In the first half of Psalm 41, we witnessed how the haters were piling on David in his season of desperation. Their appetite for harm, though, was just getting warmed up for some serious evil. In addition to cheering for the psalmist’s death, his foes whisper about him; they plot evil for him (v. 7). Yet the sense of this whispering is pagan magic. Such whisperings are uttering incantations, mixing up hexes and curses. The hostiles invoke the names of demons and false gods to jinx the psalmist. They employ voodoo against him by sticking pins in his voodoo doll. Hence, literally, they pour out words of Belial on the psalmist (v. 8). Belial refers to a dark spirit, one of the minions of the Evil One. Belial represents the power of the Devil. The haters turn to dark magic to further harm the psalmist, to amplify abusive punishments on him.
Finally, though, we are informed about at least one person within this group of hostiles. Who are these enemies, these haters? We do not know for sure; we are not told their names, but one among their number is a friend, even the closest of friends: “my bosom friend that I trusted” (v. 9), the buddy who regularly ate at the psalmist’s table. His best friend came to visit him. He showed up just like the other haters. And what did he do but lift his heel. To “lift the heel” is to be treacherous and deceptive. It is to betray and be disloyal toward. When the friend saw the psalmist sick, when he realized the Lord’s punishment, he turned on him. His love became hate; his care morphed into harm. To show the heel is a cheap shot; it is to betray with a kiss, to stab in the back.
And this is the deepest blow to the psalmist while he is sick. His nearest mate sold him down the river. He double-crossed the psalmist for his own benefit and the psalmist’s injury. But what do all these hostilities against the poor psalmist boil down to? They lack all understanding. They are void of sympathy, absent all empathy. They did not do the work to really understand the psalmist and why he was sick. Rather, they projected their own opinions. He is sick, the gods are against him, so we are justified to hate and curse him. Their disguise is moral outrage. They paint his misdemeanor as an unforgiveable atrocity. They call him a villain for which there is no redemption—only shame and punishment.
This is why the psalm opens with a blessing on the one who understands the poor, because no one understood the psalmist when he was impoverished. He needed one to empathize with him, but none did. He required wise comfort, yet it did not come. Even his best friend did not understand him. And when everyone fails you, where do you look but to God? So he prays for the Lord’s grace to raise him up. He pleads for mercy to heal him. By his sickness, the psalmist served his time; he paid his debt. With humble repentance, he casts himself on God’s wonderful grace.
And the grace he asks for is not just for healing, but it includes vindication. As he says, “so I may repay my haters” (see v. 10), so that the enemy will not rejoice triumphantly over him, so that he will know that God delights in him (v. 11). Remember, this is a matter of balanced justice. The Lord fairly disciplined the psalmist for his sin by making him ill, but the foes piled on abusive punishments. They corrupted and perverted the fair discipline of the Lord. And when twisted justice mistreats you, then vindication is the medicine for healing. Cruel shame is fixed with honor. The physical healing shows that the Lord favors the psalmist; it exposes the foes for being cruel and unusual.
Furthermore, getting over the illness reveals that the Lord cared for the psalmist because of his integrity, which clearly does not mean sinlessness, but rather sincerity. The psalmist rightly repented of his sin, and he did so with a sincere faith. His devotion and trust in the Lord had integrity; it was true and real. Likewise, the Lord sustained him by his sincere faith, and he set the psalmist in his presence forever (v. 12). To be given a place before the face of God forever is a beatitude chiefly of the next life. The forever presence of Yahweh is the polar opposite of Sheol. It is the heaven to hell. The Lord’s grace heals the psalmist unto everlasting life through faith. The Lord vindicates the piety of the psalmist by being exalted to glory.
At the end of the day, then, the only one who understood the poor psalmist was God. Yahweh alone showed empathy. The Lord perceived with compassion and sympathy the plight of the weak psalmist, and with such understanding, there can be healing, vindication, and even everlasting redemption. And from this we see that this psalm comes chiefly from the mouth of our Savior. David pens this verse as a picture of the Messiah. He writes as the one man betrayed by all under the just discipline of the Lord. He was misunderstood by all, so that his help came from God alone. In fact, in John 13, during the Last Supper, Jesus spoke the words of this psalm. He told his disciples that Scripture had to be fulfilled, that “he who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.”
