A manual of the book of Psalms · Martin Luther
PSALM X.
_David complaineth to God of the outrage of the wicked.—He prayeth for remedy.—He professeth his confidence._ Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? _Why_ hidest thou _thyself_ in times of trouble? The wicked in _his_ pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, _whom_ the Lord abhorreth. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek _after God_: God _is_ not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous; thy judgments _are_ far above out of his sight: _as for_ all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for _I shall_ never _be_ in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing, and deceit, and fraud: under his tongue _is_ mischief and vanity. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily laid against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth, _and_ humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see _it_.
Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require _it_. Thou hast seen _it_; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite _it_ with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless. Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil _man_: seek out his wickedness _till_ thou find none. The LORD _is_ King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land. LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress. This Psalm is a fervent prayer, and contains complaints of the deepest concern against Antichrist, that most atrocious enemy of God and the gospel, who will ever assail and lay waste the church, not by force and tyranny only, but with all the πανᴕργίᾳ of Satan, all his frauds and impostures, and with an infinite variety of outside deception and hypocrisy. This “Man of Sin” is descriptively pourtrayed in the present Psalm;—that he really rages against the body with the sword, ruins and destroys souls by his all-crafty and infinite hypocrisy, and with his sweet poison of false doctrines, and imposing forms of worship; but that he has no concern whatever about teaching any one kindly and with gentleness, nor instructing them seriously unto godliness or true comfort, but has his mouth ever full of cursing and deceit.
This we have manifested in the kingdom of the Pope, and in the tyranny of the Romish-church. All those fulminating and thundering excommunications are mere execrations and _cursing_, by which he has wished to make himself, and has succeeded in making himself, formidable even to kings, under the false pretence of the apostolic name, and divine authority. And his ‘_craft_’ and lies are all that infinite and inexplicable variety of hypocrisy and traditions of men; together with all that outward whitewash of holiness, and those deceptive forms of worship, by means of which, and his delusions of masses at one time, and of indulgences at another, this Antichrist ceases not to turn to wicked lucre all things human and divine, under the blasphemous cover and pretext of the name of God. In the end of the Psalm we have a consolation; which declares that such an abomination shall, in the end of the world, be revealed, and, having been made openly manifest by the sudden judgment of God, shall be rooted out. This Psalm has reference to the Second Commandment, and to the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer; as have all the Psalms of supplication.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.