"O God, you know my folly"; his wrongs are not hidden from God. David prays that those who hope in God and seek Him would not be put to shame or brought to dishonor through him, for it is for God's sake that he has borne reproach and dishonor has covered his face; he has become a stranger to his brothers, "an alien to my mother's sons" (a paraphrase of Psalm 69:5–8).

How strangely this prayer of David reflects my own heart and situation these days. It is not clear what David meant by "my folly" and "my wrongs," but his words suggest that only God knows them, or that he has confessed them only to God. Whatever the folly may have been, David commends those who wait on the Lord and seek Him, and prays that his actions might not bring them shame or dishonor. It is also clear that as David sought to honor the Lord, some of his closest relations ("brothers," "mother's sons") had turned against him.

When David declared, "O God, you know my folly," he was confessing God's omniscience. God knows not only David's folly but also the folly of those who opposed him. And because God knows the hidden things of every heart, and because He is the standard of righteousness, He alone can render a truly right and impartial judgment. David was doing what Paul would later urge the Corinthians to do. Paul writes that it is a very small thing to him to be judged by them or by any human court; he does not even judge himself; though he is aware of nothing against himself, he is not thereby acquitted, for it is the Lord who judges him; so they should pronounce no judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and disclose the purposes of the heart, and then each will receive his commendation from God (a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 4:3–5).

Friends — and I call you friends because, like me, you know the Lord and trust His Word as the supreme authority over our lives — let us seek God's wisdom, discernment, providence, and grace for our attitudes and conduct. Let us act patiently in obedience and trust, rather than reacting swiftly in anger and frustration. Let us seek God's honor first, and then honor one another before we seek our own good. In this way we will fulfill the law of Christ.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Psalm 69 is one of the most quoted psalms in the New Testament. When Jesus cleared the temple, the disciples remembered 69:9 — "Zeal for your house will consume me" (John 2:17). Jesus Himself applied 69:4 to His rejection: "They hated me without a cause" (John 15:25). On the cross, "they gave me sour wine to drink" (69:21) was fulfilled (Matthew 27:34, 48), and Paul quotes 69:9b about Christ bearing the reproaches meant for God (Romans 15:3). A psalm born of David's personal anguish became a portrait of the Messiah's sufferings.

That makes verses 5–8 especially striking, since they include a confession — "you know my folly" — that could never apply to Jesus. The New Testament applies the psalm to Christ selectively, in its experience of undeserved rejection, not its admission of guilt. The comment's application captures both halves well: honest acknowledgment of our own faults before God, and patience under opposition, leaving judgment to the One who knows every heart (1 Corinthians 4:5). Estrangement from family for the sake of faithfulness is a pain Jesus Himself knew (John 7:5), and He promised His followers a new family (Mark 10:29–30).

The psalmist says God has tested His people and tried them as silver is tried; He brought them into the net and laid a crushing burden on their backs; He let men ride over their heads; they went through fire and through water, "yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance" (a paraphrase of Psalm 66:10–12).

Here is the difference between the hardships God brings on the righteous and what He will bring on the wicked. The righteous will be refined, while the wicked will be destroyed. The righteous may suffer the same trials — may be even more grievously oppressed, taken through fire — yet they will finally come out into "a place of abundance." But of the final destiny of the wicked, Asaph writes that God sets them in slippery places and casts them down to ruin, destroyed in a moment and swept away by terrors (a paraphrase of Psalm 73:18–19).

Friends, this is why we should not be embittered if we suffer hardship in this life. If it is for God's sake, God will bless us (cf. 1 Peter 4:12–16). If it is for sin, we ought to confess and accept the Lord's discipline, so that we may be restored to a right relationship with Him (cf. 1 John 1:9; Hebrews 12:4–11). If there is no explanation for our suffering, then we should simply keep praising and serving God, trusting that He may be refining us — if not for this life, then for glory.

I have discovered that I complain far too much and am embittered far too easily by others. But I know my God is in control of all things. Nothing escapes His perception. He has established my future in Christ, so why should I care so much about others' irresponsibility, selfishness, pride, insensitivity, laziness, or ill-treatment? God does not call me to be bitter but better. He calls me simply to trust and obey what He has designed for me to do. I know that once He has tried me through spiritual discipline, hard circumstances, and unruly people, I will come forth as gold (cf. Job 23:10).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The refining image in Psalm 66 has a precise background. Ancient silver refining involved heating ore until the dross separated and could be skimmed away; a traditional saying holds that the refiner knew the silver was ready when he could see his own reflection in it. Malachi 3:3 uses the image of God as refiner sitting over His people, and Peter applies it to believers: faith tested by fire is more precious than gold that perishes (1 Peter 1:6–7). The point of the fire is not destruction but purity, and the refiner never leaves the furnace.

