What does Psalms Chapter 51 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Doeg’s report supplies the inscription’s occasion for rebuking deceitful speech. Destruction and the just people’s witnessing remain future. The speaker’s olive-tree image accompanies hope and promised praise.

Chapter breakdown

The Latin incipit is Quid gloriaris. The separate heading condemns Doeg and foretells destruction. The inscription is unto the end, understanding for David, when Doeg the Edomite told Saul that David went to Achimelech's house. It does not identify Nobe, a chief herdsman, a priestly massacre or Doeg's financial motives here. The speaker asks why one mighty in iniquity glories in malice, whose tongue devised injustice all day and worked deceit like a sharp razor, loving malice more than good and iniquity rather than righteousness, with words of ruin.

God will destroy him forever, pluck him from his dwelling and root out of the living land. The just shall see, fear and laugh, calling him the man who did not make God helper but trusted abundant riches and prevailed in vanity. Future destruction and witnessing do not become an already completed sudden downfall or an explicit extermination of lineage.

The speaker compares himself to a fruitful olive in God's house, hoping in mercy forever. He will praise forever because God did it and wait on His name, good before saints. The verse supplies neither an account of the intervening rescue nor a universal promise of temporal prosperity.

The story inside

Opening: Doeg’s report supplies the inscription’s occasion for rebuking deceitful speech. Development: Destruction and the just people’s witnessing remain future. Conclusion: The speaker’s olive-tree image accompanies hope and promised praise.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Doeg’s report supplies the inscription’s occasion for rebuking deceitful speech.
2
Destruction and the just people’s witnessing remain future.
3
The speaker’s olive-tree image accompanies hope and promised praise.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 60761–60764
51:2. When Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul: David went to the house of Achimelech. 51:3. Why dost thou glory in malice, thou that art mighty in iniquity?
Lines 60774–60776
51:7. Therefore will God destroy thee for ever: he will pluck thee out, and remove thee from thy dwelling place: and thy root out of the land of the living.
Lines 60783–60784
51:10. But I, as a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God for ever, yea for ever and ever.