Psalm 7
1O Lord my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
2or like a lion they will tear me apart;
they will drag me away, with no one to rescue.
3O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4if I have repaid my ally with harm
or plundered my foe without cause,
5then let the enemy pursue and overtake me,
trample my life to the ground,
and lay my soul in the dust.
Selah
6Rise up, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake, O my God; you have appointed a judgement.
7Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered around you,
and over it take your seat on high.
8The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9O let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
but establish the righteous,
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God.
10God is my shield,
who saves the upright in heart.
11God is a righteous judge,
and a God who has indignation every day.
12If one does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and strung his bow;
13he has prepared his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14See how they conceive evil,
and are pregnant with mischief,
and bring forth lies.
15They make a pit, digging it out,
and fall into the hole that they have made.
16Their mischief returns upon their own heads,
and on their own heads their violence descends.
17I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
In what do we take refuge? What does that even mean? In the first Psalms, we prayed that we would find refuge and strength in God. These emotions, prompted by joy, happiness, and blessedness are a far cry from the Psalmist today. The refuge sought is more align with the refuge that comes when you rest from fleeing enemies. This psalm is a prayer to seek refuge in God not because things are going well, but because things are not.
The vivid imagery that the psalmist uses--enemies as a lion, pregnant with mischief--are hope that the refuge provided in God will not merely be safety, but a "what comes around goes around" scenario. How odd that we would pray that our enemies "get what's coming to them." Yet, we do not understand God's ways. While we think, pray, and hope that our enemies get what they deserve, the psalmist acknowledges that God alone is the great judge. In other words, whatever we want to happen, we do not get the last word. For God is righteous. We are unrighteous.
We do not know what sins the psalmist has committed that (verse 3), but we see the need for repentance. Let us too pray these hard words of the Psalm. Let us also make our confession before God and lay down our pride in order to be judged by the just one, the righteous one, the Almighty.
Pray Psalm 7.
