A manual of the book of Psalms · Martin Luther
PSALM V.
_David prayeth, and professeth his study in prayer.—God favoureth not the wicked.—David, professing his faith, prayeth unto God to guide him—and to preserve the godly._ To the chief Musician upon Nehiloth. A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O LORD; consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct _my prayer_ unto thee, and will look up. For thou _art_ not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come _into_ thy house in the multitude of thy mercy; _and_ in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness, because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face. For _there is_ no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part _is_ very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue. Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels: cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee.
But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as _with_ a shield. This Psalm is an earnest prayer against that most destructive pestilence in the church—false teachers: and all ages, from Cain, the first man that was born, the first hypocrite after the creation of Adam, and the first “man of blood,” have had their Cainish saints, their false prophets, their false apostles, and their fanatic spirits; who have taught their own human dreams, and their own traditions for the word of God, and resolutely contended for their own Cainish holiness, ever burning with an insatiable thirst to drink the blood of the Abels, the true saints: and these Christ has called, in his gospel, “vipers.” It is at the blasphemies of these against God, and their cruelty towards men, that this Psalm strikes; and openly exposes the persons themselves as most virulent hypocrites, in whose doctrine and works there is nothing but outside daubing, nothing but doubting and disquietude, and a whole slaughter-house of consciences. These characters suppress the true word, the doctrine of faith, and the true worship of God; namely, the worship required by the First Commandment: and there is no end to their rage against those that fear God: they cause horrid devastations in the church, and load her with an infinity of injuries.
Against the destructive influence of these, therefore, David prays in this Psalm;—that it would please God to prevent the persecuting and Cain-like counsels of such hypocrites, and all crafty and blood-thirsty characters of the kind, and, amid all this bitter and furious hatred of the world and the devil, and such an infinity of cruelty in all their adversaries, to defend, comfort, prop up, and protect the godly; to confound the hypocrisy of the wicked, to root out all false worship; to cause the true word and the true worship of God to spread and flourish, and to glorify the true church in the face of the false one, under all the outward daubing and show of the latter. In the last verse, David appends a most glorious promise;—that, although those who truly fear God are cruelly treated by those hypocrites, it shall yet come to pass that the godly shall at length rejoice that their prayers are heard, and shall see the judgments of God openly fall upon the hypocrites and fanatics, and the true church defended and preserved. This Psalm has reference to the Second and Third Commandments of the Decalogue, and to the first and second petitions of the Lord’s Prayer; where we pray “that the name of the Lord may be sanctified and glorified,” against the pride and gloryings of such hypocrites.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.