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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 109:6 - 109:6
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The writer now turns to one among the many, and in the angry zealous fervour of despised love calls down God's judgment upon him. To call down a higher power, more particularly for punishment, upon any one is expressed by עַל (הִפְקִיד) פָּקַד, Jer 15:3; Lev 26:16. The tormentor of innocence shall find a superior executor who will bring him before the tribunal (which is expressed in Latin by legis actio per manus injectionem). The judgment scene in Psa 109:6, Psa 109:7 shows that this is what is intended in Psa 109:6: At the right hand is the place of the accuser, who in this instance will not rest before the damnatus es has been pronounced. He is called שָׂטָן, which is not to be understood here after 1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:22, but after Zec 3:1; 1Ch 21:1, if not directly of Satan, still of a superhuman (cf. Num 22:22) being which opposes him, by appearing before God as his κατήγωρ; for according to Psa 109:7 the שׂטן is to be thought of as accuser, and according to Psa 109:7 God as Judge. רָשָׁע has the sense of reus, and יָצָא refers to the publication of the sentence. Psa 109:7 wishes that his prayer, viz., that by which he would wish to avert the divine sentence of condemnation, may become לַֽחֲטָאָה, not: a missing of the mark, i.e., ineffectual (Thenius), but, according to the usual signification of the word: a sin, viz., because it proceeds from despair, not from true penitence. In Psa 109:8 the incorrigible one is wished an untimely death (מְעַטִּים as in one other instance, only, Ecc 5:1) and the loss of his office. The lxx renders: τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν αὐτοῦ λάβοι ἕτερος. פְּקֻדָּה really signifies the office of overseer, oversight, office, and the one individual must have held a prominent position among the enemies of the psalmist. Having died off from this position before his time, he shall leave behind him a family deeply reduced in circumstances, whose former dwelling - place-he was therefore wealthy - becomes “ruins.” His children wander up and down far from these ruins (מִן as e.g., in Jdg 5:11; Job 28:4) and beg (דָּרַשׁ, like προσαιτεῖν ἐπαιτεῖν, Sir. 40:28 = לֶחֶם בִּקֵּשׁ, Psa 37:25). Instead of וְדָֽרְשׁוּ the reading וְדָרְשׁוּ is also found. A Poel is now and then formed from the strong verbs also,
(Note: In connection with the strong verb it frequently represents the Piel which does not occur, as with דָּרַשׁ, לָשַׁן, שָׁפַט, or even represents the Piel which, as in the case of שָׁרַשׁ, is already made use of in another signification (Piel, to root out; Poel, to take root).)
in the inflexion of which the Cholem is sometimes shortened to Kametz chatuph; vid., the forms of לשֵׁן, to slander, in Psa 101:5, תֹּאֵר, to sketch, mark out in outline, Isa 44:13, cf. also Job 20:26 (תְּאָכְלֵהוּ) and Isa 62:9 (according to the reading מְאָסְפָיו). To read the Kametz in these instances as ā, and to regard these forms as resolved Piels, is, in connection with the absence of the Metheg, contrary to the meaning of the pointing; on purpose to guard against this way of reading it, correct codices have וְדֳרְשׁוּ (cf. Psa 69:19), which Baer has adopted.