#685 Refuge From Man

O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.


3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah


6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.


8 The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.


12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.


17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High. Psalm 7 ESV

A song for the slandered. David writes this describing his trial with Cush, the Benjamite. He describes his enemies as lions in pursuit. David is being stalked, and this will happen often in life, that men will paint a picture of you, write a story about you, and then tell others it is a biography, a non fiction. King Saul came from the tribe of Benjamin, and he saw David as a usurper, challenger. People are quick to believe evil about you when they are in want of it, when they cannot do right for themselves, it is the story they need told, the perception they want others to hold. These stories chase you, nipping at your heels, following you from one place to the next, until God so intervenes that you are made known as other than they say. It only takes one person to take the time to get to know you, to see your work and consider the source, and chase the dogs away. They were never lions, just ill bred dogs, if you stop running they will become uncertain. 

Awake for me - David is weary of the slander, and he knows that God has appointed this to the place of all sin. He has judged that it is wrong to lie and to lie against another. God does not sleep, yet a day can be as a thousand years, and where He seems slow to us to react, I have to be thankful, for if He would have acted against me quickly then I would not be here to write this now. Nevertheless, take it to Him, present Him with what He already knows, because this is the help to you, that He sees what you cannot. 

According to my righteousness - What they are saying about me is not true and others are believing it, so I need the One Who sees everything to take up my cause. Only You can judge, for it has come down to my word against his, and this person has the earthly kings ear. 

If a man does not repent - David is not speaking to inherent righteousness, a sinless life, for that is easily demonstrated in other poems and by the books about the kings. He will also say to God, "against You and You only have I sinned." No one says of eternity, judge me by my righteousness, but rather they repent and ask for the righteousness that is imputed to them by faith. Here, he is not guilty of the accusation and he is also warning the liar that though God may not move immediately, don't deceive yourself, because He has already decided against evil. God has already judged these things, and those who do not repent will face His sword.