Monday, March 7, 2022

Seder 94: Psalm 35---Lament and Imprecation

 Psalm 35 is a psalm of David and an individual lament.  He begins by imploring God to plead his cause:  "Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me."  Here the midrash notes that God is indeed "your God who pleads the cause of his people" (Isa 51:22).  

David uses both military language and courtroom language to call on the Divine Warrior for help (vv 1-3).  Asserting his innocence (v. 7), he prays that God will make things right by bringing his persecutors to justice (vv 4-8).  As with other imprecations in the psalms, David is not seeking personal vengeance.  Those who turn against him often are opposing the progress of God's plan, and David is seeking for God to make things right.  (Many are praying with Psalm 35 in early 2022 during Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.) 

 He anticipates publicly praising God when his deliverance comes (vv 9-10, 18, 28).

As in other laments of a righteous sufferer, Christians see in Psalm 35 a foreshadowing of the later experience of Jesus.  The malicious witnesses in verse 11 remind us of Jesus' experience on the eve of his crucifixion (Mark 14:55-59).  

Moreover, in John 15:25, Jesus said, "But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled:  'They hated me without a cause.' " Here the reference is either to Psalm 69:4 or Ps 35:7,19, and Jesus was viewing one of those two psalms as a prophecy about himself. 

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