Psalms 54:5

Psa 54:5 He shall reward evil unto mine enemies: cut them off in thy truth.

Ver. 5. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies] Or, mine observers, that watch me a mischief. I shall escape out of trouble, and they shall come in my stead, Pro 11:8.

Cut them off in thy truth] i.e. According as thou hast pronounced against such as seek and suck innocent blood.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7. (Psa 54:5). The evil shall return to my enemies; in thy truth destroy them. The future here runs into the imperative, as the imperative does into the future in Psa 54:3 (1), above. The imperative in this case is only a stronger form of prediction. The evil, which they mean to do me. Return to, or upon them, i.e. shall befall themselves. See above, on Psa 7:17 (16), This is the sense required by the reading in the text (bvwy), which the modern critics commonly regard as the most ancient. The marginal or masoretic reading must be rendered, he will cause to return, repay, requite. Thy truth, the truth of thy promises and threatenings, thy veracity. See above, on Psa 30:10 (9). The certain foresight of the doom of the wicked, which is expressed in the first clause, makes the prayer (if such it be considered little more than an expression of that certainty. See above, on Psa 5:11 (10).

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (1850) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

According to thy faithful promise for my defense.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

He shall . . . evil--or, "Evil shall return on" (Psa 7:16) my enemies or watchers, that is, to do me evil (Psa 6:7).

in thy truth--Thy verified promise.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 5. He shall reward evil] Saul and his courtiers, instead of having God's approbation, shall have his curse.

Cut them off in thy truth.] Thou hast promised to save me; these have purposed to destroy me. Thy truth is engaged in my defence; they will destroy me if permitted to live: to save thy truth, and to accomplish its promises, thou must cut them off.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

5. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies As the verb ישיב, yashib, may be rendered he shall cause to return, it seems to point not only at the punishment, but the kind of punishment, which would be awarded to his enemies, in the recoiling of their wicked machinations upon their own heads. Some give an optative signification to the verb, understanding the words to express a wish or prayer; but I see no reason why it should not be taken strictly in the future tense, and imagine that David intimates his certain expectation that this favor, which he had already prayed for, would be granted. It is by no means uncommon to find the prayers of the Psalmist intersected with sentences of this kind, inserted for the purpose of stimulating his faith, as here, where he announces the general truth, that God is the righteous judge who will recompense the wicked. With the view of confirming his hopes, he adverts particularly to the truth of God; for nothing can support us in the hour of temptation, when the Divine deliverance may be long delayed, but a firm persuasion that God is true, and that he cannot deceive us by his divine promises. His confidence of obtaining his request was grounded upon the circumstance that God could no more deny his word than deny himself.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(5) Cut them off.—Or, put them to silence.

In thy truth.—Or, according to thy faithfulness.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5. He shall requite the evil unto them that lie in wait for me:

Destroy thou them in thy truth.

God will cause the evil which they are plotting to recoil upon their own heads: or, according to the K’thîbh or written text (Introd. p. li), The evil shall return &c.: cp. Psa_7:16. Enemies (A.V.) is a peculiar word found only in Psa_5:8; Psa_27:11; Psa_56:2; Psa_59:10, meaning those who lie in wait for him, like fowlers (Jer_5:26 R.V.), or a leopard for its prey (Hos_13:7). Jerome renders it insidiatores.

in thy truth] For Thou canst not be false to Thy promise to deliver me.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies,.... That eyed him as Saul did; that observed his haunts, where he resorted, and who were with him, as the Ziphites did under Saul's direction; as the Word (m) here used for "enemies" signifies: the mischief they had devised for him, he believed, would be returned upon their own heads; the pit they digged they would fall into themselves; and the net they had spread for others their own feet would be taken in. This was true as of David's enemies, so of Christ's, the wicked Jews, who narrowly watched him to take every advantage against him;

cut them off in thy truth; root and branch, as Saul, and his family, and his courtiers, quickly were, according to the truth of promises made to David, and of threatenings unto them.

(m) "observatoribus meis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies - Margin, “those that observe me.” The original word here means literally “to twist, to twist together;” then, to press together; then, to “oppress,” or to treat as an enemy. The reference here is to those who pressed upon him as enemies, or who endeavored to crush him. The idea is that God would recompense them for this conduct, or that he would deal with them as they deserved.

Cut them off in thy truth - In thy faithfulness; in thy regard for what is right. This is simply a prayer, or an expression of strong confidence, that God would deal with them as they deserved, or that he would not suffer such conduct to pass without a proper expression of his sense of the wrong. There is no evidence that David in this prayer was prompted by private or vindictive feeling.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

In thy truth; or, for or according to thy truth; whereby thou art engaged to fulfil thy promises made to me, and thy threatenings denounced against thine and mine implacable enemies.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ver. 5. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies. They worked for evil, and they shall have their wages. It cannot be that malice should go unavenged. It were cruelty to the good to be lenient to their persecutors. It is appointed, and so it must ever be, that those who shoot upward the arrows of malice shall find them fall upon themselves. The recoil of their own gun has often killed oppressors.

Cut them off in thy truth. Not in ferocious revenge is this spoken, but as an Amen to the sure sentence of the just Judge. Let the veracity of thy threatenings be placed beyond dispute, the decree is right and just, let it be fulfilled. It is not a private desire, but the solemn utterance of a military man, a grossly injured man, a public leader destined to be a monarch, and a man well trained in the school of Moses, whose law ordains eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.

Ver. 5. Cut them off. He desires that God would destroy them with a death dealing blow, which is the force the word tmu contains; its primitive sense is to be silent, to keep silence, whence it is transferred to a stroke penetrating deeply and striking fatally, such as is called a silent blow, opposed to a sounding one, which is wont to rebound and not pierce deeply. Hermann Venema.

None.

Psalms 54:6*

Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

5. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies—The “evil” they sought to do to me shall recoil upon themselves. God shall turn it back upon them. So the word rendered “reward” properly signifies. It is another instance of the lex talionis.

Cut them off in thy truth—The optative sense, here, is to be taken in connexion with the qualifying words “thy truth.” Only in accordance with this does David invoke divine interference. Immutability and authority of law are the gist and essence of the prayer. If these fail all is lost. Prayer for the deliverance of the righteous cannot be answered without the reformation or the destruction of the wicked; that is, destruction as to their power to do evil.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies; literally, he shall return the wrong upon my adversaries. "The wrong" is that which his adversaries had wished to inflict upon the psalmist, viz. death. (see 1Sa_23:19, 1Sa_23:20) Cut them off in thy truth; or, "in thy truthfulness" (Cheyne). God had given his people those who were faithful to him the promise of his protection, and, being true, could not go back from his word.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Thy truth - Whereby thou art engaged to fulfil thy promises and threatenings.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.