It is worth noticing that Psalm 66 does not skip over the pain. The psalmist names the net, the crushing burden, men riding over their heads — and later in the same psalm he says he cried aloud to God in his trouble (66:14, 17). The Psalms give God's people words for lament as well as praise; roughly a third of them are laments. Scripture's alternative to bitterness is not silence about hardship, but bringing it to God honestly, as Job, David, and Jeremiah did.

The psalm's turn in verse 16 is also a model: come and hear, all who fear God, "and I will tell what he has done for my soul." The one who has been through the fire becomes a witness to God's faithfulness in it — which is what the comment itself does in its closing confession.

Let the bountiful table set before them become a snare and their prosperity become a trap. Let their eyes go blind so they cannot see, and make their bodies shake continually. Pour out your fury on them; consume them with your burning anger. Let their homes become desolate and their tents be deserted. Pile their sins up high, and don’t let them go free. Erase their names from the Book of Life; don’t let them be counted among the righteous. (Psalm 69:22–25, 27, 28 NLT)

Psalm 69 is called an "Imprecatory Psalm." It is called this because the psalmist pronounces imprecations (i.e. "spoken curses") on their enemies. This tone seems so very different from what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; (Matthew 5:44 KJV)

Many theologians and scholars have, therefore, tried to depersonalize the nature of these imprecations, calling them instead an echo of God's judgment on the wicked.

But is this really necessary to do? Couldn't we just accept that Jesus taught something different than what was taught in the Old Testament? The very earthy nationalism of the Jewish people of the OT, which centered around Jerusalem and the Temple, was being displaced by a spiritual mission and message. That is why Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23).

Even in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus first says, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." And then follows with, "But I say unto you..." (Matthew 5:43–44 KJV). Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus cites several Old Testament teachings and then proceeds to clarify and enlarge their application, often showing that not merely an act but also the intention is just as important. In the Old Testament Jewish nationalism dictated their attitude toward their "enemies," where Jerusalem and the Temple defined true worship; however, with Jesus, national boundaries are removed and the Temple is in people's hearts; therefore, the enemies are not "flesh and blood" as before but spiritual. The battle is not against nations and rulers but against sin and spiritual forces of darkness (see Ephesians 6:10–17).

Now, back to the matter of imprecations. Let us understand that such curses are not to proceed from our lips. We are to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who spitefully use us and persecute us. This is the Law of Christ. And this is how we do spiritual battle. The Old Testament principle of equal and retributive justice is no longer the rule for individual believers, even though governments still execute justice in this way.

Therefore, friends, it is vital that we understand such changes from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Otherwise, you may find yourself reciting a psalm of imprecation against your enemies, or perhaps even against Christian brothers and sisters you don't like or who have done you wrong. You must not do it. Every Scripture must be seen in its own context and in the context of the whole of God's revelation in His Word. When we fail to do this, we misconstrue and distort God's truth to our own hurt and to the hurt of others.

That said, within the Law of Christ there seems very little tolerance for false teaching. If there is any kind of imprecation, it is toward those who mishandle the Word of God. Thus, we find strong language from the Lord Jesus Christ against the teaching of the Pharisees, scribes and teachers of the Law (cf. Matthew 23). We find Paul condemning the false teaching of Judaizers in the Book of Galatians. In Revelation, John pronounces curses on those that would add to or take away from the book. And false teachers are not to be tolerated within the church (Titus 1:10–16).

AI-Expanded Reflection

Psalm 69's imprecations arise from a lament over hostility, humiliation, and undeserved hatred. They are appeals addressed to God, not instructions for the sufferer to carry out private revenge. That distinction does not remove their severity, but it identifies their form: the wounded person places judgment before the divine court. The imagery of removal from the record of the living in verse 28 belongs to that urgent plea; its relationship to later “book of life” language should be considered rather than assumed to be identical in every detail. See the NET note on Psalm 69:28.

The original emphasizes the change in covenantal setting and the church's mission, and that is an important concern. The church is not commissioned to reproduce Israel's national warfare against its neighbors. Jesus commands love for enemies, and Romans 12:14–21 forbids cursing and personal retaliation. Yet the contrast should not make enemy-kindness absent from the Old Testament. Exodus 23:4–5 commands assistance with an enemy's animal, and Proverbs 25:21–22 tells the reader to feed a hungry enemy. The command to hate one's enemy in Matthew 5:43 is not a quotation of an Old Testament command.

Nor does the New Testament entirely leave judicial prayer behind. Romans 11:9–10 applies part of Psalm 69, Acts 1:20 uses its desolation language in connection with Judas, and Revelation 6:9–11 portrays martyrs asking God to judge and avenge their blood. These passages complicate a blanket claim that all imprecation belongs only to an obsolete nationalism. The continuity is confidence in God's justice; the governing restraint is that judgment belongs to him and must not become a religious disguise for personal malice.

