Psalm 36

Psalms 36:1-2

The Hebrew title, which the reader floor does not show, names this A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, an epithet the Psalter gives to few besides David and applies elsewhere to Moses, marking the psalm as spoken from inside covenant service rather than as a stranger's cold observation of evil. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart pictures sin as a false oracle, speaking inside the wicked man the way true prophecy speaks inside a true one. There is no fear of God before his eyes names the root of the corruption the next verses describe, a missing fear rather than missing intelligence or opportunity. He flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful describes self-deception that collapses only when the sin itself finally becomes plain, even to the sinner.

Psalms 36:3-4

The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit moves from the inward oracle of verse 1 to its outward fruit, speech corrupted because the fear of God that should govern it is gone. He hath left off to be wise, and to do good marks a departure rather than an original state, a man who once functioned well now refusing it. He deviseth mischief upon his bed pictures premeditation at the most private and unguarded hour, and he setteth himself in a way that is not good, he abhorreth not evil closes the description with a will that no longer even resists wrongdoing.

Psalms 36:5-6

The psalm turns without transition from the wicked man's smallness to God's vastness: thy mercy is in the heavens, thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds, thy righteousness like the great mountains, thy judgments a great deep. The four attributes are given four different measures of scale, height, reach, mass and depth, so that no single image exhausts what is being said. Thou preservest man and beast closes the pair of verses on the widest possible object of that care, every living creature rather than Israel alone. The older commentators read the mountains and the deep together as unsearchable, God's righteousness and judgments alike beyond a man's full sounding.

Psalms 36:7-9

How excellent is thy lovingkindness answers the wicked man's self-flattery of verse 2 with genuine praise, and the children of men taking refuge under the shadow of thy wings pictures a bird sheltering its young, an image the Psalter uses elsewhere for the same protection. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house moves the picture from shelter to feast, God's own table rather than mere safety. In thy light shall we see light closes the section on one of the Psalter's most quoted lines, light itself the medium by which light is even seen, God's own being the condition for any true sight at all.

Psalms 36:10-12

O continue thy lovingkindness turns the psalm from description to petition, asking that what has just been praised keep going rather than assuming it will. Let not the foot of pride come against me and let not the hand of the wicked remove me set two specific dangers, arrogance and violence, against the mercy just described. The closing verse answers the request in advance: there are the workers of iniquity fallen, they are cast down, and shall not be able to rise, the wicked man of verse 1 brought down by the same God whose mercy reaches the clouds. Henry reads the tense shift, from petition to settled fact, as the prayer's own confidence, asked for and already seen as answered within the space of two verses.