"To the choirmaster. A Maskil of David, when Doeg, the Edomite, came and told Saul, “David has come to the house of Ahimelech.”
Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?
The steadfast love of God endures all the day.
2 Your tongue plots destruction,
like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.
3 You love evil more than good,
and lying more than speaking what is right. Selah
4 You love all words that devour,
O deceitful tongue.
5 But God will break you down forever;
he will snatch and tear you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
6 The righteous shall see and fear,
and shall laugh at him, saying,
7 “See the man who would not make
God his refuge,
but trusted in the abundance of his riches
and sought refuge in his own destruction!”
8 But I am like a green olive tree
in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God
forever and ever.
9 I will thank you forever,
because you have done it.
I will wait for your name, for it is good,
in the presence of the godly."
Psalm 52
Many commentators maintain that the title given to the Psalm, and the story to which it refers, does not correspond with the material in the Psalm. But the question arises as to why this title should have been given it in the first place if there was no connection. At all events, the story of Doeg gives us the kind of situation in which such a Psalm might well have been penned. For that story unfolds a hideous atrocity, from which even the soldiers recoiled in horror (1 Samuel 21/22). That period of David's life was a dark and terrible time; yet this is the time in which it is twice recorded of David that he spared king Saul's life (1 Samuel 24:4ff; 26:11ff). This requires being set over against any charge of vindictiveness or hatred on the Psalmist's part. The modern renderings of 1 differ markedly from the AV, but the AV follows the Hebrew text in speaking of the 'goodness' or 'loving- kindness' of God. If we follow the AV, the message is this: in time of perplexity, when under pressure, when there are things we cannot understand, we need in a deliberate exercise of faith to set the goodness of God over against all the pressures and hang on grimly to this unchanging truth. The words of the hymn-writer express this thought perfectly:
Here in the maddening maze of things,
When tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed ground my spirit clings:
I know that God is good.
When faith holds on like this, one begins to see in clearer perspective, and the certainty grows that God will intervene to vindicate the right and to punish evil. Thus 5-7: for in some contexts, and in such a situation, the goodness of God expresses itself necessarily as justice.