Bible Commentary - Psalms 35

Psalm 35 is yet another prayer psalm.  This time, it is a prayer of deliverance from David’s enemies, which is clearly indicated in verse 1.

This psalm contains many elements we have seen before.  First, and perhaps most significantly, it contains some of the elements of a typical prayer psalm.  However, it does not follow the pattern exactly.  Instead, it appears that the “problem statement” is largely missing.  It can be inferred from context, however.  David has a distinctly martial focus in this psalm.  In verses 2-3 David asks for God to take up his “buckler”, “spear” and “battle axe” to strike down his enemies.  It’s obvious that David is facing a threat against his life and desires for God to fight against his enemies.

The nature of the problem becomes more clear in verses 11-21.  David describes at length how his enemies are repaying evil for good.  In this case, he defines his “good” as how he prayed and fasted for his enemies when they suffered illness and possibly other problems (v. 13).  David believes that he genuinely treated them well, and yet when David himself “stumbled”, his enemies rejoiced and gathered together to attack him (v. 15).  I can’t exactly call this hypocrisy, but it’s clear that these are men who David treated well, and they respond by taking advantage of David’s earliest vulnerability to attempt to destroy him.  As David says in v. 12, “they repay me evil for good”.  Verses 19-21 expand on this point by clarifying that these are people who speak evil against David as well, similar to Psalm 31 which emphasizes even more strongly how the wicked fight against David through evil rumors and lies.

Nevertheless, verses 1-8 open with a request for deliverance.  The rest of the psalm has a fairly complex structure. There are some additional prayers (e.g. v. 17-26), declarations of thanksgiving and praise (v. 9-10, 27-28), and an interesting passage where David explains his own righteous conduct towards his enemies (v. 11-16).  It’s kind of a mashup of several different things.  It clearly has some prayer elements, but it does not follow the typical structure.

Second, verses 7-8 convey a wish of ironic self-destruction upon David’s enemies.  We have seen this pattern before, the notion that David’s enemies are setting traps for him, and that they will plunge into their own traps, with their behavior and trickery resulting in their own deaths rather than their intended target.

Beyond these points, it’s difficult for me to think of what else to say.  I can certainly spend a few minutes pointing out interesting details, but I struggle to grasp the overall structure and intent (beyond the obvious and conventional prayer for deliverance).  It’s clear that David sees many threats coming from people who he feels he treated well, and that David is ultimately looking to God for justice and deliverance from these wicked adversaries.  It’s also clear that while David suggests in the early verses that he faces a physical threat, the later part of the psalm seems to focus much more on destructive rumors, slander and questions (v. 11, “they ask me of things that I do not know”).  Perhaps that is all there is to it; it’s a prayer of deliverance from David’s adversaries and nothing more.