Psalm 12—A Pure And Protecting Word (Part 1): Exegesis

by on November 30, 2024 | Comment

With some irony, one of the hot topics in the news today is whether the news is reliable. The so-called “legacy media,” which is basically the major networks and news outlets, seems to face the common accusation of promoting agendas and certain lines of propaganda. On the other hand, the “new media” is said to follow bizarre interpretations of facts to stir up conspiracy. I do not have any vested interest for this article about whether one or both of those charges is correct. The point is to highlight the battle about where we are supposed to find trustworthy sources to present and analyze facts.

That battle, apart from determining who is correct, reveals how lost and frustrated we feel when we do not clearly see reliable voices speaking to our situation. We face a hard situation whenever we harbor suspicion about whomever is supposed to speak truth and give us helpful direction.

Psalm 12 is about the conflict between false and pure words. It sets the desperation of living under deceit and attack against the source of hope from true and trustworthy words. It shows our need for a reliable source that will equip us for life in the world. It reminds us where we are supposed to look to inform how we think about the world and find hope.

The Psalms are a book about the king of God’s people and about training us to live the Christian life well before the Lord. They teach us the godly response to the full spectrum of experience and emotion that we encounter in the Christian life. They teach us how to live in light of God’s promises even when things going on in the world do not make us feel like God’s promises will easily come about. As this series argues, Psalm 12 teaches that God’s Word is the pure and protecting source of guidance and deliverance.

Situating Psalm 12

In the Psalter, the first stretch of Psalms is about how God has promised that his king will have victory over the nations who rage against him, but it also demonstrates that the human experience of that raging is hard.1 We may well know that dawn will break and make the storm clouds clear eventually, but that knowledge does not make the long hard night feel any shorter.

The ordering of this first collection of psalms gives us perspective on what each psalm contributes to the developing point of the Psalter. Psalms 3–14 explore that sense of experiencing the hardship of the nations raging while clinging to God’s promise. In Psalms 9–14, we find a developing pattern giving voice to the ups and downs of our certainty in God’s promises. Psalm 9 starts that section on a high note, stating confidence in the Lord’s provision. Psalm 10 shows signs of wavering as that confidence cracked. Psalm 11 comes back strong with a firm expression of trust in the God who makes listening to fear-inducing advice foolish. When we turn to Psalm 12, we find another dip of sorts. Here, David expresses thoughts that are more overwhelmed than confident.

We need to learn something from that pattern—even the arrangement of the Psalms is meant to teach us about the Christian life as this book unfolds. The arrangement of these psalms teaches us about the ups and downs of the Christian life. Not only will ups and downs come but, we will feel the weight of those vacillations.

A Prayer in Three Acts

A standard technique of composing a good story is to develop it in three acts. The first act is the setup (establishing the story’s premises), the second is the confrontation (building the narrative tension), and the third is the resolution (bringing the story to a fitting end).

Psalm 12 has three acts that very nearly mirror that structure. In verses 1–2, David outlined the problem: he saw the disappearance of all the godly only to be surrounded by liars. In verses 3–4, he presented his potential solution: God should silence all the deceivers. In verses 5–8, the third act, David conceded that God’s Word is better than the liars’ and will ultimately provide the right solution for his people.

These three acts involve two tensions. Ultimately, Psalm 12 is about the conflict of speaking. There are liars on the one hand, but God’s Word on the other. As the psalm unfolds, the conflict of these contradictory words is highlighted. While the first tension is a conflict of speaking—the liars speak falsely but God speaks pure and protecting words—another, subtler contour informs the psalm. There is a second contrast of solutions: David thinks he has a great plan, but ultimately God’s Word must provide the way forward.

As with so many psalms, we do not know the historical background to Psalm 12. John Calvin suggested that David wrote this psalm while king Saul was persecuting him.2 Other commentators, however, have no idea even what to suggest as the likely situation where Psalm 12 originated.3 What we can see is that this situation involves David as the victim of deceitful attacks.4

The first act unfolds as David laments these deceitful attacks in verses 1–2: “Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.” At the beginning of Psalm 12, David needs God’s help. He perceives that all the godly and faithful have disappeared, explaining his sense of need for divine help, because everyone speaks lies and says whatever they need to get ahead. The great increase of agenda-driven liars gives the impression the no godly or faithful people are left.

In verses 3–4, the second act, David suggests his solution to the problem: “May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, ‘With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?’” This is what David hopes the Lord will do in response to this terrible situation. He wants God to put an end to this plague of liars with a seemingly fitting recompense. David understood the grave problem of people using their words to spread falsity and to advance evil causes. Their lies seem to have been aimed to hurt David but they were also directed wider, toward furthering some broader cause that was at variance with the truth. David, therefore, wanted God to cut off their lips and cut out their tongues. In other words, he wanted God to handle the liars directly in relation to the faculties they used to spread their lies. So, the first act is David’s description of the problem. The second act is his proposed solution about what God would do about this problem.

The third act spans verses 5–8, in which David takes a step back to analyze the situation from a heavenly perspective, even apart from whether God acts upon what David thought the solution should be.

“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,

I will now arise,” says the Lord;

“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

The words of the Lord are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.

You, O Lord, will keep them;

you will guard us from this generation forever.

On every side the wicked prowl,

as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

Here David rests himself in the enduring fact that no matter how many liars spread across the earth, God’s Word stands for truth and provides safety for those who cling to him.

This third act highlights how God’s Word is the resolution to the real problem and to David’s proposed plan as well. God’s Word trumps both as the ultimate good and as the force that is pure and protecting for his people. Because the poor are plundered by these liars, God says that he will arise.

We need to mark how this third act of the psalm starts with a quote from God. Why? Because it needed to be clear that God’s Word erupts for the sake of truth and goodness amid worldly lies. While liars are jabbering on, David puts the direct word of God in the spotlight as the true, ultimate solution. God’s speaking is the real solution to whatever speaking happens among the raging nations.

Notes

  1. I have taken up this point in previous essays. See “Psalm 9: The Past For The Sake Of The Present (Part 1)—Context,” and “Psalm 11—Explicable Courage (Part 1): Canonical Context.”
  2. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, 22 vol. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 4.2:171.
  3. John Goldingay, Psalms, 3 vol., Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006–8), 1:196; Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 3 vol. (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic Press, 2011–16), 1:351.
  4. Ross, Psalms, 1:351.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

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