Psalm 9:1–20
When the wicked disrupt life and shalom with their oppression and affliction, the community of the righteous trusts in their divine Avenger and Deliverer and his grace, the one who never forgets his people, to see and to take action, by downthrowing enemies and uplifting God-seekers, ultimately establishing order, thus causing celebration among them.
Psalm 9 commences with a typical declaration of intent to praise (9:1–2). In 9:3–10, we see God as judge against the wicked (9:3–6), and God as judge for the righteous (9:7–10).
“Enemies” and “enemy” occur for the only time in the psalm, in 9:3 and 9:6. But their overthrow—“ruins for perpetuity,” “cities … uprooted”—was metaphorically total: “[even] their memory” had perished (9:6). The wicked is wiped out “forever” (9:5), for God is seated on his throne, judging, “forever” (9:7). Therefore the psalmist and his comrades can draw comfort.
Like the Aleph segment (the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet in this pair of alphabetic pair psalms, Psalms 9–10), the Beth segment of the psalm also has a primary verse (9:3) and a secondary verse (9:4). But then in the Gimel segment, we hear the first mention of “wicked” in its primary verse (9:5) and immediately the regularity and order established thus far is disrupted: the Gimel segment is bereft of a secondary verse and there is no Daleth segment. Strikingly, where the Daleth segment ought to have been, the now “blank space” (so to speak) between 9:5 and 9:6 is “preceded” by the blotting out of the name of the wicked forever and eternally (9:5) and “followed” by the perpetual ruining of the enemy (9:6). This erasure of the wicked is thereby literally carried out in the effacement of the Daleth segment. What is textually asserted is being textually pictured!
After the disruption of the acrostic in 9:5–6, proper order is reestablished with the Waw segment that has in its primary verse (9:7), “Yahweh sits forever,” ruling! Indeed, “Yahweh” is the first word, the last word, and the middle word (the fifteenth), in the twenty-nine words of 9:7–10 (9:7, 9, 10). Besides, this Waw segment not only has a primary and secondary verse (9:7, 8), but also a tertiary and quaternary verse (9:9, 10). A plenitude and abundance of order under Yahweh! And this decorum continues in 9:11–16.
In 9:13–14 we hear, for the first time in this psalm, the plea of the righteous. Anticipating the grace of God and the answer to his plea, the psalmist deals with the fate of the wicked (9:15–17) and the hope of the righteous (9:18).
Earlier, the psalmist had asserted that “the enemy was finished—ruins for perpetuity” (9:6). But here it is declared that the righteous, the needy one, “will not be forgotten in perpetuity” (9:18). One is ruined perpetually; the other is remembered perpetually. Likewise, the wicked are those who “forget” God (9:17); but the righteous will not be “forgotten” (9:18; the passive indicating that is God who does not forget them; also see 9:12).
In 9:16 we have the second mention of “wicked” in this psalm, followed right away by a third mention in 9:17. And again, immediately there is literary disruption, a gash in the texture of the text, so to speak: the Yodh segment is missing a secondary verse. But upon entry into the Kaph segment that bears the hope of the righteous (9:18), order is restored again, with not the usual one, but three subsidiary verses (9:18–20), each with Yahweh invoked once. And thus we have resumption of order from disorder once and for all.
For more details, see my commentary on Psalms.
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.