Psalms 109:6-16

6 Set a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand.

7 When he is judged, let him be found guilty, And let his prayer become sin.

8 Let his days be few, And let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow.

10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg; Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.

11 Let the creditor seize all that he has, And let strangers plunder his labor.

12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him, Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off, And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be continually before the Lord, That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;

16 Because he did not remember to show mercy, But persecuted the poor and needy man, That he might even slay the broken in heart.

Psalms 109:6-16 Meaning and Commentary

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. This psalm was written by David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, concerning Judas the betrayer of Christ, as is certain from Acts 1:16 hence it is used to be called by the ancients the Iscariotic psalm. Whether the occasion of it was the rebellion of Absalom, as some, or the persecution of Saul, as Kimchi; and whoever David might have in view particularly, whether Ahithophel, or Doeg the Edomite, as is most likely; yet it is evident that the Holy Ghost foresaw the sin of Judas, and prophesies of that, and of the ruin and misery that should come upon him; for the imprecations in this psalm are no other than predictions of future events, and so are not to be drawn into an example by men; nor do they breathe out anything contrary to the spirit of Christianity, but are proofs of it, since what is here predicted has been exactly accomplished. The title in the Syriac version is, "a psalm of David when they created Absalom king without his knowledge, and for this cause he was slain; but to us it expounds the sufferings of the Christ of God;" and indeed he is the person that is all along speaking in this psalm.

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew satan
• [b]. Following Masoretic Text and Targum; Septuagint and Vulgate read be cast out.