In You Do I Take Refuge

  Psalm 7

 

December 14, 2021

 

 

In You Do I Take Refuge

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,  lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.   O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands,  if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,  and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah 

 

Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.  Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high.  The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.  Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, 
O, righteous God!   My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.   God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day.  If a man^[d] does not repent, God^[will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow;  he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.   Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief, and gives birth to lies.  He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made.   His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull, his violence descends.   I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

 

Maybe if not anything else I can save you from doing the research on the word “Shiggaion” the meaning is not known.   The same is true with who was Cush, a Benjaminite.  But if it is important you can look at what learned men have guessed the answer to both of these unknowns.

In this first sentence, we could all agree that the heart each of us needs as we come before our Father, for He is the only safe refuge we have.  I would not dare pray that second sentence that many years ago, I did repay a friend with evil, and he has forgiven me and so has God.  I believe since my late thirties I have never repeated such a sin, nor have I ever repaid a friend with evil.  How many of us have asked God to; Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous?  It will happen when Jesus returns to planet earth.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice