Psalm 143

Psalms 143:1-2

Christian tradition since the early church has counted this psalm the last of seven named Penitential Psalms, alongside 6, 32, 38, 51, 102 and 130, a grouping Maclaren and the older commentators both carry without treating it as anything more than an inherited custom of reading. The opening plea is answered by faithfulness and righteousness rather than by David's own record, and verse 2 states why: enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. Paul's language at Romans 3:20, that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified in his sight, echoes this verse closely without formally citing it, a resonance the bench notes rather than a quotation the New Testament marks as such.

Psalms 143:3-4

The enemy's assault is pictured as a living burial, smitten to the ground and made to dwell in darkness as those that have been long dead, oppression so total it borrows the language of the grave for a man still breathing. The same word for an overwhelmed spirit appears in the psalm just before this one, at 142:3, both psalms of persecution sharing the one vocabulary for a mind pressed past its own strength. My heart within me is desolate closes the complaint at its lowest point before the psalm turns to seek a way out.

Psalms 143:5-6

I remember the days of old: The turn away from despair begins in memory and meditation, remembering, musing and considering the work of God's hands rather than the present distress, a deliberate discipline rather than a change of circumstance. The soul's thirst is pictured as a thirsty land, ground cracked open for want of rain, the strongest image of longing the Psalter has for prayer itself. Selah closes the verse, one of seventy one such marks in the Psalter, and no reading of the word carries certainty; the tradition takes it as a musical rest, a lifted voice, or a pause to weigh what has just been said, and the honest answer is that no one now knows which.

Psalms 143:7-8

The urgency sharpens, my spirit faileth, and the fear named plainly is becoming like them that go down into the pit, the company of the dead. Morning is asked for as the hour of renewed mercy, cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning, the same daily freshness Lamentations later states outright, they are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. The prayer for guidance, cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, follows directly from the plea to be spared, rescue and direction asked for in the same breath.

Psalms 143:9-10

Flight and hiding, I flee unto thee to hide me, is followed at once by a request that goes beyond rescue to instruction, teach me to do thy will. The land of uprightness some read literally, David's own return to safety and to Israel's soil, and some read as the figure it plainly also is, a right way of life rather than a place on the map; the bench names both without forcing one. Thy spirit is good stands as the ground for the request, the psalm's only naming of the Spirit as the one able to lead into that way.

Psalms 143:11-12

The psalm closes on the same ground it opened on, David's plea resting on God's own name and righteousness rather than on any claim of his own, matching verse 2's confession that no man living stands justified before him. The last line asks for the destruction of those that afflict my soul, and the gracious rule that governs every imprecation in this book governs it here: the plea hands judgment to God against the psalmist's actual persecutors and is never read onto any living people. The closing word, for I am thy servant, gives the whole prayer its one ground, not merit but belonging.