Christians accordingly differ over how directly to pray the severe clauses. Some emphasize their fulfillment in Christ and final judgment, others pray that God stop evil and judge persistent oppression, and others avoid applying individual curses to contemporary opponents. Across these approaches, the original's warning against weaponizing a psalm against a disliked church member remains essential. A private grievance does not supply prophetic certainty about another person's final destiny.

A faithful prayer can ask God to protect victims, expose deception, stop an abuser, establish justice, and bring the wrongdoer to repentance. Loving an enemy does not require leaving the enemy free to harm others. It requires refusing hatred and revenge as our own governing purpose while entrusting the final verdict to the righteous Lord.

Someone asked me a great question about Psalm 68:18, which describes God ascending on high, leading captives in his train, and receiving gifts from among men, even the rebellious, so that the LORD God might dwell there (a paraphrase of Psalm 68:18). Read on its own, that's straightforward enough — God ascends to His throne in triumph over His enemies, receiving tribute from everyone, even rebels, so that He might dwell among them. The puzzle comes when this passage is cited in the New Testament, in Ephesians 4:8, where the wording changes: instead of receiving gifts from men, Christ is described as giving gifts to men (a paraphrase of Ephesians 4:8). One text says God received gifts among men; the other says Christ gave gifts to men. Is Paul deliberately changing the Old Testament wording, or drawing out a fuller meaning already present in it? I suspect it's a bit of both. Paul is citing the essence of the psalm, and there's no rule against adapting the wording to make his own point — Jesus does something similar quoting Isaiah about the coming Messiah (compare Luke 4:18–19 with Isaiah 61:1–2). Psalm 68's context isn't obviously Messianic to begin with; it's more directly about God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt, given its repeated references to Sinai. But perhaps Paul is making a deliberate comparison: at Sinai, God triumphed over His enemies through force; in Christ, God triumphed over His enemies by sacrificing Himself. At Sinai, God received gifts from men; in Christ, God gave gifts to men. At Sinai, God came to dwell among His people; in Christ, God comes to dwell within His people. Both accounts involve a descent and an ascent, and both describe a triumph of God. Could Paul be drawing a comparison between the redemption of the Exodus and the even greater redemption believers now have in Christ? From this citation, Paul moves into a discussion of the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12ff). What the Law at Sinai couldn't accomplish, weakened as it was by human sinfulness, God has now accomplished through His Son (see Romans 8:1–4). Paul lists apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers (Ephesians 4:11) — and as elsewhere in Scripture, the order seems significant. The first two roles were foundational (Ephesians 2:20) and don't continue today, while evangelists, who spread the gospel, and pastor-teachers, who establish new believers in the church, continue on. I've only skimmed the surface comparing Psalm 68's context with Paul's use of it in Ephesians 4 — it would make a genuinely interesting study for someone to pursue further. Hint, hint.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comparison this comment builds — Sinai's triumph by force versus Christ's triumph by self-sacrifice — is worth extending with a detail that strengthens the parallel further: both events are followed immediately by the establishment of ministry roles meant to serve the newly gathered community, priests and Levites after Sinai, apostles and pastor-teachers after Christ's ascension. In both cases, the triumph isn't the end of the story; it's what makes ongoing, structured care of God's people possible. That pattern suggests Paul's shift in wording from "received" to "gave" isn't just a clever rhetorical adaptation — it's tracking a real theological escalation, where the ultimate purpose of both events, equipping God's people through appointed leaders, remains constant even as the character of the triumph changes entirely.

The psalmist asks God to bless him and his people so that all peoples on earth may come to know God (a paraphrase of Psalm 67:1–2). I see the underlying reason for God's election of Israel here: not simply to bless them for their own sake, but so they'd become a blessing to all the peoples on earth. They were meant to live set apart from other nations and display God's way to the world, yet failed miserably because of their own sinful nature. God has blessed us in many ways too — not only so we can enjoy those blessings, but so we can become a blessing to others. Everything we do or have exists for His glory and honor.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The pattern this comment identifies — blessing given not as an end in itself but as a means of blessing others — actually traces all the way back to God's original call to Abraham, where the promise "I will bless you" is immediately followed by "so that you will be a blessing" and "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:2–3). Psalm 67 essentially prays that original Abrahamic purpose back to God centuries later, which suggests Israel's failure to fully live out that missionary calling wasn't a failure of God's plan so much as a failure to grasp what the blessing was actually for — a confusion this comment's own closing point (that everything we have exists for God's glory, not merely our own enjoyment) directly corrects.