"A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High."
Psalm 7
This is one of the Psalms in which the background is important for an appreciation of its message and meaning. The title of the Psalm speaks of 'the words spoken by Cush, the Benjamite', and this may well date the Psalm as belonging to the period of David's life in which he was 'on the run' from Saul, and when evil men were misrepresenting him to the king and speaking lies about him (cf 1 Samuel 24-26, and especially the double experience of saving the king's life when he had it in his power to kill him, 24:9, 26:19. There seems to be a particular reference to these incidents in 4). One prominent lesson here is the one we saw in Psalm 5, the sense of conflict with enemies as being the inevitable accompaniment of true spiritual life and service for God. If we are to engage in the Lord's service we are likely to be 'in the thick of it', and battles and conflicts will be the order of the day. There are three sections in the Psalm: a cry for deliverance (1-5); an appeal for judgment (6-10); a vision of judgment (11-17). The context as we have described it must condition our interpretation and understanding of 1-5. If they stood alone, we might suppose that David is merely being self-righteous in the protestations of innocence he makes in 3-5. He is not however claiming sinlessness, but protesting his innocence of particular charges that have been made against him (so also in 8). An evidence of these false, unjust charges may be seen in 1 Samuel 24:9. We should remember that our Lord warned His disciples that men would revile and persecute them, and say all manner of evil against them falsely for His sake. In view of the fierceness of these charges (2), it is well that we should realise, for our comfort and assurance, that it is for His sake that we suffer them, and that this is the root cause of all the persecution that befalls those who seek to serve Him.