Bible Commentary - Psalms 26

I have said this over and over, but we can usually identify the central theme or purpose of each psalm by studying the first verse.  I am going to continue saying it because it continues being true, and it’s true for this psalm as well.  The first verse really tells us a lot about the purpose of this psalm.  It tells us that this is a prayer psalm, with David asking for deliverance from his enemies because of his “integrity” and persistent trust in God.

We can easily identify parallels and differences with Psalm 25, which we just read.  The biggest similarity is David’s insistence that he trusts God, places his life in God’s hands, and has consistently sought to follow the LORD.  We see that in Psalm 25:1, 20, and in this psalm we see it really throughout the whole psalm but it is clearly expressed in verses 1 and 11.

The differences are more substantial.  One key difference is that in Psalm 25, David expresses a clear sense of his own guilt and need for God’s mercy.  He appeals several times for forgiveness, that God would “pardon his iniquity” (Psalm 25:11).  In this psalm, David insists repeatedly on his own innocence and separation from wicked men (verses 1-7).  David asks to avoid the fate of evil men (v. 9), but his appeal is not to God’s mercy but rather to justice and his own innocence.

The result of this is that we can reverse many of the claims that I made about Psalm 25.  I said that Psalm 25 focused on God’s mercy as the center of David’s prayer.  At its heart, David’s prayer was that he has sinned in the past, but through God’s mercy David’s sins could be forgiven and could God nevertheless deliver him from his many enemies and troubles.  I mentioned that this kind of structure, while it possesses some clear pre-exilic examples, is more common in the post-exilic period when the national consciousness of Israel was much more focused on their guilt in their conduct towards the LORD.

Psalm 26, in contrast, does not have any particular appeal to mercy.  Instead, as I already mentioned, David insists on his own innocence and correspondingly appeals instead to justice.  David should not suffer the fate of the wicked because he has not shared the deeds or the “assembly of evildoers” (v. 5).  David acknowledges God’s punishment for those who do evil, and he doesn’t seem to have any problem with it because he does not foresee that as his own just result.

In all of these ways, Psalm 26 is much more similar to the theology of Job, Deuteronomy and elsewhere that hold God to be a great judge who punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous.  This psalm places a tremendous importance on contrasting David’s behavior and habits from the “deceitful men”.  In several verses, David describes his thoughts and activity as being centered around the temple.  I believe this is a deliberate contrast, with David presented innocently, perhaps even naively, walking around the temple singing and praising God, while outside there are bands of “evildoers” and “wicked men” who are sitting and plotting together to commit some horrible crime or other.  In this way David presents a clear contrast between himself and the wicked, which is the conventional moral framework in much of the OT.  In my opinion this contrast is the central theme of this psalm.

Psalm 26, like Psalm 25, does not follow the standard formula for a prayer psalm in that it also lacks a “problem statement”; it has a brief statement of thanksgiving in verse 12, but otherwise the thanksgiving section is also absent.

I’m not sure what else to say about this chapter.  The temple shows up as a important part of how David envisions righteousness, but I don’t otherwise see this psalm having particularly strong connections to other parts of the bible.  David is praying for help from some unidentified crisis and he thinks God should judge between him and wicked men.  Besides that, I don’t think I really have anything else to add.