Plea for Judgment of False Accusers
• Unless it can be proved that the religion of the old dispensation was altogether hard, morose, ad Draconian, and that
David was of a malicious, vindictive spirit, it cannot be conceived that this Psalm contains what one author has ventured
to call “a pitiless hate, a refined and insatiable malignity”. To such a suggestion we cannot give place, no, not for an hour.
But what else can we make of such strong language? Truly this is one of the hard places of Scripture, a passage which
the soul trembles to read; yet as it is a Psalm unto God, and given by inspiration, it is not ours to sit in judgment upon it,
but to bow our ear to what God the Lord would speak to us therein. (TOD)
109:1 Do not keep silent,
O God of my praise!
• In the first five verses David humbly pleads with God that he may be delivered from his remorseless and false-
hearted enemies (TOD)
• When God is silent, we should cry all the more strongly; nor should we because of such delay despair of help,
nor impatiently cease from praying (TOD)
109:2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful
Have opened against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
• The detractor is talkative (TOD)
109:3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without a cause.
109:4 In return for my love they are my accusers,
But I give myself to prayer.
• One of our poets says of the Lord Jesus: “Found guilty of excess of love” (TOD)
• True bravery alone can teach a man to leave his traducers unanswered, and carry the case unto the Lord (TOD)
• “Men cannot help but reverence the courage that walks amid calumnies unanswering” (TOD)
• None prove worse enemies than those that have received the greatest kindnesses, when once they turn unkind
(TOD)
• The Messiah says in this prophetic psalm “I Am Prayer”. During His pilgrimage on earth, His whole life was
communion with God; and now in His glory He is constantly making intercession for us. He not merely prayed and is now
praying, He not merely teaches and influences us to pray, but He is prayer, the fountain and source of all prayer, as
well as the foundation and basis of all answers to our petitions (TOD)
109:5 Thus they have rewarded me evil for good,
And hatred for my love.
109:6 Set a wicked man over him,
And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
• What worse punishment could a man have? The proud man cannot endure the proud, nor the oppressor brook
the rule of another like himself. The curse is an awful one, but it is most natural that it should come to pass; those who
serve satan may expect to have his company (TOD)
• It is little more than a special reduplication of the national woes denounced in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28
(TOD)
109:7 When he is judged, let him be found guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
• To the injured it must seem terrible that the black-hearted villain should nevertheless pretend to pray, and very
naturally do they beg that he may not be heard, but that his pleadings may be regarded as an addition to his guilt.
He who makes it a sin for others to pray will find his own praying become sin. (TOD)
109:8 Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
109:9 Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow.
• To us it seems better to agree with God’s curses than with the devil’s blessings; and when at any time our heart
kicks against the terrors of the LORD we take it as a proof of our need of greater humbling, and confess our sin before
our God (TOD)
109:10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;
Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.
• Misused power and abused wealth have earned the family name universal detestation, and secured to the family
character an entail of baseness. (TOD)
• We confess that as we read some of these verses we have need of all our faith and reverence to accept them as
the voice of inspiration; but the exercise is good for the soul, for it educates our sense of ignorance, and tests our
teachableness. Yes, Divine Spirit, we can and do believe that even these dread words from which we shrink have a
meaning consistent with the attributes of the Judge of all the earth, though his name is Love. How this may be we
shall know hereafter. (TOD)
109;11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder his labor.
