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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 56:5 - 56:5
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This second strophe describes the adversaries, and ends in imprecation, the fire of anger being kindled against them. Hitzig's rendering is: “All the time they are injuring my concerns,” i.e., injuring my interests. This also sounds unpoetical. Just as we say חָמַס תורה, to do violence to the Tôra (Zep 3:4; Eze 22:26), so we can also say: to torture any one's words, i.e., his utterances concerning himself, viz., by misconstruing and twisting them. It is no good to David that he asseverates his innocence, that he asserts his filial faithfulness to Saul, God's anointed; they stretch his testimony concerning himself upon the rack, forcing upon it a false meaning and wrong inferences. They band themselves together, they place men in ambush. The verb גּוּר signifies sometimes to turn aside, turn in, dwell (= Arab. jâr); sometimes, to be afraid (= יָגֹר, Arab. wjr); sometimes, to stir up, excite, Psa 140:3 (= גָּרָה); and sometimes, as here, and in Psa 59:4, Isa 54:15 : to gather together (= אָגַר). The Kerî reads יִצְפֹּונוּ (as in Psa 10:8; Pro 1:11), but the scriptio plena points to Hiph. (cf. Job 24:6, and also Psa 126:5), and the following הֵמָּה leads one to the conclusion that it is the causative יַצְפִּינוּ that is intended: they cause one to keep watch in concealment, they lay an ambush (synon. הֶֽאֱרִיב, 1Sa 15:5); so that המה refers to the liers-in-wait told off by them: as to these - they observe my heels or (like the feminine plural in Psa 77:20; Psa 89:52) footprints (Rashi: mes traces), i.e., all my footsteps or movements, because (properly, “in accordance with this, that,” as in Mic 3:4) they now as formerly (which is implied in the perfect, cf. Psa 59:4) attempt my life, i.e., strive after, lie in wait for it (קִוָּה like שָׁמַר, Psa 71:10, with the accusative = קִוָּה לְ in Psa 119:95). To this circumstantial representation of their hostile proceedings is appended the clause עַל־עָוןֶ פַּלֶּט־לָמֹו, which is not to be understood otherwise than as a question, and is marked as such by the order of the words (2Ki 5:26; Isa 28:28): In spite of iniquity [is there] escape for them? i.e., shall they, the liers-in-wait, notwithstanding such evil good-for-nothing mode of action, escape? At any rate פַּלֵּט is, as in Psa 32:7, a substantivized finitive, and the “by no means” which belongs as answer to this question passes over forthwith into the prayer for the overthrow of the evil ones. This is the customary interpretation since Kimchi's day. Mendelssohn explains it differently: “In vain be their escape,” following Aben-Jachja, who, however, like Saadia, takes פלט to be imperative. Certainly adverbial notions are expressed by means of עַל, - e.g., עַל־יֶתֶר ,., abundantly, Psa 31:24; עַל־שֶׁקֶר, falsely, Lev. 5:22 (vid., Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 1028), - but one does not say עַל־הֶבֶל, and consequently also would hardly have said עַל־אָוןֶ (by no means, for nothing, in vain); moreover the connection here demands the prevailing ethical notion for און. Hupfeld alters פלט to פַּלֵּס, and renders it: “recompense to them for wickedness,” which is not only critically improbable, but even contrary to the usage of the language, since פלס signifies to weigh out, but not to requite, and requires the accusative of the object. The widening of the circle of vision to the whole of the hostile world is rightly explained by Hengstenberg by the fact that the special execution of judgment on the part of God is only an outflow of His more general and comprehensive execution of judgment, and the belief in the former has its root in a belief in the latter. The meaning of הֹורֵד becomes manifest from the preceding Psalm (Ps 55:24), to which the Psalm before us is appended by reason of manifold and closely allied relation.