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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 57:6 - 57:6
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In this second half of the Psalm the poet refreshes himself with the thought of seeing that for which he longs and prays realized even with the dawning of the morning after this night of wretchedness. The perfect in Psa 57:7 is the perfect of certainty; the other perfects state what preceded and is now changed into the destruction of the crafty ones themselves. If the clause כָּפַף נַפְשִׁי is rendered: my soul was bowed down (cf. חָלַל, Psa 109:22), it forms no appropriate corollary to the crafty laying of snares. Hence kpp must be taken as transitive: he had bowed down my soul; the change of number in the mention of the enemies is very common in the Psalms relating to these trials, whether it be that the poet has one enemy κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν before his mind or comprehends them all in one. Even the lxx renders καὶ κατέκαμψαν τὴν ψυχὴν μου, it is true, as though it were וכפפו, but can scarcely have read it thus. This line is still remarkable; one would expect for Psa 57:7 a thought parallel with Psa 57:7, and perhaps the poet wrote כפף נפשׁו, his (the net-layer's) own soul bends (viz., in order to fall into the net). Then כפף like נפל would be praet. confidentiae. In this certainty, to express which the music here becomes triumphantly forte, David's heart is confident, cheerful (Symmachus ἐδραία), and a powerful inward impulse urges him to song and harp. Although נָכֹון may signify ready, equipped (Exo 34:2; Job 12:5), yet this meaning is to be rejected here in view of Psa 51:12, Psa 78:37, Psa 112:7 : it is not appropriate to the emphatic repetition of the word. His evening mood which found expression in Psa 57:4, was hope of victory; the morning mood into which David here transports himself, is certainty of victory. He calls upon his soul to awake (כְּבֹודִי as in Psa 16:9; 30:13), he calls upon harp and cithern to awake (הַנֵּבֶל וְכִנֹּור with one article that avails for both words, as in Jer 29:3; Neh 1:5; and עוּרָה with the accent on the ultima on account of the coming together of two aspirates), from which he has not parted even though a fugitive; with the music of stringed instruments and with song he will awake the not yet risen dawn, the sun still slumbering in its chamber: אָעִירָה, expergefaciam (not expergiscar), as e.g., in Son 2:7, and as Ovid (Metam. xi. 597) says of the cock, evocat auroram.
(Note: With reference to the above passage in the Psalms, the Talmud, B. Berachoth 3b, says, “A cithern used to hang above David's bed; and when midnight came, the north wind blew among the strings, so that they sounded of themselves; and forthwith he arose and busied himself with the Tôra until the pillar of the dawn (עמוד השׁחר) ascended.” Rashi observes, “The dawn awakes the other kings; but I, said David, will awake the dawn (אני מעורר את השׁחר).”)
His song of praise, however, shall not resound in a narrow space where it is scarcely heard; he will step forth as the evangelist of his deliverance and of his Deliverer in the world of nations (בָֽעַמִּים; and the parallel word, as also in Psa 108:4; Psa 149:7, is to be written בַּֽלְעֻמּים with Lamed raphatum and Metheg before it); his vocation extends beyond Israel, and the events of his life are to be for the benefit of mankind. Here we perceive the self-consciousness of a comprehensive mission, which accompanied David from the beginning to the end of his royal career (vid., Psa 18:50). What is expressed in v. 11 is both motive and theme of the discourse among the peoples, viz., God's mercy and truth which soar high as the heavens (Psa 36:6). That they extend even to the heavens is only an earthly conception of their infinity (cf. Eph 3:18). In the refrain, v. 12, which only differs in one letter from Psa 57:6, the Psalm comes back to the language of prayer. Heaven and earth have a mutually involved history, and the blessed, glorious end of this history is the sunrise of the divine doxa over both, here prayed for.