Psalms 143: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer for help. The speaker asks God to answer, admits that no living person can stand as innocent before God, and describes an enemy who has driven him into darkness until his spirit is worn out. He remembers what God has done in the past, asks to be taught the way he should go, and asks God to rescue him and to cut off his enemies.

Claim by Claim

1. 143:1
   • The psalm is titled a psalm of David.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to hear his prayer.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to give ear to his pleas for favor.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to answer him in his faithfulness.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to answer him in his righteousness.
2. 143:2
   • The speaker asks God not to enter into judgment with his servant.
   • The speaker says that no living person is found righteous before God.
3. 143:3
   • The speaker says an enemy has pursued his soul.
   • The speaker says the enemy has crushed his life to the ground.
   • The speaker says the enemy has made him dwell in dark places.
   • The speaker says he is like those who have been dead a long time.
4. 143:4
   • The speaker's spirit faints within him.
   • The speaker's heart is appalled inside him.
5. 143:5
   • The speaker remembers the days of old.
   • The speaker meditates on all God's work.
   • The speaker muses on the work of God's hands.
6. 143:6
   • The speaker spreads out his hands to God.
   • The speaker's soul longs for God like a parched land.
   • Selah.
7. 143:7
   • The speaker asks the LORD to answer him quickly.
   • The speaker's spirit is spent.
   • The speaker asks God not to hide his face from him.
   • The speaker says that otherwise he will be like those who go down to the pit.
8. 143:8
   • The speaker asks God to make him hear God's steadfast love in the morning.
   • The speaker says he has trusted in God.
   • The speaker asks God to make him know the way he should walk.
   • The speaker says he lifts up his soul to God.
9. 143:9
   • The speaker asks the LORD to deliver him from his enemies.
   • The speaker says that to God he has covered himself, which may mean he flees to God for hiding or that he has hidden himself with God.
10. 143:10
    • The speaker asks God to teach him to do God's will.
    • The speaker says God is his God.
    • The speaker says God's spirit is good.
    • The speaker asks God to lead him on level ground.
11. 143:11
    • The speaker asks the LORD to preserve his life for the sake of God's name.
    • The speaker asks God to bring his soul out of trouble for the sake of God's righteousness.
12. 143:12
    • The speaker asks God in his steadfast love to cut off his enemies.
    • The speaker asks God to destroy all who afflict his soul.
    • The speaker says he is God's servant.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

143:1

In the King James Version, "LORD" printed in capitals stands where the Hebrew has God's personal name, the four letters YHWH. Jewish readers avoided pronouncing it and said "my Lord" instead, and the translators followed that practice. "Righteousness" here is not God's moral purity in the abstract but his reliability in setting things right: it sits alongside "faithfulness" as a reason he can be expected to act.

143:2

"Enter not into judgment" is courtroom language: do not take me to court. "Justified" is the matching legal term, to be declared in the right by a judge, not to be made good. "Thy servant" is also formal language: in the ancient Near East a king's servant was a subject or official who owed loyalty and in return could claim his master's protection, and speakers used "your servant" of themselves when addressing a superior.

143:3

"Soul" translates Hebrew *nephesh*, which means the whole living person, their life and breath, rather than an immaterial part inside them. "The enemy has persecuted my soul" means he is hunting the speaker's life. The darkness where "those that have been long dead" live is Sheol, the Hebrew picture of the place of the dead: a dim, silent underworld where the dead linger without strength.

143:4

"Heart" in Hebrew usage is the seat of thinking, choosing and courage, not just feeling, closer to "mind" or "inner self" than to the modern romantic sense. The word behind "desolate" means stunned or appalled, the state of someone struck numb by disaster.

143:5

"The days of old" normally points to Israel's early history, the exodus and the founding events, rather than to the speaker's own past. "The work of thy hands" can mean either creation or those rescues; the Hebrew leaves both open.

143:6

Spreading the hands out and upward was the ordinary posture of prayer in ancient Israel, the way kneeling or folded hands is for later readers. "Selah" appears seventy-one times in the Psalms and is probably a musical or performance direction, a pause, an instrumental break, or a cue to lift the voice. Its exact meaning was already lost by the time the Psalms were translated into Greek, and the King James translators simply left the word untranslated.

143:7

"Hide not thy face" is court idiom: a king who turned his face away from a petitioner was refusing him an audience and withdrawing favor, while a face turned toward someone signaled acceptance. "The pit" is another name for Sheol, the realm of the dead, pictured as a deep hole in the earth; "those that go down into the pit" simply means the dead.

143:8

"Lovingkindness" is the King James rendering of Hebrew *chesed*, a word with no single English equivalent: loyal, committed love of the kind owed within a binding relationship, combining affection with dependability. Morning was when legal cases were heard and when a night of danger was survived, so it is the natural time to expect an answer. "I lift up my soul unto thee" is an idiom for directing one's whole desire and life toward someone.

143:9

The Hebrew of the last clause is unusual and disputed. It may mean "I flee to you for cover" (as the King James takes it) or "to you I have hidden myself"; some ancient versions read it as "to you I have fled". The sense of taking refuge is clear either way, the exact wording is not.

143:10

The Hebrew word *ruach* means wind, breath and spirit at once, and the phrasing here is ambiguous: it can be read as "your Spirit is good; lead me" or as "may your good Spirit lead me". "The land of uprightness" translates a phrase that more literally means level or even ground (smooth walking, free of the stumbling and pitfalls of rough country), though the same root also carries the sense of moral straightness, and both readings have long been defended.

143:11

"Quicken" is 1611 English for "make alive" or "revive", not "hurry up"; the same verb is used of reviving someone faint or half-dead. "For thy name's sake" appeals to God's public reputation: a name in Hebrew thought stood for a person's known character and standing, so the speaker argues that rescuing him is a matter of God's own credit.

143:12

"Cut off" is standard idiom for putting an end to someone, removing them, as a branch is cut from a tree. "Thy mercy" here is the same word rendered "lovingkindness" in verse 8, God's loyal committed love; the speaker treats the destruction of his enemies as an expression of that loyalty toward himself, his master's servant.