Psalms 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter is a prayer that moves back and forth between asking and trusting. The speaker asks God to teach him God's ways, to forget the sins of his youth, to forgive his guilt, and to rescue him from many enemies and from inner distress. Between the requests he states what God is like: good and upright, guiding the humble, and sharing his covenant with those who fear him. The last verse widens the prayer from one person to all of Israel.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • The psalm is ascribed to David.
   • The speaker lifts up his soul to the LORD.
2. 25:2
   • The speaker addresses God as his God.
   • The speaker trusts in God.
   • The speaker asks not to be put to shame.
   • The speaker asks that his enemies not exult over him.
3. 25:3
   • None who wait for the LORD will be put to shame.
   • Those who act treacherously will be put to shame.
   • It is ambiguous whether the treachery is without cause or whether the treacherous are shamed empty-handed.
4. 25:4
   • The speaker asks the LORD to make his ways known to him.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to teach him his paths.
5. 25:5
   • The speaker asks God to lead him in his truth.
   • The speaker asks God to teach him.
   • God is the God of the speaker's salvation.
   • The speaker waits for God all day long.
6. 25:6
   • The speaker asks the LORD to remember his compassion.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to remember his acts of covenant love.
   • God's compassion and covenant love have existed from of old.
7. 25:7
   • The speaker asks God not to remember the sins of his youth.
   • The speaker asks God not to remember his transgressions.
   • The speaker asks God to remember him according to God's covenant love.
   • The speaker asks this for the sake of God's goodness.
   • The speaker addresses the LORD.
8. 25:8
   • The LORD is good.
   • The LORD is upright.
   • Because the LORD is good and upright, he instructs sinners in the way.
9. 25:9
   • God guides the humble in justice.
   • God teaches the humble his way.
10. 25:10
    • All the paths of the LORD are covenant love and faithfulness.
    • This is so for those who keep God's covenant and his testimonies.
11. 25:11
    • The speaker asks God to act for the sake of his own name.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to pardon his iniquity.
    • The speaker's iniquity is great.
12. 25:12
    • The speaker asks who the man is that fears the LORD.
    • God will instruct such a man in the way.
    • It is ambiguous whether the way is the one the man should choose or the one God chooses for him.
13. 25:13
    • The soul of the one who fears the LORD will lodge in good.
    • His offspring will inherit the land.
    • It is ambiguous whether the inheritance is the land or the earth.
14. 25:14
    • The LORD's confidential counsel belongs to those who fear him.
    • God makes his covenant known to those who fear him.
15. 25:15
    • The speaker's eyes are continually toward the LORD.
    • The LORD will bring the speaker's feet out of the net.
16. 25:16
    • The speaker asks God to turn to him.
    • The speaker asks God to be gracious to him.
    • The speaker is alone.
    • The speaker is afflicted.
17. 25:17
    • The troubles of the speaker's heart have enlarged.
    • The speaker asks God to bring him out of his distresses.
18. 25:18
    • The speaker asks God to look upon his affliction.
    • The speaker asks God to look upon his trouble.
    • The speaker asks God to take away all his sins.
19. 25:19
    • The speaker asks God to look at his enemies.
    • The speaker's enemies are many.
    • They hate the speaker with violent hatred.
20. 25:20
    • The speaker asks God to guard his soul.
    • The speaker asks God to deliver him.
    • The speaker asks not to be put to shame.
    • The speaker takes refuge in God.
21. 25:21
    • The speaker asks that integrity and uprightness preserve him.
    • The speaker waits for God.
22. 25:22
    • The speaker asks God to redeem Israel.
    • The redemption asked is out of all Israel's troubles.

Words Worth Explaining

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

25:1

"Lift up my soul" is a Hebrew idiom for directing your whole life and longing toward someone; the word behind "soul" (nephesh) means a person's life or self, not a spirit housed inside the body. This psalm is also an acrostic: in Hebrew each verse begins with the next letter of the alphabet, a shape that cannot survive translation. It means the run of thought is partly steered by the alphabet rather than by a developing argument, which is why the psalm circles back over the same themes.

25:2

"Put to shame" in Hebrew is public, not private: it means being visibly disgraced, exposed as someone whose confidence was misplaced. The fear is not embarrassment but the humiliation of having trusted and been let down where everyone can see.

