Bible Commentary - Psalms 11

As with every other psalm, we can begin by studying verse 1 to understand the overall theme and direction of this relatively short, 7-verse psalm.  In v. 1, the introduction to this psalm is quite simple: “In the LORD I take refuge”.  This leaves the psalm roughly halfway between a prayer and thanksgiving.  On the one hand, there is an obvious emphasis on God’s role as protector and his intercession into human affairs.  On the other hand, David is not directly requesting help here, so we could also reasonably say that it is thanksgiving for God’s help and not a true prayer.

The rest of the psalm mostly bears this out, though prayer isn’t really emphasized at all, so I think the content is much more oriented around praise and thanksgiving.

That said, this psalm does share some structural similarity with the prayer psalms.  More specifically, this psalm is divided into two parts.  The first part in verses 1-3 is the problem statement.  David is highlighting the difficulty of living in a world with wicked men who are busy committing crimes against the innocent and “upright in heart” (v. 2).  David ends this part with a question: “what can the righteous do?”

In a sense, this feels like a very hopeless section.  David begins with a question, “How can you say to my soul, Flee”, and he ends with a question, “what can the righteous do?”  In both cases, the general tone is, what can a righteous person possibly do in the face of the schemes of wicked men?

The second part in verses 4-7 is David’s attempt to answer those questions, and more generally, answer the “problem statement” or the crisis of evil men acting against the upright and the innocent.  That answer is not found in men, and would seem almost a non-sequitur to the modern mind.  David’s answer is, “The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD’s throne is in heaven” (v. 4).  In a nutshell, this answer is basically that God has sovereign authority and power over the whole earth, and the LORD is the one who will punish the crimes of the wicked and protect the innocent.

In Psalm 10:11, the wicked man says to himself, “God has forgotten… he will not see it”.  In v. 4 in this psalm, David’s reply is, “his eyes behold, his eyelids test the sons of men”.

The rest of verses 5-7 are a long and strong declaration that God is the righteous judge who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked.  I’ve described this as the theological background of the OT so many times I’m getting bored of saying it, and yet it continues to be true.  In verse 5, David says that God judges between “the righteous and the wicked”, and then proceeds to describe in turn how God punishes the wicked (v. 6) and blesses the righteous (v. 7).

Bringing it back to the opening line, this is the reason why the LORD is David’s refuge.  The LORD loves righteousness, the righteous will see his face, and implicitly, David understands himself to be one of the righteous who will receive that blessing.  That is the reason for David’s confidence; he is confident in his own integrity before God, and he is confident that God will sincerely bless the righteous ones.

In a sense, David imagines himself as the righteous, who God will bless, and his enemies as the wicked who God will destroy.  That is how David takes the relatively abstract theology of God as a judge and makes it personal for himself, especially in light of the crisis presented in v. 1-3.  David is asking what the righteous can do, and then he answers: look to God for our deliverance, the destruction of our enemies, and ultimately look to God so that we may see his face.