Psalms 86: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer of David asking God to listen, to keep him safe, and to be merciful, because he is poor, needy, and trusting. In the middle of the prayer he turns to praise: no god is like the LORD, God alone does wonders, and all the nations God made will come and bow before him. David asks to be taught God's way and given an undivided heart. He then names his trouble (proud, violent men are after his life) and asks God for a sign of goodness that his enemies will see.

Claim by Claim

1. 86:1
   • This psalm is a prayer of David.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to bend down his ear.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to answer him.
   • The speaker says he is poor and needy.
2. 86:2
   • The speaker asks God to guard his life.
   • The speaker says he is faithful and devoted to God.
   • The speaker addresses God as his God.
   • The speaker asks God to save his servant.
   • The speaker says that servant trusts in God.
3. 86:3
   • The speaker asks the Lord to be gracious to him.
   • The speaker says he calls out to the Lord all day long.
4. 86:4
   • The speaker asks God to make the soul of his servant glad.
   • The speaker says he lifts up his soul to the Lord.
5. 86:5
   • The Lord is good.
   • The Lord is forgiving.
   • The Lord is abundant in steadfast love toward all who call upon him.
6. 86:6
   • The speaker asks the LORD to give ear to his prayer.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to pay attention to the sound of his pleas for mercy.
7. 86:7
   • The speaker will call upon God in the day of his distress.
   • The speaker says God will answer him.
8. 86:8
   • There is none like the Lord among the gods.
   • There are no works like the Lord's works.
9. 86:9
   • The Lord made all the nations.
   • All the nations will come and bow down before the Lord.
   • All the nations will honor the Lord's name.
10. 86:10
    • God is great.
    • God does wonders.
    • God alone is God.
11. 86:11
    • The speaker asks the LORD to teach him his way.
    • The speaker says he will walk in God's truth.
    • The speaker asks God to make his heart single so that he may fear God's name.
12. 86:12
    • The speaker will praise the Lord his God with all his heart.
    • The speaker will honor God's name forever.
13. 86:13
    • God's steadfast love toward the speaker is great.
    • God has rescued the speaker's soul from the depths of Sheol.
14. 86:14
    • The speaker addresses God.
    • Insolent men have risen up against the speaker.
    • A band of ruthless men has sought the speaker's life.
    • Those men have not set God before them.
15. 86:15
    • The Lord is a God who is merciful.
    • The Lord is gracious.
    • The Lord is slow to anger.
    • The Lord is abundant in steadfast love and faithfulness.
16. 86:16
    • The speaker asks God to turn toward him.
    • The speaker asks God to be gracious to him.
    • The speaker asks God to give his strength to his servant.
    • The speaker asks God to save the son of his maidservant.
17. 86:17
    • The speaker asks God to work a sign for good with him.
    • The speaker asks that those who hate him may see it.
    • The speaker asks that those who hate him may be put to shame.
    • The LORD has helped the speaker.
    • The LORD has comforted the speaker.

Words Worth Explaining

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

86:1

The King James prints two different Hebrew words as "Lord." LORD in capitals stands in for God's personal name, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; "Lord" in ordinary type translates *adonai*, meaning master or owner. This psalm switches back and forth between the two deliberately. "Poor and needy" is a fixed pair of words in the Psalms for someone with no power and no protector, who has to depend on God for justice. It can include literal poverty but does not have to.

86:2

The King James "I am holy" translates the Hebrew *hasid*, a word built from *hesed*, loyal love. It describes someone who keeps faith inside a relationship (devoted, loyal, committed), rather than someone claiming to be morally spotless.

86:3

The King James prints God's name two different ways, and the difference is deliberate. "LORD" in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not say out loud. Plain "Lord" translates a different Hebrew word, *adonai*, an ordinary title meaning master or owner. Psalm 86 switches between the two throughout: the speaker addresses God both by name and as his master.

86:4

"Lift up my soul" is a Hebrew idiom. The word behind "soul" is *nephesh*, which means a person's life or whole self, not a spirit housed inside a body. To lift up your *nephesh* to someone is to direct your longing at them, or to put yourself in their hands.

86:5

"Plenteous in mercy" translates *rav-hesed*. *Hesed* is loyal, committed love, the kind owed between people bound to each other by an agreement or a family tie, and it recurs through this psalm at verses 13 and 15.

86:8

Ancient Israel's neighbors each had their own gods, and this kind of line was a standard way of saying that no other god measures up. The Hebrew does not settle whether those other gods are being treated as real beings or merely as things people worship; the comparison works either way.

86:9

In Hebrew, someone's "name" stands for the person themselves, their character and reputation as others know it. To glorify God's name is to make his reputation widely known, not to say something about the word itself.

86:11

The King James "fear thy name" translates a Hebrew phrase that covers awe and reverence, not fright. It describes taking someone seriously as the one you answer to. "Unite my heart" asks for a heart that is single rather than pulled in two directions; the heart in Hebrew is the seat of thinking and deciding, closer to what we mean by the mind.

86:13

"Hell" here is the King James rendering of *Sheol*, the Hebrew word for the underworld where everyone was thought to go at death, good and bad alike. It is not a place of punishment. Speakers in the Psalms often say they have been rescued from Sheol to mean they came close to dying and did not.

86:14

"Have not set thee before them" is an idiom meaning they do not keep God in view, they do not take him into account when deciding what to do. "The proud" here are not simply vain people; the Hebrew describes the arrogant who assume they can act however they like without consequence.

86:15

This line is a set formula. It repeats, almost word for word, what God says about himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6, and it is quoted the same way in several other places in the Hebrew scriptures. The first hearers would have recognized it as a quotation.

86:16

"Son of thine handmaid" means a slave born in the household to a woman who was already a slave there. Such a person belonged to the household from birth rather than being bought into it. Used in a prayer, the phrase claims the longest and closest kind of tie to the master, and the protection that came with it.

86:17

A "token" is a sign or piece of visible evidence (something onlookers could point to and say the speaker had been vindicated.) "Holpen" is simply the old past participle of "help," meaning helped.