John|Joh 15:25]]) as fulfilled in Him; it therefore appears as though the whole Psalm ought to be, or at least may be, taken typically as the words of Christ. But nowhere in the Gospels do we read an imprecation used by Jesus against His own and the enemies of the kingdom of God; David's imprecations are not suited to the lips of the Saviour, nor do the instances in which they are cited in the New Testament give them the impress of being His direct words: they are treated as the language of prophecy by virtue of the Spirit, whose instrument David was, and whose work the Scriptures are. And it is only in this sense that the Christian adopts them in prayer. For after the pattern of his Lord, who on the cross prayed “Father forgive them,” he desires that even his bitterest enemies may not be eternally lost, but, though it be only when in articulo mortis, that they may come to their right mind. Even the anathemas of the apostle against the Judaising false teachers and against Alexander the smith (Gal 1:9; Gal 5:12; 2Ti 4:14), refer only to temporal removal and chastisement, not to eternal perdition. They mark the extreme boundary where, in extraordinary instances, the holy zeal of the New Testament comes in contact with the holy fervour of the Old Testament.
Verses 1-3
The psalmist begins in a martial and anthropomorphical style such as we have not hitherto met with. On the ultima-accentuation of ריבה, vid., on Psa 3:8. Both את are signs of the accusative. This is a more natural rendering here, where the psalmist implores God to subjugate his foes, than to regard את as equivalent to עם (cf. Isa 49:25 with ib. Psa 27:8; Job 10:2); and, moreover, for the very same reason the expression in this instance is לחם, (in the Kal, which otherwise only lends the part. לחם, Psa 56:2., to the Niph. נלחם) instead of the reciprocal form הלּחם. It is usually supposed that לחם means properly vorare, and war is consequently conceived of as a devouring of men; but the Arabic offers another primary meaning: to press close and compact (Niph. to one another), consequently מלחמה means a dense crowd, a dense bustle and tumult (cf. the Homeric κλόνος). The summons to Jahve to
