PSALM 35
1For David.
Take my part, LORD, against my contesters,
fight those who fight against me.
2Steady the shield and the buckler,
and rise up to my help.
3Unsheathe the spear to the haft
against my pursuers.
4Let them be shamed and disgraced,
who seek my life.
Let them retreat, be abased,
who plot harm against me.
5Let them be like chaff before the wind,
with the LORD’s messenger driving.
6May their way be darkness and slippery paths,
with the LORD’s messenger chasing them.
7For unprovoked they set their net-trap for me,
unprovoked they dug a pit for my life.
8Let disaster come upon him unwitting
and the net that he set entrap him.
May he fall into it in disaster.
9But I shall exult in the LORD.
shall be glad in His rescue.
10All my bones say,
“LORD, who is like You?
Saving the poor from one stronger than he
and the poor and the needy from his despoiler.”
11Outrageous witnesses rose,
of things I knew not they asked me.
12They paid me back evil for good—
bereavement for my very self.
13And I, when they were ill, my garment was sackcloth,
I afflicted myself with fasting.
May my own prayer come back to my bosom.
14As for a friend, for a brother,
I went about as though mourning a mother,
in gloom I was bent.
15Yet when I limped, they rejoiced, and they gathered,
they gathered against me,
like strangers, and I did not know.
Their mouths gaped and they were not still.
16With contemptuous mocking chatter
they gnashed their teeth against me.
17O Master, how long will You see it?
Bring back my life from their violence,
from the lions, my very being.
18I shall acclaim You in a great assembly,
in a vast crowd I shall praise You.
19Let not my unprovoked enemies rejoice over me,
let my wanton foes not leer.
20For they do not speak peace
and against the earth’s quiet ones plot words of deceit.
21They open their mouths wide against me.
They say, “Hurrah! Hurrah! Our eyes have seen it.”
22You, LORD, have seen, do not be mute.
My Master, do not keep far from me.
23Rouse Yourself, wake for my cause,
my God and my Master, for my quarrel.
24Judge me by Your justice, LORD my God,
and let them not rejoice over me.
25Let them not say in their heart,
“Hurrah for ourselves.”
Let them not say, “We devoured him.”
26Let them be shamed and abased one and all,
who rejoice in my harm.
Let them don shame and disgrace,
who vaunted over me.
27May they sing glad and rejoice,
who desire justice for me,
and may they always say,
“Great is the LORD
Who desires His servant’s well-being”
28and my tongue will murmur Your justice,
all day long Your praise.
PSALM 35 NOTES
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1. Take my part, LORD, against my contesters. These initial words announce the psalm’s status as a supplication. Although military imagery is used in verses 1–4, the Hebrew term for “contesters,” yerivim, is related to riv, a legal disputation. The references to false witnesses and baffling legal interrogations in verse 11 strongly suggest that these implacable enemies are attempting to destroy the supplicant in a trumped-up legal case, with the military imagery being strictly metaphorical.
3. haft. The Hebrew segor means etymologically “closing” or “seal.” But in one of the Qumran scrolls, it has the sense of the join between spear and handle, so “haft” seems a legitimate approximation.
5. with the LORD’s messenger driving. This is a neat instance of how the second verset is used in biblical poetry to intensify and specify an idea put forth in the first verset. Wind blowing chaff of course scatters it (as in Psalm 1), but this wind is driven by an agent of divine judgment. Similarly in the next line, it is risky to make one’s way in the dark on a slippery road, but how much more so when the nocturnal pedestrian is on the run, pursued by God’s messenger.
8. Let disaster come upon him. In a common idiomatic procedure, the poet slips from referring to the plural enemies of the supplicant to a single figure who is presumably representative of them all.
May he fall into it in disaster. Though the wording sounds odd, the poet has clearly gone out of his way to build a small envelope structure in this verse, with “disaster” at the beginning and at the end syntactically surrounding the enemy.
13. And I, when they were ill, my garment was sackcloth. This profession of innocence has a certain Job-like quality. Not only, the speaker says, did he harbor no ill intention toward his persecutors, but when they themselves were in distress, he went into mourning to plead for their recovery.
May my own prayer come back to my bosom. This clause is somewhat cryptic. The least strained interpretation is that the speaker wishes the prayer he once uttered for the restoration of these people who then persecuted him would now be fulfilled for himself. The problem is that the clause appears to be set in the time now past when the speaker was mourning for his supposed friends.
15. like strangers. The Masoretic Text has nekhim, “lame people,” which makes no sense. The Syriac version has kenokhrim, “like strangers,” which nicely catches the idea of purported friends acting hostilely. It is possible that a scribe mistook nokhrim for nekhim because of the reference to limping at the beginning of the line.
Their mouths gaped. As the next clause and the following verse indicate, this is an image of mouths open to pronounce derisive speech, although there is also a suggestion, picked up later in the psalm (verse 25), of swallowing the hapless object of persecution. The Hebrew shows only the verb qarʿu, “they tore open,” which can be applied to opening the eyes wide. Here, by the suggestion of context, it may refer to an elided “mouth.”
16. contemptuous mocking chatter. This translation follows a proposal of the medieval Hebrew commentator David Kimchi that the enigmatic noun maʿog is related to the Talmudic ʿugah, which means “empty talk.”
18. I shall acclaim You in a great assembly. The reference, as in similar locutions elsewhere, is to pronouncing words of thanksgiving in the temple rite.
22. You, LORD, have seen. God’s just and omniscient seeing is, of course, neatly contrasted with the evildoers’ seeing the desperate plight of their foe and gloating.
23. my cause, / . . . my quarrel. The “quarrel” (riv) looks back to the yerivim of the beginning of the poem, but the term here has an explicitly legal meaning as it is paired with “cause” (mishpat).
26. Let them be . . . abased / . . . don shame and disgrace. This line picks up a cluster of terms used at the beginning of the poem as the psalm rounds out toward its conclusion.
27. May they sing glad and rejoice, / who desire justice for me. It is important to note that this is a drama that has four groups of players: God, the supplicant, his enemies, and his supporters. To be viciously pursued by legal means is an isolating experience, and Job, who feels he has been condemned without ever having his day in court, repeatedly complains of his withering isolation. The speaker of this poem, on the other hand, can imagine at the end a whole crowd of people who support him and want justice for him; and so he invokes a blessing upon them that is syntactically parallel and thematically antithetical to the curse he has pronounced on his persecutors.
28. and my tongue will murmur Your justice. Thus at the very end, the speaker, praising God’s justice, places himself in a community of the upright who celebrate the presence of the divine order in the lives of humankind.