Psalm 10

Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
    who are caught in the schemes he devises.
He boasts about the cravings of his heart;
    he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;
    in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
His ways are always prosperous;
    your laws are rejected by him;
    he sneers at all his enemies.
He says to himself, “Nothing will ever shake me.”
    He swears, “No one will ever do me harm.”
His mouth is full of lies and threats;
    trouble and evil are under his tongue.
He lies in wait near the villages;
    from ambush he murders the innocent.
His eyes watch in secret for his victims;
    like a lion in cover he lies in wait.
He lies in wait to catch the helpless;
    he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
His victims are crushed, they collapse;
    they fall under his strength.
He says to himself, “God will never notice;
    he covers his face and never sees.”
Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
    Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
    Why does he say to himself,
    “He won’t call me to account”?
But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
    you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
    you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked man;    call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
    that would not otherwise be found out.
The Lord is King for ever and ever;
    the nations will perish from his land.
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
    you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
    so that mere earthly mortals
    will never again strike terror.

• Psalm 10:1-18

Type of Psalm

Didactic: These psalms are psalms that are intended to teach.  In most cases the psalm instructs us in moral principles.

Imprecatory psalms (10:15): Asking for vengeance against enemies.  From the two examples above, these requests for vengeance are usually not specific in how God does it.  I have written about this type of psalm or prayer in that they are legitimate requests to God.  We know that God will eventually stamp out all evil in the world.  Praying that God would do as He promises that He will eventually do is legitimate, but when a face is applied to that evil, our first reaction should be one of forgiveness and mercy.

Matthew Henry’s Summary

“The Septuagint translation joins this psalm with the ninth, and makes them but one; but the Hebrew makes it a distinct psalm, and the scope and style are certainly different. In this psalm, I. David complains of the wickedness of the wicked, describes the dreadful pitch of impiety at which they had arrived (to the great dishonour of God and the prejudice of his church and people), and notices the delay of God’s appearing against them, ver. 1-11. II. He prays to God to appear against them for the relief of his people and comforts himself with hopes that he would do so in due time, ver. 12-18.”

• Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Psalm 10:14 ‘oppression must be punished’: “If the history of the world is rightly read, it will be found that no case of oppression has been allowed to go long unpunished. The Assyrian Empire was a cruel one, but what is now left of Nineveh and Babylon? Go to the heaps of ruins by the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates and see what will become of an empire that is made to be only an instrument of oppression in the hands of an emperor and the great men under him. It has ceased to be more than a name; its power has vanished and its palaces have been destroyed. In later times the mighty empire of Rome sprang up. How came it to fall? Many reasons have been assigned, but you may rest assured that at the bottom of them all was the cruelty practiced toward the slaves and other poor people who were absolutely in the power of the aristocracy and oligarchy who formed the dominant party in the empire. There is a fatal flaw in the foundations of any throne that does not execute justice. Though the empire seems to stand high as heaven and to raise its pinnacles to the skies, down it must come if it is not founded on right. When ten thousand slaves have cried to God, apparently in vain, it has not really been in vain, for he has registered their cries and in due season has avenged their wrongs. And when the poor workers who have reaped the rich man’s fields have been deprived of their harshly earned wages and have cast their complaints into the court of heaven, they have been registered there; and God has, at the right time, taken up their cause and punished their oppressors.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from his sermon illustrations

My Thoughts

The wicked hunt the weak.  They have no room for God, and they prosper.

But God helps the poor, He hears the helpless and afflicted.  God defends the fatherless and oppressed.

The one imprecatory verse is the first that calls for violence, but this is a metaphor for God to remove the wicked’s ability to keep doing what they are doing.  In fact, a broken arm is only temporary.  Properly set, the broken arm can make a full recovery and from my experience, the wicked will return more ferocious.  But if God removes the ability to oppress and inflict harm on the weak, it gives this verse a clear message.

