Chapter One Hundred Eight

In the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles the psalm is attributed to David, and there is nothing in its content, structure, or language that could give grounds for disputing its authorship by the person mentioned in the inscription.

David in the psalm points to the injustice of persecution by enemies and their cruelty (Ps 108:3-4); he especially singles out one from among them who holds a prominent position as an overseer (“bishop” – Ps 108:8 in the Greek Bible and the Vulgate) and against whom he prays for God’s judgment. This person may be understood to be Doeg, the Edomite, overseer of Saul’s herds, a man close to him, who became notorious for his denunciations against David and killed the priests in Nob, where David was hiding (1 Sam 22:6-19); that is, the psalm was written during the time of persecution by Saul. The entire psalm represents David’s depiction of the severity of his position, as one unjustly and cruelly persecuted, and his prayer to God both for retribution against Doeg for his betrayal and deliberate cruelty toward innocent sufferers, and for his own salvation.

God! Hear my prayer for help, since treacherous enemies surround me from all sides, ungrateful ones who have risen against me without cause (1–5). Punish and judge my enemy according to his deeds: let his life be shortened, let his children be left as orphans and begging (6–10). Let there be no one to show him mercy and let his offspring perish; let the sins of his fathers be sought against him; let him be denied mercy, since he himself did not show it; let the curse which he sent upon others come upon him. Such is the reward from the Lord to all my enemies (11–20). Me, the Lord, a poor man, abandoned, worn out from persecutions, save, so that enemies might know that You did this. Let them be ashamed, and let the righteous rejoice and praise the Lord for the salvation shown to him (21–31).

Psalm 108:1. O God of my praise! Do not be silent, “God of my praise” – Lord, the subject of my singing! Do not refuse me help now in view of the unjustified, numerous, and malicious persecutions.

Psalm 108:6. Set a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand. Psalm 108:7. When he is judged, let him be found guilty, and let his prayer become sin; Among the enemies, one distinguished himself by particular hatred toward David, and for whom he prays for strict judgment from God. “Set a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand” – let the sinner and Satan testify against him. Special weight is given to the testimony of the sinner here in view of the fact that, by virtue of his corruption, he can reveal in the conduct of the man against whom he testifies evil that the righteous, uncorrupted, and inexperienced in evil, could not, in his purity, presume to be evil motives or actions. Satan, as the source and originator of sin, knows all the inclinations of a person toward evil, and therefore can present to the court his conduct throughout his life. David’s demand for such testimony against Doeg is based on his desire for a strict and complete judgment against him. “Let his prayer become sin.” David is certain of Doeg’s condemnation. The punishment awaiting him may give rise in him to a prayer for mercy. Let this prayer, prompted by a feeling of fear, and therefore insincere, hypocritical, as forced, not only not be accepted by God, but also be counted against him as greater guilt: he only remembered God here, but not in order to reform his conduct before Him, but to escape the deserved punishment from Him. Such a prayer only increases his guilt.

Psalm 108:8. Let his days be few, and let another take his office; “Let his days be few, and let another take his office.” Let the Lord shorten his life, send premature death, and transfer his honorable position to one more worthy. The management of Saul’s herds was a prominent position, since in the hands of such a person was concentrated the whole material side of maintaining the king, he was close to the king and could influence him. In the book of Acts, chapter 1 (Acts 1:20), this verse is cited in the election of deacon Matthias in place of Judas, as a pre-indication in the Old Testament of this event. Thus, Doeg appears here as a type of Judas, who also managed the economic affairs of Jesus’ community and betrayed Him just as Doeg treacherously betrayed David to Saul. Apparently, Doeg, as can be concluded from the testimony of the book of Acts, was deprived of his position, just as Judas after betraying Christ ceased to be His apostle and was later replaced by another person.

Psalm 108:9. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow; Psalm 108:10. Let his children be vagrants and beg for food from among the ruins of their homes; Psalm 108:11. Let a creditor seize all that he has, and let strangers plunder his labor; Psalm 108:12. Let there be no one to show him kindness, and let no one have pity on his orphans; Psalm 108:13. Let his posterity be cut off; in the following generation let their name be blotted out; Psalm 108:14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out; Let Doeg’s punishment be reflected in the members of his family and their outward well-being: let his children and wife, having lost all their property, which will pass into the hands of creditors, move from house to house and live either on alms or on the chance payment for work which they will perform for others as their servants. Let no one offer protection not only to Doeg but to his children, who should leave no offspring after them, so that the memory (“name”) of him disappears in one generation. Let the Lord require of him not only for his own sins, but also for the sins of his ancestors. Such responsibility for the sins of ancestors is understandable: upbringing among the ancients was characterized by a tribal nature, that is, fathers raised their children not only in the manner of life and occupations of their ancestors, but also passed on and instilled in them their purely personal views, so that the son became a copy of his father (“when his father died, it was as if he did not die” (Sir 30:4-6)), and therefore the vices of the father passed to the son, and were in him not external and fleeting impulses, but an expression of his personality, why they answered for the sins of their ancestors, more precisely – for their own, acquired from their ancestors.

Psalm 108:15. Let them be always before the eyes of the Lord, and let Him cut off the memory of them from the earth, Psalm 108:16. inasmuch as he did not think to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy and the broken-hearted man, to put him to death; Psalm 108:17. He loved cursing – let it come upon him; he did not desire blessing – let it depart from him; Psalm 108:18. Let him put on cursing like a robe, and let it enter like water into his inmost being and like oil into his bones; Psalm 108:19. Let it be to him like a garment in which he is clothed, and like a belt with which he is always girded. Such severe punishment of Doeg and his family is the application to him of the law’s commandment – “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Exod 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21), the law of corresponding retribution. Since Doeg loved to curse others, let him too be under a curse; he did not want to do good to others (“blessing”), but let him not receive it himself either. He never thought to show mercy to anyone; on the contrary, he pursued the weak and poor, persecuted the innocent and meek (“the broken-hearted,” perhaps also referring to the priests of Nob). Let Divine Justice then surround him with miseries from all sides, as a man’s garment embraces him, and so tightly as a belt binds him to his body.

Psalm 108:20. Such is the reward from the Lord to my enemies and those speaking evil against my soul! Such is the fate of all who slander and plot against me, says David, before the Lord!

Psalm 108:22. for I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. “My heart is wounded within me” – I have lost courage and am sick at heart from the unjustness of the persecutions and the wicked acts of the ungodly.

Psalm 108:23. I fade away like a passing shadow; I am driven away like a locust. Psalm 108:24. My knees are weak from fasting, and my body is emaciated from lack of oil. “They drive me away like a locust.” In the constant persecutions to which David was subjected, he was as helpless as a grasshopper that is easily crushed. This expression can also mean the degree of intensified persecutions and malice which fell to David’s lot. They hunted him so mercilessly and sought to utterly destroy him, as if he were harmful to people, as the locust is destructive, whose destruction is a great public benefit. From frequent starvation he became so weak that his legs could not move; his very appearance changed from the absence of oil, with which people on the East anointed their bodies, which made the skin more elastic, less dry, and less susceptible to cracking from the sun’s heat. Otherwise, the heat caused the skin to crack, into which dust entered, causing severe pain and changing a person’s appearance, which is what happened to David in this case. David concludes the psalm with a prayer for help with a vow to sing God’s praises among the people in his songs for the salvation shown to him.