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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 142:6 - 142:6
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His request now ascends all the more confident of being answered, and becomes calm, being well-grounded in his feebleness and the superiority of his enemies, and aiming at the glorifying of the divine Name. In Psa 142:7 רִנָּתִי calls to mind Psa 17:1; the first confirmation, Psa 79:8, and the second, Psa 18:18. But this is the only passage in the whole Psalter where the poet designates the “distress” in which he finds himself as a prison (מַסְגֵּר). V. 8b brings the whole congregation of the righteous in in the praising of the divine Name. The poet therefore does not after all find himself so absolutely alone, as it might seem according to Psa 142:5. He is far from regarding himself as the only righteous person. He is only a member of a community or church whose destiny is interwoven with his own, and which will glory in his deliverance as its own; for “if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (1Co 12:26). We understand the differently interpreted יַכְתִּירוּ after this “rejoicing with” (συγχαίρει). The lxx, Syriac, and Aquilaz render: the righteous wait for me; but to wait is כִּתֵּר and not הִכְתִּיר. The modern versions, on the other hand, almost universally, like Luther after Felix Pratensis, render: the righteous shall surround me (flock about me), in connection with which, as Hengstenberg observes, בִּי denotes the tender sympathy they fell with him: crowding closely upon me. But there is no instance of a verb of surrounding (אָפַף, סָבַב, סֹבֵב, עִוֵּד, עָטַר, הִקִּיף) taking בְּ; the accusative stands with הִכְתִּיר in Hab 1:4, and כִּתֵּר in Psa 22:13, in the signification cingere. Symmachus (although erroneously rendering: τὸ ὄνομά σου στεφανώσονται δίκαιοι), Jerome (in me coronabuntur justi), Parchon, Aben-Ezra, Coccejus, and others, rightly take יַכְתִּירוּ as a denominative from כֶּתֶר, to put on a crown or to crown (cf. Pro 14:18): on account of me the righteous shall adorn themselves as with crowns, i.e., shall triumph, that Thou dealest bountifully with me (an echo of Psa 13:6). According to passages like Ps 64:11; Psa 40:17, one might have expected בֹּו instead of בִּי. But the close of Ps 22 (Psa 22:23.), cf. Psa 140:12., shows that בי is also admissible. The very fact that David contemplates his own destiny and the destiny of his foes in a not merely ideal but foreordainedly causal connection with the general end of the two powers that stand opposed to one another in the world, belongs to the characteristic impress of the Psalms of David that come from the time of Saul's persecution.