Psalm 64:1-10

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹Hear my voice, O God, in my meditation;
Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.

Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,
From the rebellion of the workers of iniquity,

Who sharpen their tongue like a sword,
And bend their bows to shoot their arrows—bitter words,

That they may shoot in secret at the blameless;
Suddenly they shoot at him and do not fear.

They encourage themselves in an evil matter;
They talk of laying snares secretly;
They say, “Who will see them?”

They devise iniquities:
“We have perfected a shrewd scheme.”
Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep.

But God shall shoot at them with an arrow;
Suddenly they shall be wounded.

So He will make them stumble over their own tongue;
All who see them shall flee away.

All men shall fear,
And shall declare the work of God;
For they shall wisely consider His doing.

10 The righteous shall be glad in the Lord, and trust in Him.
And all the upright in heart shall glory.

To express complaint (v.1) to God, provided one does so in the manner modeled by Scripture, is not only an acceptable part of worship, but it is also an essential part, for in doing so the child of God finds healthy release for the angst that inevitably attends living in an ungodly world, and in the process strengthens the bonds of filial intimacy and dependence on their Heavenly Father. David concludes his complaint in this section by affirming that the inward thought and the heart of man are deep (v.6)—i.e., too deep for David to discover (and so take guard against), but never too deep for God, who knows the innermost secrets of all men’s hearts. 

Because God knows the heart, and because He is just and all-powerful, David can say with confidence that He will (not may) shoot at them and suddenly they will be smitten down—i.e., completely defeated (not just “wounded”), just as in 1 Samuel 17:46, where David declares with identical confidence what God will do through him to Goliath. — Wechsler, page 169.

Williams’ take (and he’s very specific about the occasion with no reference to David’s context at all):

In Matthew 22 and Luke 11, and in other similar passages, it is recorded that the leaders of the Jews composed in private crafty questions for the Lord so as to entangle Him in His teaching, and thus to be in a position to accuse Him either to the Sanhedrin or to the Roman government as a heretic or an insurgent and consequently guilty of death, and that they then in public rudely and vehemently proposed these questions to Him.

In this Psalm are found His comments upon their conduct, and His appeal to God about it. — Williams, page 349.

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