He spoke this about Judas. The son of destruction broke faith with Jesus by a kiss. The betrayer stabbed him in the back, leading to his death. The haters here are the crowds, the fellow countrymen of Jesus. His neighbors turned on him. The kids he grew up with whispered incantations against our Lord. And the enemies were the priests. A priest’s first job is to sympathize with weak sinners; they mediate for them with God. A priest intercedes for mercy and grace. But the high priests over Jesus plotted his woe. They twisted the courts of God to commit judicial murder, to abuse and oppress Jesus, who made himself vulnerable. Certainly, the cross was the Father’s just punishment that Jesus bore not for his sins, but for ours. There was a deep necessity of the cross, similar to how the sickness was necessary for the psalmist.
Yet even though Christ had to die for our sins to appease justice, the priests, the crowds, and Judas exploited this to their evil benefit. Judas stabbed Jesus in the back for thirty silver dollars. The crowds chanted for his death to make the priests happy. And the chief priests condemned our Lord to preserve their grip on power. As 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, Jesus “became poor” for our sake, and this is the wretched poverty he endured to pay for your sins. Christ was sick unto death; he faced eternal wrath to bear away all your transgressions.
Additionally, by doing this for us, what did Jesus accomplish? Of course, our full atonement and redemption. But he also gained understanding of our weakness. The psalm pronounces a blessing on the one who understands the poor, but based on the rest of the psalm, no human fits the bill. Not a soul was empathetic toward David. The compassionate understanding comes from God, not man. But there is also the sense that David becomes the understanding one. Note how God sustains the understanding one on his sickbed (v. 3), and at the end of the psalm, grace supports the sick psalmist (v. 12). By being weak and ill himself, David learns how to be understanding toward others who are poor.
So also Jesus learned sympathy for us by what he suffered. Jesus was born with lowly body like ours, one that got ill and gave him pain. He faced temptations. All the seductions of evil that hound us hunted our Lord, and even more so. People hated him, family forsook him, friends betrayed him. Jesus was wrongly convicted for a crime he did not commit. And by enduring all this and more, Christ equipped himself as our high priest with compassion, empathy, and mercy. As one who understands us completely, Jesus is fully capable and ready to be gracious to us. Our Savior is the one who understands us and all we endure, and he uses this gentle understanding to help us pray for grace. Our prayers are heard because Jesus carries them to the Father. Our cries for help are answered, for Christ clothes us with himself. Through the cruel kiss of Judas, Jesus became our redeemer and our compassionate high priest for an overflowing fountain of grace.
And since Jesus fulfilled this psalm for us, we are enabled to perform its final verse. “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting” (v. 13). (Is this not our chief end? To glorify and enjoy the eternal presence of the Lord?) So the grace of Christ’s understanding unlocks our lips to praise and overflows our hearts with gratitude to glorify our God forever. Let us, then, do this very thing. With the grace of Christ lifted high, may we bless our triune God. May we bless him today, tomorrow, and forever more. Amen and amen.
©Zach Keele. All Rights Reserved.
You can find the whole series here.
RESOURCES
- Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
- Download the HeidelApp on Apple App Store or Google Play
- Browse the Heidelshop!
- The Heidelblog Resource Page
- Heidelmedia Resources
- The Ecumenical Creeds
- The Reformed Confessions
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological, & Pastoral Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2025)
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
- Why I Am A Christian
- What Must A Christian Believe?
- Heidelblog Contributors
- Saturday Psalm Series
- Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to
Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
Zach Keele
Rev. Zachary Keele grew up on a ranch in a small town named Crawford, Colorado. He attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and received his Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary California. He has served as the pastor of Escondido OPC since 2006.
More by Zach Keele ›