Psalms 5 To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
Psalm 5
1 Give ear to my words, O LORD;
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
3 O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O LORD;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
Psalm 5 is another Psalm of David, again in a context where he is under pressure. There is an oscillating movement in the Psalm, in a kind of triple decker sandwich. The ‘bread’ is a focus on God and David, while the ‘fillings’ are focused on God and evildoers.
We start at 5:1-3
1 Give ear to my words, O LORD;
Psalm 5:1-3
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
3 O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
Here David appeals to Yahweh to hear him – to hear his words, his groans and his cry. It is a cry for attention. David knows that he can bring his groaning to God. This may be something we need to learn. God is happy to listen and pay attention to our problems. A good part of prayer consists in bringing ourselves just as we are to God, and to invite him to pay attention.
But David doesn’t just pour out his heart to God. Verse 3 is important here. David knows that God hears his voice “in the morning” – at the start of his day, and he also knows that at the start of the day David also begins his attention to God. In the morning, he says, he “prepares” – here the ESV adds “sacrifice” which is not actually in the Hebrew which literally reads “[in the] morning, I arrange/set out for you and I watch.” The reader has to supply what David sets out before God. It could well be “sacrifice” (ESV) or it could easily be “requests” (NIV). The key thing is what David does when he has set out before God. The last word of verse 3 is “I watch”.
David waits to see what God will do. As we read the rest of the Psalm we see that David has some bold requests in the midst of his distress. David is in the midst of difficult times. When we are in the midst of difficult times we are often tempted to work out plans and strategies for how we will escape from the difficulty. We may well need to make plans – but before we get to plans we need to lay out our requests before God, and watch to see what he will do, what he is doing, in response to our prayers. Our basic posture in the world as we go about in the midst of our troubles and difficulties should be one of watching. Of looking to see what God is doing, and where he is at work in answer to our prayers. Of opening his word to see what he has done for others in the past. Of focusing on God and what he is like and how he has acted and how he is acting now.
And so we move on in the Psalm to the next verses:
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
Psalm 5:4-6
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
This is the fundamental reality that God does not delight in wickedness and evil. He doesn’t tolerate boasting, he will destroy the liar and he hates the bloodthirsty and deceitful. Boasting, evil, lies and shedding blood are the actions of people who are not watching for what God will do. They are the actions we carry out to get our way when we stop trusting God to be at work in his world.
Such actions are hated by God – and even more strongly we are told that God hates the evildoer, and he hates bloodthirsty and deceitful people. We often say ‘hate the sin’, ‘love the sinner’, but here it seems that God goes a stage further to hatred of the sinner. It is important to remember as we read these words that we are not being told to hate sinners. It is also important to remember that people of the Bible often spoken in very binary terms. Think of Jesus talking about ‘hating’ our own families.
We don’t like to speak of people hating or being hated. But we often say we do not hate, while at the same time we act in ways that make it seem like we hate. The Bible is more consistent in its speech. If a person or people are living in a way that God disapproves of, and has promised one day to judge then they are spoken of as being ‘hated’ by God. They can still be part of the world that God has loved, by sending his Son to die for them. God can simultaneously ‘hate’ the sinner for their wilful defiance of his will and desire to spoil his creation, while at the same time loving them and desiring that they be saved.
This Psalm reminds us of God’s settled hatred against everything and everyone who ruins his good creation by their lies and shedding of blood. David contrasts his own experience with that of the evil doers:
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
Psalm 5:7-8
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
David stands in God’s house, bowed down toward the temple in the fear of God. If we are feeling pedantic as we read the Psalms we will notice that here David writes about the temple – but there was no temple. I don’t think we need to worry too much about this. David may be referring to the tabernacle of his day in temple language, or it maybe that David’s original language is updated by the people who gathered the collection together to make it more appropriate for temple worship – or perhaps it was written later and is ‘of David’ in the sense of being ‘about’ him.
Whichever of those is true one key thing is his attitude of reverent fear towards God – a attitude of humility by contrast with his boastful enemies. The other key thing in v7 is that David does this by means of the abundance of Yahweh’s steadfast love. In other words, while the boasting enemies think they have ‘made it’ by their own efforts, David stands because Yahweh has shown him his love. David’s standing in God’s temple comes from God’s action in his life. David’s enemies will be destroyed because of their sin – but David stands with God because of God’s steadfast love – rather than because of anything good in David.
It is out of this right posture of humility before God that David can then pray for God to lead David in God’s righteousness, because of David’s enemies and to make God’s way straight before David. David is asking for God to lead him on the right path through his enemies. God’s righteousness here is his righteous action on David’s behalf to rescue him.
The contrast between the deceiving murders and David is vivid – and it begins in the attitude of the heart. The one who seeks after God must begin in the morning watching for God’s action, and must go on in reverent fear of God, asking for his leading and direction through those who oppose God. And that mention of the enemies leads back to his next prayer in regard to his enemies:
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
Psalm 5:9-10
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
This is likely where the Psalm contrasts most strongly with our own prayers. David declares that his enemies are devoid of truth and bent on destruction – their words are a graveyard, and their weapon is flattery. They sound good at times, but all the time they are seeking to deceive and destroy. And so David prays for God to deal with them appropriately – for God to judge them, that they would fall by their own wickedness. David prays that they would receive the just penalty of their sin.
It is striking – but we are conditioned to believe that we should always forgive and so we find it hard to read such words in a prayer. And yet, even though we know we should forgive we also harbour hatred in our hearts. We would never stand up in a prayer meeting and pray like this. What would people think of us? And yet we might well harbour such thoughts. What David does when he thinks such things is bring them straight to God. He brings them into the open. And leaves it with God. To watch what God will do.
Maybe, before we come to a place where we are ready to forgive we need to pray prayers like this. To admit how much we long for someone who has hurt us to face justice. Sometimes surely that is the right prayer to pray. And certainly the right place to take those feelings and desires is to God. What God then does with them is up to him, but we do no one any favours by denying our desire for justice.
The calling to forgive those who have wronged us, and to love our enemies does not mean we are to stoically deny the feelings which our enemies have stirred up in us, and these Psalms which call on God to judge our enemies can give us the words to say to God. And so at this point David turns back to God.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
Psalm 5:11-12
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O LORD;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
He calls on all who take refuge in God to rejoice – we’ve seen that call to take refuge in God in Psalm 2 – to be those who kiss the son, and submit to his rule. If we are among those we can rejoice, knowing that we are protected by the creator of the universe. We live in a world where his rule is not yet fully manifested – so we see much that puzzles us, and face much that will try to harm us. Yet we can know that we are ultimately held by the creator of the universe – we are safe in his arms, held by him, and so we can exult in him.
Those who take refuge in God are made righteous by him, and find his blessing, covered with his favour, or grace as a shield. God is for us. And if God is for us, Paul writes, who can be against us? The answer, of course is that lots of things can be against us – but they can never ultimately stand. We are safe. Held by God. Kept by him. And so we can join with David and watch what God will do next. We know we don’t need to plot God’s salvation plan – instead we watch and pray that God will lead us in his ways, and make our ways straight as we seek to rejoice in the God who holds us.
Joshua's Tree Rooted 