Psalm 69

Psalms 69:1-3

Save me, O God: The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, A Psalm of David, shoshannim meaning the lilies, a tune name the bench discusses without settling its sense. The psalm opens already drowning rather than merely threatened: waters come in unto my soul, deep mire with no standing, deep waters where the floods overflow me. Verse 3 adds exhaustion to the flood, weary of crying, throat dried, eyes failing while he waits for his God, so prayer that keeps going is set beside a body that cannot.

Psalms 69:4-5

They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head names an opponent too many to count, and then I restored that which I took not away adds the sharper claim of being made to pay for another's theft. Henry and Barnes both connect the phrase hated me without a cause to John 15:25, where Christ applies to himself words that also stand at Psalm 35:19, a link the bench draws though the New Testament does not name which chapter it quotes. Verse 5 turns the plea inward without contradiction: thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee, the sufferer innocent of what his enemies charge yet not claiming sinlessness before God.

Psalms 69:6-8

O Lord God of hosts: Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake pleads that the sufferer's fall would cost others their own faith, his trial made a stake for the whole believing community rather than a private matter. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach turns the suffering into something taken up for God's own name. Verse 8 names the cost inside his own house, I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children, which the bench reads against the Gospels' report that his brethren did not believe on him.

Psalms 69:9

For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up is quoted directly at John 2:17, where the disciples remember it as the temple cleansing takes place, one of the New Testament's own attachments of this psalm to Christ. The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me, the verse's second half, is applied at Romans 15:3 to Christ pleasing not himself but bearing the reproach meant for God. Barnes reads the two halves together as one pattern, zeal for God's house drawing onto the zealous man the hostility that properly belongs to God himself.

Psalms 69:10-12

When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting sets a devotional discipline meant to draw sympathy, and instead it becomes a further reproach; sackcloth made a garment turns mourning itself into public mockery. They that sit in the gate speak against me places the scorn at the city's own courtroom, the place where justice was supposed to be heard, and I was the song of the drunkards adds insult from men with no standing to judge anything. Clarke notes the escalation across the three verses, from private grief, to public dress, to open ridicule in the street.

Psalms 69:13-15

But as for me, my prayer is unto thee... in an acceptable time turns from the mockers to the one hearer who matters, prayer offered though the moment does not feel acceptable at all. Deliver me out of the mire returns to the opening image of verse 2, and the three pleas of verse 15, the waterflood, the deep, the pit, ask that the drowning not become final in any of its three forms. Spurgeon reads the acceptable time as faith's own claim on God's timing rather than the sufferer's feeling, since nothing in the surrounding verses suggests the moment felt acceptable to him.

Psalms 69:16-18

Hear me, O Lord; for thy lovingkindness is good grounds the plea in God's character rather than the sufferer's own merit, the same move the psalm made at verse 3 in turning back to nearness. Hide not thy face from thy servant asks the opposite of what verses 7 and 20 report has already happened among men, God's own face being the one that must not also turn away. Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it pairs nearness with rescue as though the two cannot be separated, deliverance requiring God to come close rather than act from a distance.

Psalms 69:19-20

Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour appeals to a God who has watched the whole ordeal rather than one who must be informed of it now. Reproach hath broken my heart carries the toll further than any of the earlier complaints, and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none names the deepest wound of the psalm, not the enemies but the absence of a single comforter. Barnes marks this as the psalm's low point, the sufferer surveying his own isolation with no relief offered before the prayer resumes.

Psalms 69:21

They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink stands behind two separate moments at the cross, the wine mingled with gall offered before the crucifixion and refused at Matt 27:34, and the vinegar offered on a sponge later at John 19:29. The psalm does not distinguish the two offerings the Gospels record separately, and the bench reads both as fulfilling this one verse rather than forcing it onto either alone. Delitzsch notes that gall for food and vinegar for drink both answer kindness with its opposite, a meal turned to poison at the moment of greatest need.

Psalms 69:22-24

Let their table become a snare before them opens the imprecation by asking that the enemies' own provision turn against them, the very meal that sustains them made a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not is read by Paul at Romans 11:9-10 as spoken of Israel's unbelief in his own day, one of the psalm's imprecations the New Testament itself picks up and applies rather than passes over. The bench reads these lines as prayers handing vengeance to God's own justice rather than the sufferer's private revenge, the voice of a covenant lawsuit rather than personal spite.

Psalms 69:25

Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents is quoted at Acts 1:20 by Peter concerning Judas, named there as written in the book of Psalms, one of only two psalm citations in that speech and the New Testament's own application of an imprecatory line to one man's fate rather than to any living people. The plural tents of the psalm becomes Peter's singular habitation for Judas, and the bench notes the shift without treating it as a strain on the text. No note on this psalm turns its curses toward anyone but the parties the text and the apostles themselves name.

Psalms 69:26-28

For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten names the enemies' worst offense, piling cruelty onto a man already under God's own hand rather than showing mercy to the afflicted. Add iniquity unto their iniquity, and let them not come into thy righteousness asks that guilt already incurred be left standing, the sharpest line in the section. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living sits behind Revelation's own book of life, and the bench reads the plea as covenant language, exclusion from the community of the redeemed, rather than a wish for death alone.

Psalms 69:29-31

But I am poor and sorrowful turns the psalm from imprecation to petition in one breath, the same voice that just prayed judgment now asking only to be set up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song answers the prayer before it is granted, praise offered on credit. Verse 31 names what that praise is worth: this also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs, a thankful heart weighed against the temple's own sacrifices and found to outweigh them.

Psalms 69:32-33

The humble shall see this, and be glad turns the psalm outward, the sufferer's own deliverance made into good news for others who are watching. Your heart shall live that seek God ties survival itself to seeking rather than to already having found. Verse 33 gives the reason: the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners, prisoners read by Barnes as those bound by affliction rather than crime, God's ear turned toward exactly the kind of captivity this psalm has described.

Psalms 69:34-36

Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein widens the call to praise past Israel to the whole created order, an answer in scale to the flood imagery that opened the psalm. For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah turns the personal deliverance into a national hope, the sufferer's rescue standing for a promise to the whole people. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it closes the psalm on inheritance carried forward to a generation not yet born, the same hope Psalm 22 reaches at its own close.