One of the most disorienting experiences in life is to be wrongfully accused. To have motives assigned to you that you never had or to have rumors spread about you that aren't true can be intensely confounding.
In our psalm today, David deals with the disorientation of a false accusation. He lands in an interesting place—a place we should land whenever wrongly accused.
So, beginning with his prayer, let's consider how David responded.
1. His Prayer: Deliverance
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite. 1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, 2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
The Setting
This is another psalm that gives us some background material before it begins. The superscription tells us it is a Shiggaion of David. This likely means it is a song of intense feeling, perhaps set to chaotic or aggressive music. Less ballad and more hard rock. Less Adelle and more AC/DC. Less aroma therapy and more rage room.
But beyond the style of the song, we also learn it was to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite. We don't know who Cush was, nor do we know what he said, at least not exactly. We do know Saul was a Benjamite just like Cush and that Saul was surrounded by Benjaminites who told him young David was out to get him (1 Samuel 22:7, 24:9, 26:19). And, as the song progresses, David alludes to an accusation that he's repaid his friend with evil, plundered his enemy without cause, and pursue his enemy's soul—this is likely the accusation Cush made against David (4-5).
So, though we can't know the situation with a high degree of certainty, we might suspect David is young, not yet king, and on the run from the ruling king of Israel, his father-in-law, Saul. Out in the wilderness, he is desperate, tired of running, and worried he will be consumed because of Cush's counsel. Like a lion tears apart its prey, David is concerned that his soul is about to be torn apart in the same way (2). So he cries out to God for deliverance. He looks to God for refuge (1).
Modern backpackers will often take various satellite-connected emergency communication systems into the wilderness. One I saw enabled the hiker to send one of three preset messages—OK, help, or SOS. When clicking "OK," friends or family could know they had made it safely through another day and find their location on a map. Clicking "help" means they need aid but can make due for a while. But "SOS" is meant to tell the authorities they need immediate rescue. David has come to his SOS moment—the accusation is too intense—so he cries out to God.
Falsely Attacked
This psalm is important partly because a wrongful accusation or false attack is difficult to navigate. What do we do?
Should we respond with the same methods of our accusers? We can't because that brings us down to our their level, and they are sinning.
Do we openly (or even combatively) defend ourselves? This often backfires because our vehemence often leads others to think we are guilty. And, if innocent, we don't have the option of repentance and restoration because that would be a lie.
What can we do? David found the only way—take the problem to God. Ask him for deliverance.
2. His Claim: Innocence
So David's prayer was for deliverance, but he quickly left that request and moved on to the bulk of his song. After his prayer was a claim of innocence. He said:
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, 4 if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, 5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
An Honest Prayer
This is an incredibly honest part of the song. In it, David qualifies his desire for refuge and deliverance from God with a few conditions. If he had done the crime Cush accused him of, if there was wrong in his hands, if he was guilty of mistreating his friend Saul (or true friend, Jonathan), if he had wrongfully plundered his enemy, David wanted God to let his enemy defeat him. Basically, he's saying, "God, if I'm guilty, let me lose this one." It's a very honest and vulnerable prayer.
A Specific Prayer
Some of us are having a hard time with this prayer right now because we know the doctrine of depravity. Every human being has the stain of sin and is guilty before God. No one is innocent. Paul said, "There is none righteous, no not one" (Romans 3:10). So when David vehemently defends his innocence, we have our doubts.
Our suspicions are aroused further by his staunch denial of guilt. We have sayings like "where there's smoke, there's fire" or, to quote Shakespeare, "They doth protest too much." What we mean is that all the smoke of denial and protestation against the charge makes us think David must be guilty.
But this is a highly specific prayer. David was not saying he was personally pure in all his ways before God, a man who never succumbed to temptation. He wasn't even saying he was incapable of the crimes Cush said he'd committed. All he's saying is that he knows he did not commit that crime this time. In this instance, he was sure he was innocent.
And it can be one of the most disorienting experiences of life to be wrongfully accused when you know you are innocent. To know you've done nothing deserving of the ire of your accuser is jarring and dispiriting.
Integrity
But I want you to see an underlying commitment in David's cries of innocence. David implies that he is going to remain innocent. He would not take matters into his own hands. He valued integrity with others and innocence before God.
To have integrity is to be whole, an undivided person. An integer is a whole number, not a fraction, and a person with integrity actually is what they appear to be. They live an undivided, unsegmented life.
David was committed to this life of integrity, and, at least in this instance, he knew he was innocent.
3. His Hope: Judgment
So David prayed for deliverance and clung to innocence and integrity, but the next portion of his song shows us his hope.
What did David hope would happen? You might not be able to relate to it all that quickly—David wanted God's judgment to come. Let's read:
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. 7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. 8 The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. 9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous— you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! 10 My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. 11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.
A Longing For Judgment
In this portion of the song, David describes God in a specific way. He asks God to arise like a warrior going into battle (6). He appeals to God's anger and fury (6). He wants God to judge his opponents and put an end to the evil of the wicked (8-9). He concludes God will do these things because he knows God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day (11).
So David hoped for God's judgment—and not exclusively of his opponents. He wanted to be judged as well. He said, "Judge me, O Lord" (8).
What does this mean? Does David enjoy performance reviews because he likes being judged? To help us understand David's prayer, we have to consider what judgment looked like in the Old Testament era and compare it to the New Testament.
C.S. Lewis weighed in on the difference between them in his Reflections on the Psalms.[^1] He distinguished two types of justice—ultimate or heavenly justice is the first, while limited or earthy justice is the second. As Christians, we often think about the first, the justice that will come from heaven to every person when Christ returns. But Jewish believers often thought about the second, justice for people living in obedience to God today. Christians might even have a bit of dread about the ultimate accounting of our lives to God, but the Jewish believer sought and desired God's earthly justice.
