For the director of Music, according to Muth-labben,
To the tune of ‘The Death of the Son’.
1 I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart;
I will praise of all your wonderful deeds.
2 I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing the praises to your name, O Most High.
3 My enemies turn back;
they stumble and perish before you.
4 For you have upheld my right and my cause,
you have sat on your throne, judging righteously .
5 You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;
you have blotted out their name for ever and ever.
6 Endless ruin has overtaken my enemy
you have uprooted their cities;
even the memory of them has perished.
7 The Lord reigns for ever;
he has established his throne for judgment.
8 He will judge the world in righteousness
he will govern the peoples with justice.
9 The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
10 Those who know your name trust in you,
for you, Lord, have never forsaken those
who seek you.
11 Sing the praises of the Lord, enthroned in Zion;
proclaim among the nations what he has done.
12 For he who avenges blood remembers;
he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.
13 O Lord, see how my enemies persecute me!
Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death,
14 that I may declare your praises
in the gates of Daughter Zion,
and there rejoice in your salvation.
15 The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug;
their feet are caught in the net they have hidden.
16 The Lord is known by his acts of justice;
the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.[c]
17 The wicked return to the grave
all the nations that forget God.
18 But needy will not always be forgotten;
nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.
19 Arise, O Lord, let not man triumph;
let the nations be judged in your presence.
20 Strike them with terror, O Lord;
let the nations know they are buy men.
(NIV)
Psalm 9:- Take Psalms 9 and 10 together, they form the first of the acrostic psalms (mind puzzle), Psalms where the first letter of each verse follows the order of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. Only the first eleven letters (with one omission) are used here, and the acrostic seems to continue (imperfectly) in Psalm 10.b
In the ancient Jewish script and the Vulgate Psalm 9 and 10 were combined as a single psalm, and this accounts for the differences in the numbering of Psalms 10 to 148 between the Protestant and Catholic/orthodox traditions, the later following 70. A few Hebrew MSS treat the psalms as a single psalm. The main pattern is to start each two verses with the appropriate letter of the Hebrew alphabet, but the d verse is missing, and the regular pattern is disturbed at the end of Psalm 9 and the first eleven verses of psalm 10, being resumed only with q (Ps 10:12) when it continues perfectly until the end of the psalm. The difficulties show that textural corruption has occurred and small changes in being restored some letters are missing.
Each half line in 9:1-2 begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Verses 3-8 give the reason for the outburst of praise. God has executed justice and upheld the right. He is an unassailable fortress (9-10). Praise him (11) Trouble is by no means over (13),
But experience gives ground for fresh hope (15-20). ‘Thy kingdom come’
“Marvellous works”: This especially references God’s extraordinary interventions into history on behalf of His people (compare the Exodus events). We see a determined David here. ‘I will praise thee’. He is determined to praise the Lord. Circumstances that he is going through would make us want to mourn, when we should be praising. As the psalmist cries and all of mankind is, “Have mercy upon me O Lord”. God hears and answers prayers of those who believe.
God sees our problems, even before we pray, before we know the full extent of our problem. The powerfulness of fervent prayer of a righteous man can gain much in the pit of despair, can find comfort from being in God’s presence. The idea is, that they had been brought into the destruction which they had designed for others, but it is his own sins that shall take him, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins and be rewarded double for all his sins.
The wicked are without excuse and charged guilty, because he has not accepted the forgiveness offered to him, the heathen (those who have totally rejected God), have made their own choice. The man activated his own free will and rejected the Mercy of God. Now he stands before the Judge of all the earth with nothing but his own life. He is judged guilty of sin and worthy of death because he did not accept God. The Lord is Just and must judge him lost. Though God, for a time, may seem to forget or neglect them, and suffer their enemies to triumph over them. "The expectation of the poor": Namely, of their receiving help from God. "Shall not perish for ever": Though they may be tempted to think it shall. The vision is for an appointed time, and at the end it shall speak.
A tough psalm to try and understand. I know from what has happened in my life that God must have written out all that would happen to me. If I was told as a child I would not have understood and would perhaps try to go a different way. God knows the life we will lead and try’s to prepare us, but how many children want to go the way than the way their parents want them to go.
I wanted to be a telephonist when I was at school, but when I enquired about the job, I was told they were going to automatic exchanges, no work there. I tried other jobs but they were also being changed for automatic systems. The girl I worked with in the Post Office gave me the advert to work on computers. This was all new things in my younger days, but I did not realise that working with computers would be the way I found the man I married. You can never tell what God has in mind for you.