Context No. 26 of 4322 · Psalms

Psalms 5:1-12: in context

1Give ear to my words, LORD. Consider my meditation. 2Listen to the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for I pray to you. 3LORD, in the morning you will hear my voice. In the morning I will lay my requests before you, and will watch expectantly. 4For you are not a God who has pleasure in wickedness. Evil can’t live with you. 5The arrogant will not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. 6You will destroy those who speak lies. The LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. 7But as for me, in the abundance of your loving kindness I will come into your house. I will bow toward your holy temple in reverence of you. 8Lead me, LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before my face. 9For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their heart is destruction. Their throat is an open tomb. They flatter with their tongue. 10Hold them guilty, God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Thrust them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you. 11But let all those who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them always shout for joy, because you defend them. Let them also who love your name be joyful in you. 12For you will bless the righteous. LORD, you will surround him with favor as with a shield.

The Psalms are Israel's prayer book, a hundred and fifty poems for every state the soul can be in, and this is one of the morning ones. The speaker wakes, turns straight to God, lays out his case before the day starts, and then watches to see what will come of it.

The prayer is honest about the company he is keeping. He is surrounded by liars and violent men, and he says so without softening it. Their throat is an open grave, he prays, they flatter with the tongue. He does not pretend to feel generous toward them. He asks God to hold them guilty and let them fall by their own schemes. But the heart of the psalm is not the enemies. It is the two doors it keeps setting next to each other: the arrogant cannot stand in God's presence, while the one who takes refuge in him walks into his house and is covered as with a shield.

This is a prayer for the morning, before anything has happened, while the day's dangers are still only expected. It does not ask for the enemies to disappear. It asks to be led straight through them, guided and guarded, into God's own house. Which do I reach for first thing in the morning: the running list of who is against me, or the one who can lead me through them?

Sources

Psalm 5 as a morning prayer, one of the individual laments in the first book of the Psalter
Psalm 5:9: their throat is an open tomb, quoted later by Paul in Romans 3:13
The pairing of the arrogant who cannot stand before God with the one who takes refuge and is shielded