Bible Commentary - Psalms 41

This psalm is basically a prayer psalm, though it doesn’t follow a typical structure.

Beginning in verse 1, David lays out his overall plan for this psalm.  David’s righteousness, expressed through his concern for the poor and helpless, invites God’s protection over David’s life.  This is similar to a theme we see expressed in much of the Old Testament, that God is a judge who blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked.  In this case, David lays out a very clear balance of consequences, that the person who “considers the helpless” will be delivered and protected by God in the time of trouble.

That time of trouble is, apparently, now.  In one of the clearest statements of a prayer psalm topic anywhere in the Psalms, v. 3 tells us that the particular trouble being faced here is “illness”.  Verse 8 confirms the theme of sickness, suggesting that when David lies down, he won’t get up again.

Having established that David is in the midst of a time of trouble, and he is clearly petitioning the LORD for healing, I was next interested to discover the basis for David’s prayer.  In many other prayers, David commonly gives a rationale for why God should answer his prayer and deliver him from whatever crisis he is facing.  This psalm is no exception.

David basically lays out two explanations for why God should heal him.  First, he says in verse 1 that “he who considers the helpless” should receive God’s protection.  Second, he says at the very end of the psalm in verse 12 that God “upholds me in my integrity”.

Between this first and last verse, verses 4-9 are a long and emotional description of the enemies that are eager to see David’s destruction and triumph over him.  Opposite David’s description of his own good intentions, he spends much more energy describing the foul intentions of his enemies.  They are “speaking evil” against him (v. 5), “speaking falsehoods” towards him (v. 6), “gathering wickedness” (v. 6), “devising hurt” for David (v. 7), and to cap it all off, even David’s “close friend in whom I trusted” has betrayed him (v. 9).  This is someone “who ate my bread”, meaning that they shared a meal.  We have seen many times in the OT that sharing a meal is a ceremony to seal a covenant (for one example of this, check out Exodus 24:11), and it is clear that David sees their shared meal as a further aggravation of his subsequent betrayal.

One interesting topic is to figure out the identity of this betrayer.  There are several people who betrayed David during his life, many who were close to him, and the most obvious are Saul, Adonijah and Absalom.  Between these three, I would say the least likely is Saul (because Saul did not exactly betray David), and the most likely is Adonijah.  I think Adonijah is the most likely because his betrayal, unlike Absalom, was towards the very end of David’s life when David’s health was most likely to be faltering and in question.  My suspicion is that verses 4-9 could be a reference to the conspiracy organized by Adonijah, Joab, Abiathar and others to overthrow David.  And since I mentioned it, Joab and Abiathar are two other candidates for the “close friend” of v. 9.  If anything, Abiathar might be more plausible since he spent much more time with David including during the long years in the wilderness hiding from Saul.

Although I don’t usually mention future bible passages, it is worth noting that verse 9 is quoted in the New Testament to prophetically describe Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

Verses 10-12 conclude with a prayer for relief.

Verse 13 seems like an especially strong conclusion to the psalm, and that’s because this is not just the end of the psalm, but also the end of Book 1 of the book of Psalms.  Psalms is internally divided into 5 books, and this is the end of the first one.  This verse almost certainly exists to provide a conclusion to the first book, which implies one of several possibilities.

One possibility is that the final verse, 13, was added by a later editor, after the psalm was written, and at the time that the book was being composed.  Another possibility is that this psalm was written intentionally to be the last psalm of the book, and this verse was added to provide a fitting conclusion to that book.  There are a handful of other, less likely possibilities that I won’t mention.  Between these two possibilities, the first one seems most plausible.  The main reason is that, in all likelihood, the psalms were composed independently and then combined into the book of Psalms at a later time.

And that will be the end of the first book!  Next up, we will continue with the Book 2 of the Psalms!