I will give thanks to Yahweh with all my heart; I will recount all Your wondrous deeds.
Psalm 9
I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.
When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before You.
For You have maintained my justice and my cause; You have sat on the throne judging righteously.
You have rebuked the nations, You have made the wicked perish; You have blotted out their name forever and ever.
The enemy has come to an end in perpetual ruins, and You have uprooted the cities; the very memory of them has perished.
But Yahweh [h]abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment,
And He will judge the world in righteousness; He will render justice for the peoples with equity.
Yahweh also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of distress;
And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, for You, O Yahweh, have not forsaken those who seek You.
Sing praises to Yahweh, who abides in Zion; declare among the peoples His acts.
For He who requires blood remembers them; He does not forget the cry of the afflicted.
Be gracious to me, O Yahweh; see my affliction from those who hate me, You who lift me up from the gates of death,
That I may recount all Your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in Your salvation.
The nations have sunk down in the pit which they have made; in the net which they hid, their own foot has been caught.
Yahweh has made Himself known; He has executed judgment. In the work of his own hands the wicked is snared.
Higgaion Selah.
The wicked will return to Sheol, even all the nations who forget God.
For the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted perish forever.
Arise, O Yahweh, do not let man prevail; let the nations be judged before You.
Put them in fear, O Yahweh; let the nations know that they are but men. Selah.
Introduction
In this, the ninth Psalm, there is a difference in the way David formulates his prayer. Instead of focusing primarily on his immediate affliction and God’s faithfulness generally, he dials into exactly how God has been faithful in the immediate past. It can be easy when we pray to preoccupy our minds on the things we want God to do for us now. Even when we give thanks, it can easily be done in a formulaic fashion as though God would not hear our prayers if we did not first give thanks.
But God is not interested in how well we can recite prescribed formulae or offer empty vague gratitude. Instead, He is gloried in the recitation of specific ways He has been faithful. My mind often returns to the old hymn Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. A favorite of a college friend of mine, the second verse begins with, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I’m come.”
“Ebenezer” is a Hebrew compound word meaning “stone of help.” It was the name the prophet Samuel gave to a specific rock he placed at the site of a battle against the Philistines that God granted to Israel by personally intervening and confusing the minds of the Philistine soldiers (1 Samuel 7:12). Samuel so named this rock because it marked the location of a specific and definite place where God stooped down to help His people.
A recount of His deeds
Many believe this Psalm was written after David’s defeat of Goliath. But it really could be any victory, since David is singing praise to God for delivering his enemy into his hand. Regardless of when exactly David wrote this Psalm, it is clear that his response to help from God is like Samuel’s: he eagerly desires to praise and thank God for His faithfulness over the protection of His people.
When we encounter hardships, it can almost seem like prayer is just another one of the things we do to deal with things. Because when situations are dire, your options of response tend to dry up. Prayer becomes a sort of last resort in those situations if it is not a regular habit to begin with. But when we make a point to thank God immediately for the graces He gives in life, small to large, prayer in times of need is more of a first response.
Is this a habit you make in your life? Do you pause to thank God when things are going well or you have found relief from some discomfort? Recount His deeds and remind even just yourself of His infinite faithfulness.
A prayer for justice
Mixed into David’s prayer of thanksgiving here is one where he desires God’s justice to be metered out. This is probably something everyone, even non-believers, feel a longing for in some way. The very language mirrors it when they use terms like “social justice,” claiming an inherent and noticed injustice present in social structures. People who subscribe to that are not wrong – there are injustices present in all levels of society. Where they fail to meet the mark, though, is in recognizing what true justice looks like.
Amos 5:18 is a prophetic passage rebuking the unrepentant people of Israel. They have chased after idols and presented themselves to the pagan deities while simultaneously attempting to worship the true God. He does not accept their worship, however, and in this line chastises them by saying, “Woe, you who are longing for the day of Yahweh, for what purpose will the day of Yahweh be to you? It will be darkness and not light.”
And so, as the people longed for justice to strike and the day of the Lord to arrive, that very Lord struck back against the people by telling them they are not exempt from the wrath to come. In fact, the very justice they call out for is a justice against themselves. And that is the same case for many today who deeply desire justice.
The only ones who will be spared when the Lord returns to judge the living and the dead are those whose names are found in the book of life (Revelation 20:5). And the only way to ensure your name is written in that book is to believe in the Lord Jesus (Acts 16:31).
Like David, we should long for the wicked to return to Sheol and for the nations who forget God to perish. But we should also remember that we were once among the wicked ourselves (1 Corinthians 6:11), and to God’s glory, He may save even the most heinous of sinners.
May the Lord bless you and conform you into the image of His Son.
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