Psalms 17: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A prayer of David asking God to hear his case and judge it. He says his heart has been tested and found honest, and he asks God to guard him like the pupil of an eye from enemies who circle him like hunting lions. He calls on God to rise up and bring the wicked down, and he contrasts men whose share is only in this life with his own hope of seeing God's face when he awakes.

Claim by Claim

1. 17:1
   • This is a prayer of David.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to hear the right, that is, a just cause.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to attend to his cry.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to give ear to his prayer.
   • The speaker's prayer does not come from deceitful lips.
2. 17:2
   • The speaker asks that the verdict in his case come forth from God's presence.
   • The speaker asks that God's eyes look upon what is right.
3. 17:3
   • God has tested the speaker's heart.
   • God has visited the speaker in the night.
   • God has refined the speaker.
   • God will find nothing wrong in him.
   • The speaker has resolved that his mouth will not transgress.
4. 17:4
   • The claim concerns the deeds of men.
   • By the word of God's lips the speaker has kept himself from the paths of the violent man.
5. 17:5
   • The speaker's steps hold to God's paths, stated in a form that is either a request that God hold them there or a declaration that they have held.
   • The speaker's footsteps do not slip.
6. 17:6
   • The speaker has called upon God.
   • God will answer him.
   • The speaker asks God to incline his ear to him.
   • The speaker asks God to hear his speech.
7. 17:7
   • The speaker asks God to make his acts of steadfast love wondrous.
   • God saves those who take refuge in him.
   • God saves them by his right hand.
   • God saves them from those who rise up against them.
8. 17:8
   • The speaker asks God to keep him as the pupil of the eye.
   • The speaker asks God to hide him in the shadow of his wings.
9. 17:9
   • The speaker asks to be kept from the wicked who despoil him.
   • The speaker's enemies surround him.
   • Those enemies are enemies against his life.
10. 17:10
    • They have closed up their fat, so that they are unfeeling.
    • With their mouth they speak arrogantly.
11. 17:11
    • They have now surrounded us at our steps, the text being uncertain whether it reads 'our steps' or 'they have surrounded me'.
    • They set their eyes to cast down to the ground.
12. 17:12
    • He is like a lion that longs to tear its prey.
    • He is like a young lion lurking in hiding places.
13. 17:13
    • The speaker asks the LORD to arise.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to confront him.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to bring him down.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to deliver his life from the wicked.
    • The wicked is called God's sword, the wording being open to meaning instead that the deliverance is by God's sword.
14. 17:14
    • The deliverance is asked from men by God's hand, the wording being open to meaning that those men are God's hand.
    • They are men of the world whose portion is in this life.
    • God fills their belly with his hidden store.
    • They are satisfied with sons.
    • They leave what remains of their substance to their little ones.
15. 17:15
    • The speaker will behold God's face in righteousness.
    • The speaker will be satisfied with God's form when he awakes.

Words Worth Explaining

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

17:1

The psalm is framed as a court case: a man under accusation asks God to hear the case and rule on it. "Lying lips" is the courtroom charge of false testimony: he is swearing that his own plea is not a false one.

17:2

"The verdict about me" translates a legal word for the sentence a judge hands down. The picture is of a ruling issued and announced in the ruler's own presence, so that everyone hears the man declared in the right.

17:3

"Tested" and "examined" are the words used for assaying metal, heating it to see whether it is pure or has cheaper metal mixed in. Night was the usual time for such self-examination; the line can also be read as spending the night at God's sanctuary waiting for a ruling by morning.

17:4

"The words you spoke" means God's spoken instructions, the commands a person was expected to live by. "Paths" here means a settled way of life, not a road.

17:5

"Goings" means steps, or the way a person walks. Feet slipping on a path is a standard image in the Psalms for losing your moral footing, not for a literal fall.

17:6

"Incline thine ear" pictures someone bending down and turning their head to bring an ear close to a person speaking quietly, the way an adult leans toward a small child.

17:7

"Faithful love" translates a Hebrew word for loyalty owed inside a binding relationship, the steady commitment of one party who will not walk away. The "right hand" stands for strength: for most people the stronger hand, the one that holds a weapon, so saving "by your right hand" means saving by one's own power.

17:8

The Hebrew behind "apple of the eye" is literally "the little man of the eye", the tiny reflection of yourself you can see in another person's pupil. It was a proverbial name for the most delicate and most instinctively guarded thing a body has. "The shadow of your wings" is the image of a bird covering its young; the same picture also called to mind the outstretched wings of the carved figures over the ark in the sanctuary.

17:9

"My deadly enemies" is literally enemies against my life, meaning people actually trying to kill him, not simply people who dislike him. "Compass me about" means surround, the way soldiers encircle a target so there is no way out.

17:10

Fat here is not about body size. In Hebrew idiom, fat closing over the heart is a stock image for someone grown so comfortable and well-off that nothing reaches them any more, an unfeeling, shut-up mind.

17:11

The Hebrew of this verse is damaged or garbled, and translators differ over who is surrounding whom and what the eyes are fixed on. Any rendering here involves guesswork.

17:12

Lions lived wild in Israel in this period and killed both livestock and people, so this is a real local danger rather than a distant or storybook animal. The two lines describe one hunt from two angles: the open hunger, and then the patient hidden crouch before the spring.

17:13

The last phrase is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean "rescue me from the wicked man by means of your sword," or "rescue me from the wicked man, who is your sword": that is, an enemy God himself is using as a weapon. The grammar does not decide between them.

17:14

The same ambiguity continues: "men who are your hand" may mean men God is using as his instrument, or may mean "rescue me by your hand from these men." A "portion" is the share of land or property allotted to a person as their inheritance; men whose portion is in this life get everything they will ever get now. The rest of the verse is one of the most disputed sentences in the Psalms, the Hebrew can be read as a complaint that God fills such men with good things and many heirs, or as a prayer that God fill and satisfy his own people instead.

17:15

Being allowed to "see the face" of a king meant being admitted to his presence and received with favor; to be shut out from his face meant rejection. "When I awake" is left open in Hebrew: it can mean waking in the morning after a night of waiting for God's answer, or a waking beyond death. The wording does not settle which.