1For the lead player, a David maskil, 2when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul and said to him, “David has come to the house of Ahimelech.”
3Why boast of evil, O warrior?
—God’s kindness is all day long.
4Disasters your tongue devises,
like a well-honed razor, doing deceit.
5You love evil better than good,
a lie more than speaking justice.
selah
6You love all destructive words,
the tongue of deceit.
7God surely will smash you forever,
sweep you up and tear you from the tent,
root you out from the land of the living.
selah
8And the righteous shall see and be awed
9Look, the man who does not make
God his stronghold,
and who trusts in his great wealth,
who would be strong in his disaster!
10But I am like a lush olive tree
in the house of our God.
I trust in God’s kindness forevermore.
11I shall acclaim You forever, for You have acted,
and hope in Your name, for it is good,
before Your faithful.
PSALM 52 NOTES
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2. when Doeg the Edomite came. Doeg is the informer who sees the fleeing David take refuge with the priest Ahimelech in Nob, then denounces Ahimelech to Saul (1 Samuel 21–22). Saul’s response is to massacre all the priests of Nob. The lethal effect of Doeg’s words may have especially encouraged the editor to create the connection with this psalm in the superscription, though the fit with the content of the psalm is far from perfect: Doeg causes harm through his report but does not in fact speak in deceit, and the sarcastic address to the man boasting of evil as “warrior” is not exactly appropriate for him.
3. God’s kindness is all day long. The likely meaning is that God in His perpetual kindness will somehow protect the victims over whom the evildoer vaunts and whom he thinks he can destroy.
7. sweep you up. The root of the declined verb yaḥtekha is ambiguous. It might instead derive from a verbal stem meaning “reduce to rubble.” Either way, the line produces an image of violent destruction of the wicked.
8. laugh over him. The “him” is, of course, the evil person, until now addressed in the second person. Such switches in pronoun reference are fairly common in biblical usage.
9. would be strong in his disaster. The verb yaʿoz obviously plays against the noun maʿoz, “stronghold,” which has just been used. Its employment here is evidently sardonic: such a man imagines, foolishly, that he will remain strong in his disaster.
10. But I am like a lush olive tree. A first-person singular enters the poem only now, at the conclusion. The speaker feels secure against the razor-tongued evil man destined to be uprooted, and he will flourish like an olive tree—a standard symbol for prosperity and peace—within the temple precincts.
I trust in God’s kindness forevermore. God’s kindness, or keeping faith (ḥesed), with humankind, mentioned elliptically at the beginning of the poem, is the quality that the grateful speaker feels manifested in his own life.
11. I shall acclaim You forever, for You have acted. This poem, which began as a defiant challenge to the boastful wicked, ends as a thanksgiving psalm. The act of thanksgiving takes place within the Temple, in the presence of God’s community of faithful followers. The phrase “hope in Your name” is syntactically parenthetical. It is not the hope but the acclaiming that takes place “before Your faithful.”