A Cry for Mercy under Judgement

The morning prayer, Psalms 5:1-12, is followed by a “Psalm of David,” which, even if not composed in the morning, looks back upon a sleepless, tearful night. It consists of three strophes. In the middle one, which is a third longer than the other two, the poet, by means of a calmer outpouring of his heart, struggles on from the cry of distress in the first strophe to the believing confidence of the last. The hostility of men seems to him as a punishment of divine wrath, and consequently (but this is not so clearly expressed as in Ps 38, which is its counterpart) as the result of his sin; and this persecution, which to him has God's wrath behind it and sin as the sting of its bitterness, makes him sorrowful and sick even unto death. Because the Psalm contains no confession of sin, one might be inclined to think that the church has wrongly reckoned it as the first of the seven (probably selected with reference to the seven days of the week) Psalmi paenitentiales (Psalms 6:1, Psalms 32:1, Psalms 38:1, Psalms 51:1, Psalms 102:1, Psalms 130:1, Psalms 143:1). A. H. Francke in his Introductio in Psalterium says, it is rather Psalmus precatorius hominis gravissimi tentati a paenitente probe distinguendi . But this is a mistake. The man who is tempted is distinguished from a penitent man by this, that the feeling of wrath is with the one perfectly groundless and with the other well-grounded. Job was one who was tempted thus. Our psalmist, however, is a penitent, who accordingly seeks that the punitive chastisement of God, as the just God, may for him be changed into the loving chastisement of God, as the merciful One.

We recognise here the language of penitently believing prayer, which has been coined by David. Compare Psalms 6:2 with Psalms 38:2; Psalms 6:3 with Psalms 41:5; Psalms 6:5 with Psalms 109:26; Psalms 6:6 with Psalms 30:10; Psalms 6:7 with Psalms 69:4; Psalms 6:8 with Psalms 31:10; Psalms 6:10 with Psalms 35:4, Psalms 35:26. The language of Heman's Psalm is perceptibly different, comp. Psalms 6:6 with Psalms 88:11-13; Psalms 6:8 with Psalms 88:10. And the corresponding strains in Jeremiah (comp. Psalms 6:2, Psalms 38:2 with Jeremiah 10:24; Psalms 6:3 and Psalms 6:5 with Jeremiah 17:14; Psalms 6:7 with Jeremiah 45:3) are echoes, which to us prove that the Psalm belongs to an earlier age, not that it was composed by the prophet (Hitzig). It is at once probable, from the almost anthological relationship in which Jeremiah stands to the earlier literature, that in the present instance also he is the reproducer. And this idea is confirmed by the fact that in Jeremiah 10:25, after language resembling the Psalm before us, he continues in words taken from Psalms 79:6. When Hitzig maintains that David could no more have composed this disconcertedly despondent Psalm than Isaiah could the words in Isaiah 21:3-4, we refer, in answer to him, to Isaiah 22:4 and to the many attestations that David did weep, 2 Samuel 1:12; 2 Samuel 3:32; 2 Samuel 12:21; 2 Samuel 15:30; 2 Samuel 19:1.

The accompanying musical direction runs: To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, upon the Octave. The lxx translates ὑπὲρ τῆς ὀγδόης , and the Fathers associate with it the thought of the octave of eternal happiness, ἡ ὀγδόη ἐκείνη , as Gregory of Nyssa says, ἥτίς ἐστιν ὁ ἐφεξῆς αἰών . But there is no doubt whatever that על־השּׁמינית has reference to music. It is also found by Psalms 12:1-8, and besides in 1 Chronicles 15:21. From this latter passage it is at least clear that it is not the name of an instrument. An instrument with eight strings could not have been called an octave instead of an octachord . In that passage they played upon nablas על־עלמות , and with citherns על־השּׁמינית . If עלמות denotes maidens = maidens' voices i.e., soprano , then, as it seems, השּׁמינית is a designation of the bass, and על־השׁמינית equivalent to all' ottava bassa . The fact that Psalms 46:1-11, which is accompanied by the direction על־עלמות , is a joyous song, whereas Psalms 6:1-10 is a plaintive one and Psalms 12:1-8 not less gloomy and sad, accords with this. These two were to be played in the lower octave, that one in the higher.

(Heb.: 6:2-4) There is a chastisement which proceeds from God's love to the man as being pardoned and which is designed to purify or to prove him, and a chastisement which proceeds from God's wrath against the man as striving obstinately against, or as fallen away from, favour, and which satisfies divine justice. Psalms 94:12; Psalms 118:17; Proverbs 3:11. speak of this loving chastisement. The man who should decline it, would act against his own salvation. Accordingly David, like Jeremiah (Jeremiah 10:24), does not pray for the removal of the chastisement but of the chastisement in wrath, or what is the same thing, of the judgment proceeding from wrath [ Zorngericht ]. בּאפּך and בּחמתך stand in the middle, between אל and the verbs, for the sake of emphasis. Hengstenberg indeed finds a different antithesis here. He says: “The contrast is not that of chastisement in love with chastisement in wrath , but that of loving rescue in contrast with chastisement, which always proceeds from the principle of wrath.” If what is here meant is, that always when God chastens a man his wrath is the true and proper motive, it is an error, for the refutation of which one whole book of the Bible, viz., the Book of Job, has been written. For there the friends think that God is angry with Job; but we know from the prologue that, so far from being angry with him, he on the contrary glories in him. Here, in this Psalm, assuming David to be its author, and his adultery the occasion of it, it is certainly quite otherwise. The chastisement under which David is brought low, has God's wrath as its motive: it is punitive chastisement and remains such, so long as David remains fallen from favour. But if in sincere penitence he again struggles through to favour, then the punitive becomes a loving chastisement: God's relationship to him becomes an essentially different relationship. The evil, which is the result of his sin and as such indeed originates in the principle of wrath, becomes the means of discipline and purifying which love employs, and this it is that he here implores for himself. And thus Dante Alighieri

(Note: Provided he is the author of I sêtte Salmi Penitenziali trasportati alla volgar poesia, vid., Dante Alighieri's Lyric poems, translated and annotated by Kannegiesser and Witte (1842) i. 203f., ii. 208f.)

correctly and beautifully paraphrases the verse:

Signor, non mi riprender con furore,

E non voler correggermi con ira,

Ma con dolcezza e con perfetto amore