Psalms 41: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The psalm opens by saying that the person who cares about the poor will be protected and rescued by the LORD in a time of trouble. The speaker then asks God for mercy and healing, admitting he has sinned, and describes enemies who want him dead, a visitor who spreads lies about him, and a trusted friend who turned against him. He asks God to raise him up so he can pay them back, and takes his enemy's failure as a sign of God's favor.

Claim by Claim

1. 41:1
   • The one who considers the poor and weak is blessed.
   • The LORD will rescue that person in the day of trouble.
2. 41:2
   • The LORD will guard him and preserve his life.
   • He will be called blessed in the land.
   • The speaker tells the LORD that He will not hand that person over to the desire of his enemies.
3. 41:3
   • The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed.
   • The speaker tells the LORD that He turns over his whole bed in his illness, which may mean either that God makes up his bed or that God restores him from his sickness.
4. 41:4
   • The speaker said something to the LORD.
   • The speaker asked the LORD to be gracious to him.
   • The speaker asked the LORD to heal him.
   • The speaker said he had sinned against the LORD.
5. 41:5
   • The speaker's enemies speak evil about him.
   • His enemies ask when he will die.
   • His enemies ask when his name will perish.
6. 41:6
   • If one comes to see the speaker, that visitor speaks emptiness and falsehood.
   • The visitor's heart gathers up wickedness for itself.
   • The visitor goes outside.
   • Once outside, the visitor spreads what he has gathered.
7. 41:7
   • All who hate the speaker whisper together against him.
   • They devise harm against him.
8. 41:8
   • His enemies say that a destructive thing has been poured into him and holds him fast, which may mean a deadly disease or a ruinous deed.
   • His enemies say that now that he lies down, he will not rise again.
9. 41:9
   • The man who was at peace with the speaker has turned against him.
   • The speaker had trusted that man.
   • That man ate the speaker's bread.
   • That man lifted up his heel against the speaker.
10. 41:10
    • The speaker asks the LORD to be gracious to him.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to raise him up.
    • The speaker asks this so that he may repay his enemies.
11. 41:11
    • The speaker knows by this that the LORD delights in him.
    • The speaker's enemy does not shout in triumph over him.
12. 41:12
    • The LORD upholds the speaker in his integrity.
    • The LORD sets the speaker before His face forever.
13. 41:13
    • The LORD, the God of Israel, is blessed from everlasting to everlasting.
    • Amen.
    • Amen.

Words Worth Explaining

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

41:1

Where LORD appears in capitals it stands in for the personal name of God in Hebrew, which Jewish readers did not pronounce and replaced with "the Lord" when reading aloud. The word behind "the poor" covers anyone weak, low or helpless, the sick and the powerless as much as the penniless, and the verb behind "gives thought to" means noticing someone's situation and acting sensibly on it, not merely feeling sorry for them.

41:2

"In the land" usually means the land of Israel, and to be blessed there is the ordinary Hebrew way of saying a person is counted fortunate and secure among his own people.

41:3

The second half of this verse is notoriously hard Hebrew. Word for word it says something like "you turn over all his bed in his sickness." That has been read as God restoring the sick man to health, and also, more concretely, as God doing for him what a nurse does, turning and remaking the bed of someone too weak to move himself.

41:4

"Heal me" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning heal my nephesh, the whole living person: life, self, breath, appetite. It does not mean an inner soul as distinct from the body.

41:5

For a name to be forgotten meant being wiped out of memory altogether: no descendants, no reputation, nobody left who speaks of you. It was treated as a loss on top of dying.

41:6

Visiting the sick was a social duty, so the enemy has a respectable reason to be at the bedside. What he is after is material (signs that the man is finished) to carry back out to the others.

41:7

The Hebrew verb for whispering is also the word used for muttering a charm or an incantation over someone, so the whispering may carry a hint of something worse than gossip.

41:8

The phrase behind "some evil sickness" is literally "a thing of belial", a worthless or destructive thing, and the verb means poured out into him, as though a fatal substance or a curse had been emptied in. Whether the enemies are diagnosing the illness or wishing it on him, the Hebrew leaves open.

41:9

Eating at a man's table created a bond of loyalty, and betrayal by a table companion was among the worst injuries one person could do another. "Lifted up his heel against me" is an idiom whose exact picture is uncertain (a kick, from a horse or a man, or trampling someone underfoot) but it describes a friend turning on him violently.

41:10

The verb translated "pay them back" is the ordinary word for repaying a debt or settling a score. Simply getting up off the sickbed is what would put the speaker in a position to answer his accusers at all.

41:12

"Honest" here translates a word meaning whole, or all of one piece, conduct in this matter with no crack in it, rather than sinlessness, since he has already admitted sin in verse 4. Being set "in front of you" is court language: kept standing in the king's presence like a trusted servant, rather than dismissed from it.

41:13

This verse is not part of the psalm itself. The book of Psalms is arranged in five collections, and a short burst of praise was added at the end of each one; this closes the first collection, Psalms 1–41. "Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning roughly "that is firm" or "let it stand," said to agree with what has just been spoken.