Psalm 11

In the Lord I take refuge.
    How then can you say to me:
    “Flee like a bird to your mountain.
For look, the wicked bend their bows;
    they set their arrows against the strings
to shoot from the shadows
    at the upright in heart.
When the foundations are being destroyed,
    what can the righteous do?”
The Lord is in his holy temple;
    the Lord is on his heavenly throne.
He observes everyone on earth;
    his eyes examine them.
The Lord examines the righteous,
    but the wicked, those who love violence,
    he hates with a passion.
On the wicked he will rain
    fiery coals and burning sulfur;
    a scorching wind will be their lot.
For the Lord is righteous,
    he loves justice;
    the upright will see his face.

• Psalm 11:1-7

Type of Psalm

Didactic psalms: These psalms are psalms that are intended to teach.  In most cases the psalm instructs us in moral principles.

Psalms of Affliction: Psalms where the psalmist is crying out in pain or distress, asking God where He is in the psalmist’s time of need.  But no matter how dire the circumstances or how long the lament, there seems to always be a word of praise.  Otherwise, why do we go to God in such times, other than to recognize Him as the only one who can help us?

Matthew Henry’s Summary

“In this psalm we have David’s struggle with and triumph over a strong temptation to distrust God and betake himself to indirect means for his own safety in a time of danger. It is supposed to have been penned when he began to feel the resentments of Saul’s envy, and had had the javelin thrown at him once and again. He was then advised to run his country. “No,” says he, “I trust in God, and therefore will keep my ground.” Observe, I. How he represents the temptation, and perhaps parleys with it, ver. 1-2. II. How he answers it, and puts it to silence with the consideration of God’s dominion and providence, ver. 4, his favour to the righteous, and the wrath which the wicked are reserved for, ver. 5-7. In times of public fear, when the insults of the church’s enemies are daring and threatening, it will be profitable to meditate on this psalm.”

• Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Psalm 11:3 ‘Praise God in all things’: “As the children of Israel spoiled the Egyptians and made themselves rich from the spoils of their oppressors, both when they left Egypt and after the passage of the Red Sea, so let us gather riches of comfort and arms for future warfare from this text that threatens to enthrall the minds of Christians and hold them in the chains of fear and doubt. God has laid in Zion certain spiritual foundations that can never be removed—against which the gates of hell cannot prevail, time cannot shake, and eternity will only confirm. The spiritual foundations cannot be removed, but the temporal foundations can be. The foundations of civil government, the foundations of commerce, the foundations of one’s estates, the foundations of trust between man and man—these may be removed. War may arise. What can the righteous do? We can say, ‘The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord’(Job 1:21). If the ship is wrecked, our treasure is not aboard it. We know that if the banks should break, we will only part with some of our spending money, but our true treasure is up there—not in an iron chest where the burglar can break through. The righteous must not do as the unbeliever does, who puts his hand to his fevered brow and says, ‘I am a ruined man.’ The righteous one cannot be a ruined man. We must not say, ‘I have lost everything.’ We cannot lose everything. Christ is our all, and Christ cannot be lost. Just accept the blow, kiss the rod, touch the hand that smites, and say, ‘Blessed be you, my Father.’ “

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from his sermon illustrations

My Thoughts

We take refuge in God.

God hates the wickedness and violence.

But God loves justice.

Psalm 12

Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
    those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
Everyone lies to their neighbor;
    they flatter with their lips
    but harbor deception in their hearts.
May the Lord silence all flattering lips
    and every boastful tongue—
those who say,
    “By our tongues we will prevail;
    our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”
“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord.
    “I will protect them from those who malign them.”
And the words of the Lord are flawless,
    like silver purified in a crucible,
    like gold refined seven times.
You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
    and will protect us forever from the wicked,
who freely strut about
    when what is vile is honored by the human race.

• Psalm 12:1-8

Type of Psalm

Didactic psalms: These psalms are psalms that are intended to teach.  In most cases the psalm instructs us in moral principles.