And, though David's words likely point to God's ultimate judgment in the last days, he was surely (and mostly) thinking about justice in his day. And there is a difference between these two types of judgment. In one, an assessment is made of one's overall righteousness, while in the other, an assessment is made about a specific incident.
Imagine two little boys both claiming a toy, arguing that it cannot belong to the other because it belongs to them. "Mine," they both say. A good parent isn't going to say, "Well, Jonny is a better little boy than Jack, so I decree that the toy belongs to Jonny." No, Jonny, no matter how good a boy he is, is still just a boy and could've had a bad moment and stolen the toy from Jack. The parent isn't there to assess overall righteousness at that moment but a specific incident of unrighteousness.
And that is what David wants God to do. Judge him. Judge his adversaries. David wants justice. And he is urgent in his request. He wants God to rise up for battle, awake to his situation, and make a decree an end to evil.
This should be instructive to us today. As Christians, we should long for both forms of God's judgment—the final judgment of all evil, but also his justice today.
4. His Conviction: Folly
But after hoping for judgment, David states a conviction about the foolishness of evil. He saw what Cush had done to him as a folly because God would not let Cush get away with it. David said:
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.
The Way Of Folly
Here David declares the facts. Without repentance God is at odds with the evildoer, and he readies himself for war with them (12-13). Unless they repent, they will experience his deadly weapons (13). The wicked will dig a pit—something they would do to trap prey—but he would fall into it (15). David envisioned Cush's words backfiring on him as his mischief returned upon his own head (16).
The concept is similar to Proverbs 26:27: "Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling."
According to David, Cush's way is the way of folly. It doesn't pay. In the long run, it hurts. It all comes back on you. It just won't work out, and God has designed human life this way.
When a spider glides across his own web, he is not entangled in it. But the fly cannot walk on the web in the same way. The spider is made for it, while the fly is not. And the person who persists in evil is not made for it—he will eventually feel its consequences.
Repentance Available
And David saw the process of this wicked life with evil actions and compared it to birth. The idea for evil is conceived; then there is the development of it during the long pregnancy; followed by birth of the sin (14).
But this process is not inevitable. David said, "If a man does not repent," then all these things will happen. What this hints at is the possibility of repentance, which means an acknowledgment of guilt and a commitment to turn from it to follow God.
Repent is a gospel word because it gives us hope that God will receive the guilty, and the gospel of Jesus Christ shows us how. Jesus came to live the life we never could, died in our place on his cross, and rose from the dead so that all who trust him will be made just in God's eyes. As Tim Keller often says, "We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”[^2]
And, since the acceptance of Jesus' message will only happen when we agree with what he says about our sins, repentance is a vital form of entry into this gospel message. It is a word of hope for those without God.
5. His Decision: Praise
David has uttered his prayer for deliverance, made his commitment to integrity, declared his hope for God's judgment, and expressed his convictions about folly. Now he is ready to conclude his prayer—and his conclusion is a decision. He said:
17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
No Change
One fascinating element of his decision is that there is no discernable change in David's circumstances. Cush has not even had time to end his accusations, and the parallel narratives of 1-2 Samuel tell us that Saul's advisors never let up. They persisted in telling Saul lies about David (1 Samuel 24:9, 26:19).
But—in prayer—David made a vital turn. He shifted from a need for justice right now to celebratory praise over God and his nature. In a sense, David's time of prayer did what prayer often does; it counseled him to worship God more and better than before. One biblical counselor said, "The job of counselors is to work themselves out of a job by restoring worship in the hearts of the hurting."[^3] So David's prayer time did what a good counselor will do—it pointed him to a deeper appreciation of God, which resulted in thanksgiving and praise.
In the spiritual classic Assembling Together, author Watchman Nee wrote:
"Why is praise also triumph? Because when you pray, you are still in the environment; but when you praise, you have risen above the environment. Whenever you are praying and pleading, you are involved in the thing you ask for. The more you plead, the more you are bound by that thing, for it is before you all the time. But if you are brought by God beyond the prison, beyond the stocks, beyond the shame and suffering, then you are able to raise your voice and sing praise to the name of God."[^4] —Watchman Nee, Assembling Together
That was David. Cush was the same at the end of the prayer as he was at the beginning. Saul was the same. But David would not be imprisoned by their wickedness. He instead freed himself to praise God.
And this praise is the very deliverance David wanted. He opened this psalm by praying, "Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me" (1). Now David is delivered. God is his refuge.
And this praise is the very deliverance we need as well. When injustice or unrighteousness abounds, it can have an imprisoning effect on your soul. Soon, all you can see is evil. I've watched people whose lives—their practical, everyday experiences—are barely touched at all by the tumult and upside-down morality of our time but who are bound and imprisoned, unable to have any joy at all, because the evil has consumed their vision. Praise is what can deliver them.
And Christians always have a reason to praise because we always have the cross of Christ. We always have the beauty of the great exchange Luther spoke of—that the God-man exchanged himself for us, trading out our sin for his righteousness. Because Christ substituted himself for us on the cross, because he is the Savior who loves a broken world and sends us into it as missionaries, we always have a reason to praise.
And when we praise, we are delivered.
[^1] Lewis, C. S. 2020. Reflections on the Psalms. London, England: William Collins.
[^2] Keller, Timothy. 2016. The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Marriage with the Wisdom of God. London, England: Hodder & Stoughton Audio.
[^3] Lambert, Heath. 2016. A Theology of Biblical Counseling: The Doctrinal Foundations of Counseling Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[^4] Nee, W. 1980. Assembling Together. Richmond, VA: Christian Fellowship.