Bible Commentary - Psalms 7

In this psalm, the title once again gives us a specific situational context for this prayer of deliverance, when David fought with a Benjamite named Cush.

Similar to the previous contextualized psalms we have seen, the text does not make any specific references to the event that it supposedly commemorates.  Furthermore, I should add that the person called “Cush, a Benjamite” is not referenced anywhere in Samuel or Chronicles, meaning that this conflict is not in the recorded biblical history.  It suggests that this psalm, or the events it describes, likely come from a separate historical tradition such as the book of the kings of Judah or one of the other lost books of Israelite history.  Alternatively, perhaps this psalm was itself written by David or one of David’s contemporaries about a specific event that was simply never recorded.  It’s tough to say.

As I mentioned, this psalm tends towards the general pattern of referencing a specific event in the title, but then the text of the psalm is decontextualized, presumably to make it more generic and relatable to future readers such as ourselves.

Even though we do not know anything else about Cush, we can compare this psalm to David’s recorded history to figure out a reasonable window for when this conflict may have occurred.  David’s greatest conflict with Benjamin was during the reign of Saul, who was himself a Benjamite and garnered strong support from his relatives.  During Saul’s reign, Saul employed his army specifically to find and kill David, who was hiding in the wilderness.  It is easy to imagine roving groups of Benjamite soldiers hunting for David in this context, and this psalm may be referring to a specific battle or chase during that time period.

A secondary possible window is during David’s conflict with Ish-Bosheth, who was Saul’s son and briefly reigned as king after Saul’s death.  The Ish-Bosheth period is somewhat less likely because David was much stronger after the death of Saul and while David was certainly still fighting the Benjamites, his stronger position would reduce the urgency of his prayers and petitions such as this psalm.  That said, since the psalm doesn’t really touch on any of these events, the specific historical context doesn’t change our interpretation meaningfully.

Reviewing the content of this psalm, my first reaction is that it has a strong emphasis on God as the righteous judge who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked, similar to the theological context of Job.

In verses 1-2 David first prays for relief, but then in verses 3-5 we can see David affirming that God’s deliverance can and should be conditional on David’s righteous behavior.  David believes that any injustice or evil he may have performed would disqualify him for God’s support.

In verse 8 there is a similar theme, with David seeking “vindication”, i.e. that God’s deliverance would prove to everyone his righteous and innocent character.

Verses 6-11 repeatedly highlight God’s role as the “righteous judge… who saves the upright”.  There are a few references to the wicked in this block but the main emphasis is on God’s treatment of the righteous, who are “saved”, “vindicated” and “established”.

Meanwhile, verses 12-16 suggest that the wicked are busy making lots of dangerous weapons and traps, but in the end they find themselves caught in the trap they were preparing for someone else; he “has fallen into the hole which he made” (v. 15).  This kind of justice is intentionally ironic, mostly based on the self-destructive tendencies of sin and wickedness.  It is exemplified by a wicked man digging a pit to trap someone else, but then falling into his own trap.

One obvious parallel elsewhere in the bible is the story of Haman, who constructed a gallows with which to kill Mordecai, but ended up being hanged on his own gallows (Esther 7:9-10).  This framework emphasizes the agency of the wicked person himself being responsible for his own downfall.  However, since it’s placed within the larger narrative of God as the righteous judge, we can infer that God is somehow involved behind the scenes.  Once again the parallel to Esther is quite apt because in the book of Esther, God is never mentioned even once, and yet we are left imagining that there, too, God was a driving force behind the scenes bringing about so many “ironic” outcomes such as Haman’s death on his own gallows.  More generally, Esther as a whole reinforces the notion that God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked, and we see that through the inversion of fates throughout the story, as the wicked Haman is brought from greatness to destruction, while the righteous Esther and Mordecai are exalted from slavery into royalty.

Esther is clearly a post-exilic book, while the book of Job is generally considered one of the oldest books in the bible.  Yet between them, the theological framework is very consistent as both books imagine God to be an enforcer of heavenly justice that aligns happiness and material prosperity with one’s inner moral condition.  This psalm has the same theological framework and therefore shares elements with both books.