Psalm 86

The title calls this a prayer, and only a handful of psalms carry that label. It is also the one psalm of David inside this third section of the book, which otherwise belongs to the Asaph and Korah collections. The collectors clearly grouped by author elsewhere, so its placement here is one of the small puzzles the book does not explain.

Almost every line is a quotation from somewhere else in Scripture. The central one is God's own self-description to Moses on the mountain — merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth — the sentence Israel quoted back to God more often than any other. The psalm's argument is simply to repeat God's description of himself and ask him to act like it.

I am poor and needy is how a petitioner addressed a king. Letters from subjects to rulers across the ancient Near East open with the same self-lowering, and the point is not to describe a bank balance but to define the relationship: I have no claim, only your goodwill.

Unite my heart to fear thy name asks for one thing to be made out of many. A divided heart — wanting God and wanting something else — was Israel's standing problem, and this is a request for surgery on it.