1A David psalm.
hearken to my pleas.
In Your faithfulness answer me, in Your bounty.
2Do not come into judgment with Your servant,
for no living thing is acquitted before You.
3For the enemy pursued me,
thrust my life to the ground,
made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
4And my spirit fainted within me,
in my breast my heart was stunned.
5I recalled the days of old,
I recited all Your deeds,
of Your handiwork I did speak.
6I stretched out my hands to You—
my very self like thirsty land to You.
selah
7Quick, answer me, O LORD,
my spirit pines away.
Do not hide Your face from me,
lest I be like those gone down to the Pit.
8Let me hear Your kindness in the morning,
for in You I trust.
Let me know the way I should go,
for to You I lift up my being.
9Save me from my enemies, LORD;
10Teach me to do what will please You,
for You are my God.
Let Your goodly spirit guide me
on level ground.
11For the sake of Your name, LORD, give me life,
in Your bounty bring me out from the straits.
12And in Your kindness devastate my enemies
and destroy all my bitter foes,
for I am Your servant.
PSALM 143 NOTES
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1. LORD, hear my prayer. From these opening words, the psalm abounds in the stereotypical language of the psalm of supplication.
2. for no living thing is acquitted before You. The idea here is in accord with a theme in Job—that no creature (not even the angels, according to Job) can hope to be blameless before God’s inexorable judgment. The Hebrew phrase kol ḥay is not restricted to humankind, as many translations suggest, but embraces all living creatures.
3. like those long dead. The sense of this phrase might also be “like the forever dead.”
6. my very self like thirsty land to You. Rain in this climate and therefore in this body of literature is characteristically thought of as a desperately needed blessing. Hence God’s responsive presence is metaphorically represented as the rain that the parched land awaits to quicken it with growth.
8. in the morning. What is implied is waiting through a long, dark night—perhaps, like a city under siege—to discover rescue as day breaks.
for to You I lift up my being. This is a gesture of prayer or entreaty, an idiomatic extension of lifting up the hands in prayer.
9. with You is my vindication. This is the one textual crux in the psalm. The Hebrew seems to say “to You I covered” (ʾelekha kisiti). This translation revocalizes the second of these two words to read kesuti, a term that in Genesis 20:16 has the sense of “vindication.” Some scholars, anticipated by at least one medieval Hebrew exegete, prefer to read ḥasiti, “I sheltered.”
12. devastate my enemies / . . . destroy all my bitter foes. The psalm gives no real indication of the identity of these enemies or of the concrete nature—judicial? military?—of their assault on the speaker. Some interpreters have seized on the reference to dwelling in darkness at the beginning as an indication that the supplicant has been cast into prison, but the inference is questionable because darkness is such a general and archetypal image for adversity. The translation adds the adjective “bitter” to “foes” because the Hebrew tsorerey nafshi, literally “foes of my life,” suggests implacability or the desire to kill the person.