- er crises. As the Apostle says, 'He that spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' The whole history of the Old Testament bears out this glorious theme, from the premise of deliverance given in Genesis 3:15, through the Exodus story, the many deliverances expressed in David's own turbulent history, Jehoshaphat's and Hezekiah's, to that of the return from Babylon after the Exile. And it is significant how the Psalmist here speaks of the assurance of such deliverance: in 6 he says, 'The words of the Lord are pure words' - not only in contrast to the specious and flattering words of insincere men, as mentioned in 2, but supremely in that the Lord's words are wholly to be relied upon. Hath He said, and will He not do it? It is this that brings assurances to the heart and changes the whole aspect of things, al- though the situation may as yet - and for long enough - remain unchanged. The phrase 'as silver tried in a furnace' stresses the degree of purity, and there is at least a hint, in the analogy of the furnace, of the sufferings of God Himself: His Word is trustworthy be- cause it is the Word made flesh and also made sin, in the crucible of suffering. He Who so suffered for us may surely be trusted to do what He has promised to do!