"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
What we have in 6-10 is an appeal for judgment, and this is followed in 11-17 by a vision of judgment. The first verses represent a longing for vindication in the Psalmist's heart - surely a natural one - in the midst of all the maligning; and those that follow rep- resent God's assurance to His sorely tried servant that that vindication will surely come. This is very graphically illustrated by a word in Isaiah 54:17, 'No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord'. David cries to the Lord to arise and awake for him (6). He obviously knows the Lord, for in the vision that follows the Lord is represented as standing at the ready to deal with those who malign and persecute His servants (12,13), and as turn- ing the mischief they had planned for David against themselves (16). What this says to us is this: 'Child of God, hard-pressed and misrepresented, take heart and courage, for God will vindicate you, and you will yet praise Him' (17).
There are, of course, other kinds of false accusations and misgivings in the believer's experience, and they come from unseen foes, from Satan himself. And these are even more like the ferocity of a roaring lion (2). One thinks of Bunyan's Christian in the Valley of Humiliation, and the fearsome voices and accusations coming in to him so confusingly that he almost began to think he was guilty of them. When we fit this Psalm into such an experience we have a wonderful word of hope, for - there is a refuge (1); and God will vindicate (11). Wait, I say, on the Lord!