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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 35:11 - 35:11
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The second part begins with two strophes of sorrowful description of the wickedness of the enemy. The futures in Psa 35:11, Psa 35:12 describe that which at present takes place. עֵדֵי חָמָס are μάρτυρες ἄδικοι (lxx). They demand from him a confession of acts and things which lie entirely outside his consciousness and his way of acting (cf. Psa 69:5): they would gladly brand him as a perjurer, as an usurper, and as a plunderer. What David complains of in Psa 35:12, we hear Saul confess in 1Sa 24:18; the charge of ingratitude is therefore well-grounded. שְׁכֹול לְנַפְשִׁי is not dependent on יְשַׁלְּמוּנִי, in which case one would have looked for כְּשֹׁול rather than שְׁכֹול, but a substantival clause: “bereavement is to my soul,” its condition is that of being forsaken by all those who formerly showed me marks of affection; all these have, as it were, died off so far as I am concerned. Not only had David been obliged to save his parents by causing them to flee to Moab, but Michal was also torn from him, Jonathan removed, and all those at the court of Saul, who had hitherto sought the favour and friendship of the highly-gifted and highly-honoured son-in-law of the king, were alienated from him. And how sincerely and sympathisingly had he reciprocated their leanings towards himself! By וַאֲנִי in Psa 35:13, he contrasts himself with the ungrateful and unfeeling ones. Instead of לָבַשְׁתִּי שָׁק, the expression is לְבוּשִׁי שָׁק; the tendency of poetry for the use of the substantival clause is closely allied to its fondness for well-conceived brevity and pictorial definition. He manifested towards them a love which knew no distinction between the ego and tu, which regarded their sorrow and their guilt as his own, and joined with them in their expiation for it; his head was lowered upon his breast, or he cowered, like Elijah (1Ki 18:42), upon the ground with his head hanging down upon his breast even to his knees, so that that which came forth from the inmost depths of his nature returned again as it were in broken accents into his bosom. Riehm's rendering, “at their ungodliness and hostility my prayer for things not executed came back,” is contrary to the connection, and makes one look for אֵלַי instead of אֶל־חֵיקִי. Perret-Gentil correctly renders it, Je priai la tête penchée sur la poitrine.
The Psalmist goes on to say in Psa 35:14, I went about as for a friend, for a brother to me, i.e., as if the sufferer had been such to me. With הִתְחַלֵּךְ, used of the solemn slowness of gait, which corresponds to the sacredness of pain, alternates שָׁחַח used of the being bowed down very low, in which the heavy weight of pain finds expression. כַּֽאֲבֶל־אֵם, not: like the mourning (from אֵבֶל, like הֲבֵל from הֶבֶל) of a mother (Hitzig), but, since a personal אָבֵל is more natural, and next to the mourning for an only child the loss of a mother (cf. Gen 24:67) strikes the deepest wound: like one who mourns (אַבֶל־,
(Note: According to the old Babylonian reading (belonging to a period when Pathach and Segol were as yet not distinguished from one another), כַּֽאֲבַל (with the sign of Pathach and the stroke for Raphe below = ä); vid., Pinsker, Zur Geschichte des Karaismus, S. 141, and Einleitung, S. 118.)
like לְבֶן־, Gen 49:12, from אֲבֵל, construct state, like טְמֵא) for a mother (the objective genitive, as in Gen 27:41; Deu 34:8; Amo 8:10; Jer 6:26). קֹדֵר signifies the colours, outward appearance, and attire of mourning: with dark clothes, with tearful unwashed face, and with neglected beard. But as for them - how do they act at the present time, when he finds himself in צֶלַע (Psa 38:17; Job 18:12), a sideway direction, i.e., likely to fall (from צָלַע, Arab. ḍl‛, to incline towards the side)? They rejoice and gather themselves together, and this assemblage of ungrateful friends rejoicing over another's misfortune, is augmented by the lowest rabble that attach themselves to them. The verb נָכָה means to smite; Niph. נִכָּא, Job 30:6, to be driven forth with a whip, after which the lxx renders it μάστιγες, Symm. πλῆκται, and the Targum conterentes me verbis suis; cf. הִכָּה בַּלַשֹׂון, Jer 18:18. But נֵכִים cannot by itself mean smiters with the tongue. The adjective נָכֶה signifies elsewhere with רַגְלַיִם, one who is smitten in the feet, i.e., one who limps or halts, and with רוּחַ, but also without any addition, in Isa 16:7, one smitten in spirit, i.e., one deeply troubled or sorrowful. Thus, therefore, נֵכִים from נֵכֶה, like גֵּאִים from גֵּאֶה, may mean smitten, men, i.e., men who are brought low or reduced (Hengstenberg). It might also, after the Arabic nawika, to be injured in mind, anwak, stupid, silly (from the same root נך, to prick, smite, wound, cf. ichtalla, to be pierced through = mad), be understood as those mentally deranged, enraged at nothing or without cause. But the former definition of the notion of the word is favoured by the continuation of the idea of the verbal adjective נכים by וְלֹא יָדַעְתִּי, persons of whom I have hitherto taken no notice because they were far removed from me, i.e., men belonging to the dregs of the people (cf. Job 19:18; Job 30:1). The addition of ולא ידעתי certainly makes Olshausen's conjecture that we should read נָכְרִים somewhat natural; but the expression then becomes tautological, and there are other instances also in which psalm-poesy goes beyond the ordinary range of words, in order to find language to describe that which is loathsome, in the most glaring way. פָרַע, to tear, rend in pieces, viz., with abusive and slanderous words (like Arab. qr‛ II) also does not occur anywhere else.
And what remarkable language we now meet with in Psa 35:16! מָעֹוג does not mean scorn or buffoonery, as Böttcher and Hitzig imagine,
(Note: The Talmudic עגה (לשׁון), B. Sanhedrin 101b, which is said to mean “a jesting way of speaking,” has all the less place here, as the reading wavers between עגה (עגא) and אגא.)
but according to 1Ki 17:12, a cake of a round formation (like the Talmudic עֻגָּה, a circle); לָעֵג, jeering, jesting. Therefore לַֽעֲגֵי מָעֹוג means: mockers for a cake, i.e., those who for a delicate morsel, for the sake of dainty fare, make scornful jokes, viz., about me, the persecuted one, vile parasites; German Tellerlecker, Bratenriecher, Greek κνισσοκόλακες, ψωμοκόλακες, Mediaeval Latin buccellarii. This לַֽעֲגֵי מָלֹוג, which even Rashi interprets in substantially the same manner, stands either in a logical co-ordinate relation (vid., on Isa 19:11) or in a logical as well as grammatical subordinate relation to its regens חַנְפֵי. In the former case, it would be equivalent to: the profane, viz., the cake-jesters; in the latter, which is the more natural, and quite suitable: the profane (= the profanest, vid., Psa 45:13; Isa 29:19; Eze 7:24) among cake-jesters. The בְּ is not the Beth of companionship or fellowship, to express which עִם or אֵת (Hos 7:5) would have been used, but Beth essentiae or the Beth of characterisation: in the character of the most abject examples of this class of men do they gnash upon him with their teeth. The gerund חָרֹק (of the noise of the teeth being pressed together, like Arab. ḥrq, of the crackling of a fire and the grating of a file), which is used according to Ges. §131, 4, b, carries its subject in itself. They gnash upon him with their teeth after the manner of the profanest among those, by whom their neighbour's honour is sold for a delicate morsel.