Psalm 52

Psalms 52:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician, Maschil, A Psalm of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, and said unto him, David is come to the house of Ahimelech, fixing this psalm's mighty man as Doeg, the herdsman who betrayed the priest Ahimelech and Nob's priests with him at 1 Samuel 22:9-19. Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man addresses that boast directly, and sets it against the goodness of God endureth continually, a strength Doeg trusted that will not outlast the strength David is not yet trusting in his own defense. Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully names the informer's report to Saul as the weapon it was, a tongue doing a blade's work.

Psalms 52:3-4

Thou lovest evil more than good turns from the single act of informing to the settled taste behind it, a love for wrongdoing before any occasion to practice it arrives. Selah closes the verse, one of seventy-one such markers across the Psalter, three more in Habakkuk 3, whose meaning no one holds with certainty; the readings named across the commentators run from a musical rest or interlude, following the Septuagint's diapsalma, to a lifted voice, to a simple pause and weigh it. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue repeats the accusation from verse 2 in direct address, the tongue itself now spoken to as though it were the man.

Psalms 52:5

God shall likewise destroy thee for ever answers Doeg's own violence with a like measure, the massacre of Nob's priests met by an undoing as total as the deed. He shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living stacks three verbs of removal, uprooting the settled security a mighty man's riches had bought him. The verse closes on its own Selah, weighed rather than glossed.

Psalms 52:6-7

The righteous also shall see, and fear, and shall laugh at him turns the psalm's audience from Doeg to the watching righteous, whose reaction moves from fear at what such power can do to laughter at what has become of it. Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength names the root failure plainly, trusted in the abundance of his riches naming the substitute Doeg reached for instead. Strengthened himself in his wickedness closes the description, the same word for strength now describing a foundation the psalm has already promised will not hold.

Psalms 52:8-9

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God sets David's own image against Doeg's uprooted one, a tree planted and thriving in the sanctuary rather than a house plucked up. I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever answers Doeg's trust in riches with the one trust the psalm has been arguing for throughout. I will praise thee for ever, because thou hast done it closes the psalm in the present tense of faith, praising an outcome not yet seen as though already accomplished, and I will wait on thy name names the interval between the promise and its fulfillment as itself an act of worship.