"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
The phrase that best describes the kind of pressures spoken of in the previous Note is 'the offence of the Cross', and this is as true for the man who preaches the Word, and for the witness at home or in the office or workshop. And this is what happens: through the faithful testimony of the servant of God, the Word comes to men. Some respond, and welcome it, and are blessed and transformed; but others are offended at the word (as Jesus said!) and a terrible resistance is set up in their hearts. Nothing maddens a man more, or stirs up all that is ugly in him, than the Word of life when he is bent on resisting it. And the luckless servant of the Word, be he in pulpit, home or office, gets the brunt of it: he becomes the focal point of their ire - they dare not admit, even to themselves, that their quarrel is really with the Almighty (that would be too frightening) and so the arrows are directed at His representatives, and all their venom goes out on them. It is this that explains not only the sneers and derision, but worse still the evil speaking and lies, and misrepresentation from those who have been convicted, rebuked and condemned by the grace that they have encountered in genuine servants of God. It was because David was the Lord's anointed, and destined to be king, that he was maligned by his foes. But there is always a vindication in the offing, and it is this that the remainder of the Psalm speaks of, as we shall see in the next Note.