"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
The effect of the Divine justice is to impart fear and reverential awe to the hearts of the righteous (6). And after awe, laughter. This should not disturb us, for if it is possible to speak of judgment without bitterness and hatred, it is also possible to laugh as God laughs. There is no thought of gloating here; but it is right to be glad when evil is destroyed and put down. It is a measure of how confused our moral distinctions have become that we should not be very sure whether this is a right emotion to express. To get the full force of the meaning of 8, 9 we need to go back to 1: 'the mercy of God' in 8b corresponds to 'the goodness of God' in 1, but we should note the transition. In 1 the Psalmist was clinging, in desperate faith and in darkness, to the fact of God's goodness. Here, in 8, he has emerged into calm and peaceful trust in that goodness. What began as blind, desperate clinging ends in serene and quiet confidence. He has now come to an awareness of his position by grace that no amount of pressure or difficulty will ever be able to destroy. Furthermore, 'green' means flourishing or fruitful and David realises that his life has become fruitful in and through the trials and testings; trusting God in the midst of pressures does something to a man - it is the pruning of the husbandman's knife that leads to fruitfulness (John 15:2). Finally, we should note the word in 9 'Thou hast done it': as yet no change has occurred in the Psalmist's circumstances, but faith sees the deliverance as if it had already come. This is the wonderful crown of all God's dealings with the Psalmist. Happy is the man who comes to that assurance in life!