Psalm 10

Psalms 10:1-3

This psalm carries no title of its own; Delitzsch and Barnes note that its alphabetic pattern continues brokenly from Psalm 9, so the two were anciently read as one acrostic poem, kept as a single psalm in the Septuagint's numbering. The complaint opens without any preamble of praise, why standest thou afar off, O Lord, God's apparent distance named as the whole problem while the wicked hunts the poor in the very times of trouble the sufferer names. The wicked man's pride is self-satisfied twice over, he boasteth of his heart's desire and blesseth the covetous man the Lord abhors, praise turned upside down.

Psalms 10:4-6

Through the pride of his countenance the wicked man will not seek after God, and God is not in all his thoughts, the verse's famous line naming not denial of God's existence but the exclusion of God from every calculation, what the older writers call practical rather than formal atheism. His ways prosper without apparent check, thy judgments are far above out of his sight, and he puffs at every enemy as beneath his notice. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity, the settled self-confidence Spurgeon reads as the mark of a man judgment has not yet visited.

Psalms 10:7-11

His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud, and under his tongue is mischief and vanity, speech that hides what the hands are already doing. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages, murders the innocent in secret, and the psalm turns him into a lion crouched in his den to catch the poor and draw them into his net, predator language John Gill reads as deliberate, no accident of circumstance. The self-deception closes the portrait, he hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten, he hideth his face, he will never see it, the same practical atheism of verse 4 now sharpened into a wager that no one is watching.

Psalms 10:12-15

Arise, O Lord: The prayer breaks in against the portrait just drawn, arise, O Lord, O God, lift up thine hand, forget not the humble, the same divine forgetting the wicked man presumed on in verse 11 now recalled as impossible. Verse 14 answers verse 11 directly, thou hast seen it, for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand, the poor committeth himself unto thee, thou art the helper of the fatherless, the title itself the psalm's own answer to why standest thou afar off. Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man is the imprecation proper, aimed at the predator just described and never generalized beyond him.

Psalms 10:16-18

The psalm answers its own opening distance with a coronation, the Lord is King for ever and ever, the heathen are perished out of his land, kingship the ground the whole prayer stood on without saying so until now. Thou hast heard the desire of the humble closes the case the poor man opened in verse 12, humility met with hearing rather than silence. The last verse states the purpose plainly, to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress, justice for the powerless the reason the King reigns.