Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 7:1 - 7:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
(Heb.: 7:2-3) With this word of faith, love, and hope בְּךָ חָסִיתִּי (as in Psa 141:8), this holy captatio benevolentiae, David also begins in Psa 11:1; Psa 16:1; Psa 31:2, cf. Psa 71:1. The perf. is inchoative: in Thee have I taken my refuge, equivalent to: in Thee do I trust. The transition from the multitude of his persecutors to the sing. in Psa 7:3 is explained most naturally, as one looks at the inscription, thus: that of the many the one who is just at the time the worst of all comes prominently before his mind. The verb טָרַף from the primary signification carpere (which corresponds still more exactly to חרף) means both to tear off and to tear in pieces (whence טְרֵפָה that which is torn in pieces); and פָּרַק from its primary signification frangere means both to break loose and to break in pieces, therefore to liberate, e.g., in Psa 136:24, and to break in small pieces, 1Ki 19:11. The persecutors are conceived of as wild animals, as lions which rend their prey and craunch its bones. Thus blood-thirsty are they for his soul, i.e., his life. After the painful unrest of this first strophe, the second begins the tone of defiant self-consciousness.