Psalms 140:1-7

1 God, get me out of here, away from this evil; protect me from these vicious people.
2 All they do is think up new ways to be bad; they spend their days plotting war games.
3 They practice the sharp rhetoric of hate and hurt, speak venomous words that maim and kill.
4 God, keep me out of the clutch of these wicked ones, protect me from these vicious people;
5 Stuffed with self-importance, they plot ways to trip me up, determined to bring me down. These crooks invent traps to catch me and do their best to incriminate me.
6 I prayed, "God, you're my God! Listen, God! Mercy!
7 God, my Lord, Strong Savior, protect me when the fighting breaks out!

Psalms 140:1-7 Meaning and Commentary

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. This psalm, A ben Ezra says, was composed by David before he was king; and Kimchi says, it is concerning Doeg and the Ziphites, who calumniated him to Saul; and, according to our English contents, it is a prayer of David to be delivered from Saul and Doeg. The Syriac inscription is, "said by David, when Saul threw a javelin at him to kill him, but it struck the wall; but, spiritually, the words of him that cleaves to God, and contends with his enemies." R. Obadiah says, it was made at the persecution of David by Saul, which was before the kingdom of David; as the persecution (of Gog) is before the coming of the Messiah. It is indeed before his spiritual coming, but not before his coming in the flesh; and David may be very well considered in the psalm as a type of Christ, for he was particularly so in his sufferings, as well as in other things.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.