Psalm 7--In You Do I Take Refuge

Psalm 7
English Standard Version

In You Do I Take Refuge
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
7 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.

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

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.

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.

​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.

---

We see yet another prayer of "salvation" and deliverance here from David.  The first image that we have in this psalm of David is that the LORD is a refuge--a place of safety and protection for David from all of his enemies.  David says that if it were not for the LORD's protection that all of his enemies would have torn his soul to pieces in the same way that a lion tears apart its prey, and no one would have been able to deliver him from them if it was not for the LORD.

We then see something that to this point we haven't seen--David realizes that God sometimes uses our "enemies" to correct us and David thinks about this fact.  Perhaps there is some secret and unconfessed sin that God is using David's enemies to deal with in his life and that God has a greater purpose in this and maybe the pain and suffering is for the purpose of good correction.  Maybe, just maybe, David shouldn't be praying for the suffering to go away, but that he should learn from it what God means for him to learn from it.  This shows another level of spiritual maturity on the part of David.  David is not certain that there is sin there that is being corrected, but he prays that if it is there that God expose that to him so that it can be dealt with and that God would use whatever means necessary to correct him.  This is the only place in this psalm where the reader/singer is told to pause and reflect, and I think that is for good reason as we need to stop and think about if we have this same kind of attitude or need to have this kind of attitude in our own lives.

Once David is sure that he is right with God, he once again prays for God's wrath and judgment to be poured out on his enemies (likely Gentile enemies if he's praying for God's wrath to be poured out on them).  He prays for all the people of the world to be called to watch the LORD hold court and sit in judgment (this will happen one day).

David then prays for the LORD to judge him--remember he's already dealt with his sin issue, even his secret/hidden sins, and is sure that there is nothing other than righteousness and integrity for the LORD to see now.  We know more about this from the New Testament that we can stand firm and confident knowing that at the coming judgment that we will be judged by the righteousness and integrity of Christ, and not by our own works which would never measure up, so don't read this as David claiming he can be saved by his own works.  David has already received grace and mercy and we have seen other places where he has specifically cried out that God would not hold his sin against him.

David desires for wickedness and evil to come to an end and for God to reign not just in heaven, but to be in complete control of the hearts and minds of men (maybe David had the recreation that we read about in the book of Revelation in mind).  David relies on God's righteous judgment, that He will not let the righteous be swept up with the judgment of the unrighteous, that He will be a Shield to those who belong to Him, and we see that David says that not only is God's judgment righteous, but that God feels righteous indignation towards sin every single day--for all sin is sin against the LORD.  It is Him that we are sinning and rebelling against, and He feels it each and every time that we sin against Him.

David then makes it clear that there is no salvation without repentance (in case we missed that earlier in the psalm).  There is only the sharpened sword of God's judgment and wrath for the unrepentant sinner and the bent bow (the arrow is already drawn and ready to be released to hit its target) that can strike its target from far away.  The LORD can deal with your sin in hand-to-hand combat or by used a ranged weapon from far away--either way, He will always hit his target and accomplish His aim.  We normally think of "fiery arrows" associated with the devil and his temptations, but here David says that these are what the LORD will shoot from His bow as he readies his "deadly weapons" and "fiery shafts" as instruments of His judgment.

What an image we have next that the wicked man conceives evil, is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies.  Then another image that sin is like a man digging a pit to try to lay a trap for someone or something else (someone or something that will be his victim that he's going to take advantage of) and the man is caught in his own snare.  This is what sin does to us as we are slaves to it and we are caught up in it with no way to make our own escape--salvation must come from outside of us--from the LORD.

In all of this, David chooses to end the psalm by giving thanks to the LORD because He is righteous, even though there is much wickedness around us.  David chooses to sing the name and the praises of the LORD Most High (to worship Him) in spite of everything that David sees and feels because God is still a good God worthy of our worship even if He does not destroy our enemies immediately or bring the whole world into account immediately.  David knows that God has a good plan that maybe he doesn't fully understand--even we don't fully understand it, but we know God's plan a little better now as we understand that God has been patient with us so that all might repent and believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Way, the Truth and the Life--the only way to the Father, and the one who is the Righteous Judge of both the living and the dead.  We are living in a period of God's "longsuffering" right now, but His longsuffering will come to an end when the vials of the wrath of God are full and will be poured out in judgment on unrepentant sinners.  Then the world will come into judgment and all will watch as we stand there completely exposed before God and the books are opened--first the Lamb's Book of Life that contains the names of all those that are in Christ.  Anyone whose name is not found in that book will then have the book that records all of their deeds opened so that they may be judged by their works (the only other option) and all who are judged by their works will be found guilty for no one will be able to stand by his own merit in the Day of the LORD.

The LORD's judgment is good and holy as He will not let the wicked go unpunished, nor will He let the the righteous perish with the wicked.  We can be certain of this because this is God's nature and this is how we've already seen Him work in the past and since He is unchanging, we know this is how He will continue to work in the future.  So let us be free to praise Him for the salvation that we know that He has provided.  At this point David was looking forward to the salvation that would be in Christ.  We are both looking back to the cross and looking forward to the fulfillment where, " And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6).