25:3

"Wait for you" translates a verb (qavah) of tense, expectant hope, watching for something to arrive, not passive killing of time. The people contrasted with them are described by a word (bagad) used of breaking faith: treachery against a partner, an ally, or a spouse. The Hebrew grammar leaves it open whether the line is a statement ("none who wait for you will be shamed") or a wish ("let none be shamed").

25:4

"Shew" is simply the seventeenth century spelling of "show" and was pronounced the same way. The image running through this psalm is a road: God's "ways" and "paths" are his way of living, so asking to be shown them is asking to be taught how to act.

25:5

"Salvation" here means rescue from concrete danger: enemies, illness, disgrace, ruin. In the Psalms it is about being pulled out of a present situation, not about life after death.

25:6

Two different words for love sit side by side here. The first (rachamim, KJV "tender mercies") is built on the word for a womb and suggests the gut-level pity of a parent for a child. The second (chesed, KJV "lovingkindness") means loyal, committed love, the steady faithfulness owed inside a binding relationship. "Ever of old" means from ancient times, not merely for a long while.

25:7

"Transgressions" translates a word for deliberate rebellion against someone in authority, a step beyond simply doing something wrong by accident or weakness. "For thy goodness' sake" means because of what God is like, not because of anything the writer has earned.

25:9

"Meek" in 1611 English did not mean timid. The Hebrew word covers the humble and the low-status, those without power or standing, often the poor. "Judgment" here (mishpat) means what is right and just, not a verdict or a punishment.

25:10

A covenant was a formal binding agreement, the ancient equivalent of a treaty, with named obligations on each side; Israel understood its relationship with God in those terms. "Testimonies" translates a word for the specific stipulations of such an agreement, the recorded terms, not a personal account of one's experiences. "Mercy and truth" are again chesed (loyal love) and emet (reliability, faithfulness).

25:11

"For your name's sake" is an idiom: a name stood for a person's reputation and known character. The request is that God act in a way consistent with who he is publicly known to be. The "it" that is great is the guilt, not the name, the psalmist gives the size of the offense as the reason for asking, not as an obstacle.

25:12

To "fear the LORD" is a standing Hebrew phrase for reverent loyalty, taking God seriously enough to order your life by him, rather than being frightened of him. The second half is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean the way God chooses for the man, or the way the man himself should choose.

25:13

"Dwell at ease" translates a phrase meaning to spend the night in good things, settled, provided for, secure. "Seed" means descendants. The word rendered "earth" (eretz) usually means land or territory, and for an Israelite reader it would point to the land promised to their ancestors; inheriting land, not the planet, is the picture.

25:14

The word behind KJV's "secret" (sod) means a confidential circle, the group of trusted advisers a king lets into his deliberations, and by extension the private counsel shared there. The line says God treats such people as insiders, not that he keeps secrets from others.

25:15

The net is a hunter's or fowler's net, spread on the ground to entangle the legs of animals and birds. Being caught in one is a stock image in these poems for being trapped by enemies' schemes.

25:16

"Desolate" has its older sense: alone, with no company and no one to back you up. The Hebrew word means solitary and cut off, isolated from family and allies, which in that society left a person with no protection at all.

25:17

"Heart" in Hebrew is the seat of thought, decision and will as much as feeling, closer to "mind" than to romantic emotion. The Hebrew of the first line is disputed: it can be read as "the troubles of my heart have grown wide" or, dividing the words differently, as "relieve the troubles of my heart."

25:19

"Cruel hatred" translates "hatred of violence", hatred of the kind that produces bodily harm, not merely hostile feeling.

25:20

"Keep my soul" uses the same word as in verse 1: guard my life, my very self. "Take shelter" translates a verb (chasah) meaning to run for refuge (to a rock, a fortress, or under a bird's wing), so trusting God is pictured as fleeing to a safe place rather than holding an opinion.

25:21

"Integrity" translates a word (tom) meaning whole, complete, undivided (a person of one piece, without a hidden second agenda), rather than honesty in the narrow sense of not lying.

25:22

This verse falls outside the alphabet pattern that governs the rest of the psalm and switches from one person's trouble to the whole nation's; many readers take it as a line added so a congregation could use the psalm together. "Redeem" translates padah, a commercial word: to buy someone out of captivity or slavery by paying the price for them.