PSALM 26

    ¹For David.

    Judge me, O LORD.

          For I have walked in my wholeness,

                And the LORD I have trusted.

                    I shall not stumble.

    ²Test me, O LORD, and try me.

          Burn pure my conscience and my heart.

    ³For Your kindness is before my eyes

          and I shall walk in Your truth.

    ⁴I have not sat with lying folk

          nor with furtive men have dealt.

    ⁵I despised the assembly of evildoers,

          nor with the wicked have I sat.

    ⁶Let me wash my palms in cleanness

          and go round Your altar, LORD,

    ⁷to utter aloud a thanksgiving

          and to recount all Your wonders.

    ⁸LORD, I love the abode of Your house

          and the place where Your glory dwells.

    ⁹Do not take my life-breath with offenders

          nor with blood-guilty men my life,

    ¹⁰in whose hands there are plots,

          their right hand full of bribes.

    ¹¹But I shall walk in my wholeness.

          Redeem me, grant me grace.

    ¹²My foot stands on level ground.

          In the chorus I bless the LORD.

PSALM 26 NOTES

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1. Judge me, O LORD. Although the explicit mention of thanksgiving, todah, in verse 7 has led some interpreters to classify this as a thanksgiving psalm, it is rather a profession of innocence. The speaker expresses his readiness to withstand God’s searching gaze into his innermost parts (verse 2) in the confident knowledge that he has lived an upright life (verses 3–5) and hence is fit to celebrate God in His sanctuary (verses 6–8).

For I have walked in my wholeness, / . . . I shall not stumble. The simple, and conventional, metaphor of walking secure is beautifully expressive in this poem. It is picked up at the end, again in an envelope structure, when the speaker proclaims, “My foot stands on level ground (verse 12).”

2. my conscience. As elsewhere, the literal sense of the Hebrew is “kidneys,” thought to be the seat of conscience.

3. kindness . . . / truth. This is a clear instance of what some biblical scholars call a break-up pattern. The phrase “kindness and truth,” ḥesed-weʾemet, meaning something like “steadfast kindness,” is split between the two versets, standing as bookends at the beginning and end of the line.

4. I have not sat with lying folk. The avoidance of the company of the wicked articulated in this verse and the next one stands in implicit contrast to enjoying the company of the righteous in the temple ceremony. These two verses approximately correspond to the profession of innocence at the beginning of Psalm 1.

6. Let me wash my palms in cleanness, / and go round Your altar, LORD. Some scholars have conjectured that these words were the text of a temple ceremony in which the celebrant proclaimed his innocence, ritually washing his hands while he marched around the altar. Although the existence of such a ritual is a distinct possibility, one wonders whether the whole conjecture might be an instance of what A. N. Whitehead, in a very different context, called “misplaced concreteness.” Washing the palms could simply be an apt metaphor for innocence.

9–10. blood-guilty men . . . / in whose hands there are plots. The “lying folk” and “evildoers” referred to in general terms earlier in the poem are now given criminal specificity: they are murderers, schemers, and bribe takers. The speaker has done well to keep a distance from them.

12. In the chorus I bless the LORD. As a concrete expression of the sweetness of being able to stand in the place where God’s glory dwells, the speaker at the conclusion of the psalm praises God among the many singers (in the Hebrew, “chorus” is in the plural) taking part in the joyous temple rite.