• In the most subtle, worrying, and sweeping manner the extortioner takes away, piece by piece, his victim’s estate,
till not a fraction remains to form a pittance for old age. Baiting his trap, watching it carefully, and dexterously driving
his victim into it, the extortioner by legal means performs unlawful deeds, catches his bird, strips him of every feather,
and cares not if he die of starvation. (TOD)
• Wealth amassed by oppression has seldom lasted to the third generation; it was gathered by wrong and by wrong
it is scattered, and who would decree that it should be otherwise? (TOD)
109;12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him,
Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
• He had no mercy, but on the contrary, he crushed down all who appealed to him. Loath to smite him with his own
weapon, stern justice can do no otherwise, she lifts her scales and sees that this too, must be in the sentence (TOD)
• No man among us could desire to see the fatherless suffer for their deceased father’s fault, yet so it happens,
and there is no injustice in the fact. They share the parents ill-gotten gain or rank, and their aggrandizement is a part
of the object at which he aimed in the perpetration of his crimes; to allow them to prosper would be an encouragement
and reward of his iniquity; therefore, for these and other reasons, a man perishes not alone in his iniquity. (TOD)
109:13 Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
• Both from existence and from memory let them pass away till none shall know that such a vile brood existed. (TOD)
109;14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord,
And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
109:15 Le them be continually before the LORD,
That he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
109:16 Because he did not remember to show mercy,
But persecuted the poor and needy man,
That he might even slay the broken in heart.
109:17 As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;
As he did not delight in blessing, so let us be far from him.
• Retaliation, not for private revenge, but as a measure of public justice, is demanded by the Psalmist and deserved
by the crime (TOD)
• Surely the malicious man cannot complain if he is judged by his own rule (TOD)
109:18 As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
So let it enter his body like water,
And like oil into his bones.
• He was so openly in the habit of wishing ill to others that he seemed to wear robes of cursing (TOD)
109:19 Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,
And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.
109:20 Let this be the LORD’S reward to my accusers,
And to those who speak evil against my person.
109:21 But You, O God the Lord,
Deal with me for Your name’s sake;
Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.
• Do whatever You think fit. He leaves himself in the Lord’s hands, dictating nothing, but quite content so long as
his God will but undertake for him. His plea is not his own merit, but “the name”. God Himself has performed His
grandest deeds of grace for the honor of His name (TOD)
• Not because I am good, but because Thy mercy is good. (TOD)
• His name and His mercy are two firm grounds for hope, and happy are those who know how to rest upon them (TOD)
• Mercy – loyal love (NCBC)
109:22 For I am poor and needy,
And my heart is wounded within me,
• The undeserved cruelty, the baseness, the slander of his remorseless enemies had pierced him to the soul,
and this sad condition he pleads as a reason for speedy help (TOD)
109:23 I am gone like a shadow when it lengthens;
I am shaken off like a locust.
• Lord, there is next to nothing left of me, will You not come in before I am quite gone? (TOD)
• The Psalmist felt as powerless in his distress as a poor insect, which a child may toss up and down at its pleasure (TOD)
109:24 My knees are weak through fasting,
And my flesh is feeble from lack of fatness.
• Either religious fasting, to which he resorted in the dire extremity of his grief, or else through loss of appetite
occasioned by distress of mind (TOD)
109:25 I also have become a reproach to them;
When they look at me, they shake their heads.
• They made him the theme of ridicule, the butt of their ribald jests (TOD)
• Words were not a sufficient expression of their scorn, they resorted to gestures which were meant both to show
their derision and to irritate his mind. Though these things break no bones, yet they do worse, for they break and
bruise far tenderer parts of us. (TOD)
109:26 Help me, O LORD my God!
Oh save me according to Your mercy.
109:27 That they may know that this is Your hand –
That You, LORD, have done it!
109:28 Let them curse, but You bless;
When they arise, let them be ashamed,
But let Your servant rejoice.
109:29 Let my accusers be clothed with shame,
And let them cover themselves with their own disgrace as with a mantle.
• It is a prophecy as well as a wish (TOD)
109:30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth;
Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude.
• The singer in the present case is the man whose heart was wounded within him because he was the laughing-
stock of remorseless enemies; yet now he praises, praises greatly, praises aloud, praises in the teeth of all gainsayers,
and praises with a right joyous spirit. (TOD)
109:31 For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor,
To save him from those who condemn him.
• Nothing can more sweetly sustain the heart of a slandered believer than the firm conviction that God is near to
all who are wronged, and is sure to work out their salvation (TOD)