Chapter 7
2021 - The intro paragraph says this is a song David sang concerning the words of Cush, a Benjamite. Can't find out who he really was, or just what words he spoke. So we don't truly know what prompted this psalm.
This is a Psalm of David, and in the chronological Bible I am reading, all these come right after 1 Sam 21-24. In 24, David had a chance to kill Saul, who is pursuing him with intent to kill all over Israel. David spares Saul, and Saul "repents" temporarily from his murderous intentions. So at this sort of "pause" in the narrative of 1 Samuel, the chronological Bible inserts these Psalms. This one, like many we will see from David, is said to have been written as he was in hiding and in flight to avoid Saul. He had been anointed king, but was hiding in caves. This would have been a very difficult time to have faith in God's promises because events were not looking at all in sync with what God had said. This happens to us all, but not usually as dramatically as it happened to David....
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 [Psa 7:3-5 ESV]
2021 - Knowing that this is a response to the words of Cush, one can see this verse being a self-examination. David is asking God if what Cush has accused him of is really true. David is questioning his own motives based on a finger pointed at him. That context does help clarify the verse.
2021 - Is an "enemy without cause" an enemy at all? Or this a huge mistake, making any violence toward that "enemy" an unjustified sin?
It would take a lot better person than me to pray this prayer. That David could pray it should tell us something about the kind of man he really was.
David is perhaps trying to understand the disconnect between events and God's promises. Maybe he is examining himself to see if the events are because of some unrepented sin in his life. He looks to see if he is deserving of what is happening to him, and prays that any sin be dealt with, even if that means his death, before the promises of being king are fulfilled.
Then this in verse 6:
6 Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. [Psa 7:6 ESV]
So first he prays to pay for his own sins, and then he prays for God to rise against his enemies.
2021 - A non-defensive prayer.
Possible FB post.
And here is a really good FB post:
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! [Psa 7:9 ESV]
Or...it would have been last week during the rioting.
Vss 12-16 speak of the inevitable destruction of the wicked. We need not worry about them, plot against them, try to hasten their end. Because vs 12 begins like this:
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; [Psa 7:12 ESV]
God will end the wicked, and he will end up this way:
16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. [Psa 7:16 ESV]
God arranges it so that the unrepentant are in fact the very cause of their own ends.
2023 - But...Job??? I guess this is not the promise of good to the good, but of justice toward the bad...
Here is an interesting verse: 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. [Psa 7:15 ESV]. Compare to this one: 8 He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him. [Ecc 10:8 KJV]. The first is clearly labeled a Psalm of David. Ecclesiastes is written by Solomon. This could have been a common expression of the time that they both picked up and included. Or it could be that Solomon sought the wisdom of his father. That he read all that his father had written.