Bible Commentary - Psalms 9

In many cases, the first verse of each psalm tells us what kind of psalm we are reading.  I mentioned how Psalms 3-7 were all prayers for relief, while Psalm 8 is a psalm of praise, declaring the glory of God.

Psalm 9 is also a psalm of praise, which we see in the very first verse: “I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders”.  This really sets the tone for the rest of the psalm, and even though it may share common themes with the prayer psalms, the intent is fundamentally different.

Similar to Psalm 8, this psalm also lacks a specific historical context.  It is a psalm “of David”, but does not otherwise give us a specific incident when this psalm was composed.  It leaves us relatively unmoored from the biblical histories, so instead we must focus our study on the structure and theological content of the psalm.

In terms of content, this psalm places a strong emphasis on God as the righteous judge who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked.  In that sense it shares some parallels with Psalm 7.  Rather than asking God to come in and punish the wicked, this psalm is a bit of a past-tense, “thank you God for having destroyed the wicked”, but it nevertheless follows a very similar theological framework.  Verses 7-8 in particular highlight God’s role as judge, but the rest of the psalm feels built around the same theme.  We see God destroying the wicked in verses 3-6, and on the other hand we see God delivering the oppressed and afflicted in verses 9-14.

What makes this psalm somewhat unique compared to previous descriptions of the “righteous judge” is how this psalm emphasizes God’s judgment as resting upon evil nations.  For the most part, previous descriptions of God’s role as the righteous judge describe him destroy wicked individuals.  Even Psalm 7 followed that formula, describing at length how an evil man would be destroyed by his own wickedness (Psalm 7:12-16).

In contrast, Psalm 9 seems to be focused almost exclusively on wicked nations.  We see this in verses 5, 6 (the “cities” of the wicked imply they are an evil people, not an evil person), 15, 17, 19 and 20.  Verse 15 in particular uses the “wicked will fall into their own pit” metaphor that is almost literally identical to Psalm 7:15.  The only difference is that Psalm 7:15 talks about an evil person falling into his own pit, while Psalm 9:15 describes “the nations” falling into the pit that they made.

We can infer from this that David likely wrote this psalm in the later half of his life, once he was already king.  My intuition is that when Saul was still alive, David would have thought much more about “the evil man” such as Saul and Saul’s men who were trying to kill him.  After becoming king, David’s conflicts became much less personal and a lot more focused on fighting wars with the surrounding nations (whom he routinely defeated).  It’s not a sure thing, since David did fight against the Philistines even during his exile, and before his exile he was one of Saul’s chief commanders, but the longest period David spent fighting foreign nations was as the king of Israel.

From a theological point of view, this is basically an adaptation of the existing “righteous judge” concept.  David takes the idea of God being a righteous judge who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked, and extends it to God blessing righteous nations and punishing wicked nations.  This is a simple idea and we will see it repeatedly throughout the Psalms and later in the prophets as well.

This is not an entirely new idea, however.  We can point to several other cases in the bible where God has inflicted punishment for “wickedness” of differing kinds upon nations.  The most prominent example is the plagues of Egypt during the Exodus.  This was effectively God “judging” or “punishing” the Egyptians collectively for their treatment of the Israelites (collectively).  While that is the most prominent example, we could point to many other cases, especially in Pentateuch, when God “punished” offending nations who attacked Judah, or conversely we can occasionally see God punish Judah or Israel for the times when they do things wrong.  I’ll point to one example and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader: in Numbers 11, “the people” complained about the trials of desert life and their desire for meat (rather than manna), and God punished them for their collective sin by sending a plague and fire to burn in their midst.

Since I mentioned it, I do think this psalm seems to share characteristics of the Pentateuch, namely the emphasis on nations.  So much of the Pentateuch is built around national identity.  The covenant, for instance, is called the covenant of Moses but it is not a covenant WITH Moses.  Instead, it is a covenant between Israel, as a nation, and God.  The plagues I mentioned struck Egypt, God’s dealings with Israel in the desert generally (but not always) involved national sins and corresponding national punishments.  For instance, the twelve spies entered the promised land and came back with a bad report, but it is the nation was wept and “the whole congregation” criticized Moses and planned to return to Egypt (Numbers 14:1-5).

At the same time, the enemies of Israel are also nations.  The nations of the promised land are one of the most commonly recited lists: the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites and so on (Exodus 23:23, Deut 7:1 and others).  To state the obvious, these are not individual people; these are nations set in opposition to the Israelites, and by framing things in these ways the conflict is framed as a conflict between nations.  The justification for this invasion was partially a blessing for Abraham (the righteous man of faith), but also partially a punishment for “the sin of the Amorites” who were previously dwelling in the land (Gen 15:16).

While this isn’t exactly identical to calling God a righteous judge who judges between good and bad nations, it does show in some cases God blessing good nations and punishing evil ones, in much the same way that we see God treat individuals in e.g. Job.  Another great example of this is the grand dichotomy of Deut 28, when Moses lays out blessings and curses before the people based on their conduct.  Once again these are national blessings or curses based on national behavior, not something that devolves to the individual (though we can possibly reason that there was a similar scheme at the individual level).  The whole system of Deuteronomy is fundamentally predicated on group behavior, group rewards and group punishment, both for Israel and for the foreign nations.  Psalm 9 takes it in a different direction compared to Deuteronomy, but I think it’s fair to say they are both starting in the same place and both put God in a very similar role as judge of the nations.

This psalm is pretty dense so it would take me a lot longer to unpack everything.  I’ve already written at some length however, so I will conclude with one final point.  One other broad theme of this psalm appears to be the subject of remembrance and memory.  In verses 5-6, David says that the punishment of the wicked is the destruction of their “name” and their “memory”.  In contrast, verse 7 says that God lives forever and in verse 12 God remembers the oppressed (“he does not forget the cry of the afflicted”).

In verse 17, it is the wicked who forget God, though ironically they will be the ones forgotten by the world (v. 5-6).  In contrast, while the wicked forget God, God remembers the needy and afflicted, who are being oppressed by evil nations (v. 18).  So basically the punishment of the wicked is that they will be forgotten by everyone (after they are destroyed), while God remembers the oppressed (who will be saved).  At the same time, the wicked forget God and that is part of their crime (because they have no shame or fear to do what is right).  So uhh, yeah, it’s kinda complicated, but that is basically what’s going on here.  :)  Let’s move on to Psalm 10.