Matthew Henry’s Summary

“It is supposed that David penned this psalm in Saul’s reign, when there was a general decay of honesty and piety both in court and country, which he here complains of to God, and very feelingly, for he himself suffered by the treachery of his false friends and the insolence of his sworn enemies. I. He begs help of God, because there were none among men whom he durst trust, ver. 1, 2. II. He foretells the destruction of his proud and threatening enemies, ver. 3, 4. III. He assures himself and others that, how ill soever things went now, ver. 8, God would preserve and secure to himself his own people, ver. 5, 7, and would certainly make good his promises to them, ver. 6.”

• Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Psalm 12:5 ‘God hears our groaning’: “This text tells us three things. First, God’s people may be in a sad case. Second, God’s people have a divine friend at hand who can hear even their groaning. And, third, this friend will come to their aid and take their cause in hand.
“David lived in evil times. When he wrote this psalm, the days were dark and his cry was, ‘Help, Lord, for no faithful one remains; the loyal have disappeared from the human race.’ I gather from this that, bad as the times may be in which we live, there have been bad times before these. We are not the first persons who have had reason to complain of the evils by which we are surrounded. But see the power that there is in the sorrows of God’s children to touch the heart of their great Father when he hears their groaning. When those sorrows come to be so bitter that the sufferers can scarcely pray, when they cannot find any language in which to express their grief, when even their desires seem to fail and they are so broken down and made so weak by the various troubles that have crushed them that it comes to just this groaning and nothing more, then God cannot be still. He must get up. He may have hidden his face before, but now he sees that the time has come to manifest his unchanging love and grace. If we need a picture of this, we may read, ‘After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor; and they cried out; and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God’ (Ex 2:23). The same God lives forever and ever and lives for us as he lived for Jacob’s seed in the land of Egypt. And we in our sorrow can still touch the heart of God with our groaning. And he will deliver us as he delivered them.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from his sermon illustrations

My Thoughts

David laments that no one is faithful anymore.  No one is loyal.  These concepts seem rare in society today, except among those who oppress the weak.

With their lies, the wicked will defend themselves with their own lips.

But the Lord will defend the poor.

These three psalms have some elements that are the same.

One of the reasons that I am taking three psalms each weak is that I was in a small group that read three psalms each week.  We were supposed to have three people, but one person dropped out before we ever started.  With just one other person and me, we picked the psalm of the three that meant the most to us.  Often, my friend and I picked the same one, but occasionally, we picked a different one.  With these three psalms being similar, it might be the turn of a phrase that made the difference in our mind.  My work took me away from home for a key part of our journey and when I returned, my friend’s schedule had changed.  We called our Bible study to an end.  Within a couple of years, my friend passed away.  I cannot go back through these psalms without thinking of him.  He was a dear friend.

Some Serendipitous Reflections

Psalm 10

“1. Have you ever felt like the king does here? What happened? Why is God sometimes so silent in the face of great needs?
“2. When God does not appear to answer your prayers, as in this psalmist’s plight, do you persevere in faith anyway? If so, how? If not, why not?
“3. Who in the world today seems similar to the wicked man in this psalm? What would you like to say to him or her? What do you think God wants to say?
“4. Paul applies verse 7 to all of us (see Ro 3:14)? What’s his point? How does the image fit you? Might anyone be praying this psalm ‘against you’? Are you part of the problem or the solution?”

Psalm 11

“1. What hiding places or ‘getaways’ does the world urge upon you? How do you seek refuge in the Lord instead?
“2. Do you feel like ‘the foundations are being destroyed’? Which ones? What should the group do about it?”

Psalm 12

“1. What is your biggest ‘speech impediment’: Withholding the truth? Flattery’? Boasting? Not listening?
“2. Do you consider yourself a good communicator? What do your friends think?
“3. When did a small word hurt a lot? Encourage a lot?
“4. How do you rate on Paul’s view of speech (see Eph 4:15,25, 29)?”

• Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups

There is one set of questions for each psalm.

Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.