Psalms 9 KJV
Praise for God's Justice
About This Psalm
Thanksgiving for justice done. When the oppressed finally see wrongs made right, this is their victory song.
1 will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works.
2 I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.
3 When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.
4 For thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right.
5 Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever.
6 O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.
7 But the LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment.
8 And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness.
9 The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.
11 Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings.
12 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.
13 Have mercy upon me, O LORD; consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me, thou that liftest me up from the gates of death:
14 That I may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation.
15 The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.
16 The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.
17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.
18 For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.
19 Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.
20 Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.
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Did You Know?
Psalm 9 forms the opening half of a single broken acrostic with Psalm 10, the Hebrew initial letters running from aleph through tav but with several letters absent, hinting at an early textual fracture rather than two independent compositions.
The superscription 'upon Muth-labben' most plausibly denotes a now-lost melody titled 'Death of the Son,' a cryptic musical cue that may echo either the death of Goliath or a royal lament, thereby framing the entire psalm as a victory song set to a dirge tune.
Verse 12's image of God 'making inquisition for blood' casts YHWH explicitly as the divine go'el, the kinsman-avenger who actively investigates and requites bloodshed, a legal-theological motif drawn from Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19 yet applied here to international rather than clan justice.
The psalm's movement from singular thanksgiving (vv. 1-2) to plural imperatives calling the nations to account (vv. 11, 19-20) enacts a theological progression in which personal deliverance is understood as the first installment of universal judgment, a pattern later echoed in prophetic eschatology.
By contrasting the 'gates of death' from which the psalmist is lifted (v. 13) with the wicked being 'turned into Sheol' (v. 17), the poem draws on Canaanite underworld topography while subverting it: death's portal becomes a one-way passage only for the arrogant, underscoring a distinctly Israelite reversal of ancient Near Eastern fate.