Today’s Passage: Psalm 143
The prayer begins with a plea, and then, almost at once, with a confession. Hear my prayer, David says, and do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You. Notice that he lays this down before the enemy is ever named. Before he speaks a single word about the danger he is in, he has already admitted that he cannot stand before God on his own account. This is the same gospel we met back in Psalm 51, not some second gospel, and not a record scrubbed clean by trying harder. He asks God not to judge him, because he knows that a fair verdict would be the end of him.
As you read, hold this: Do not enter into judgment with Your servant.
Context A Psalm of David
The heading over this psalm is a short one. “A Psalm of David,” and nothing more. There is no mention of Nathan the prophet, no instrument named for the music, no pursuer given a name. The danger running all through the verses is real, but it is left unnamed, and that is on purpose. A prayer with no names attached to it is a prayer written to be borrowed and used, by David first, and then by anyone who comes after him into the same kind of trouble.
Psalm 143:1-2 (BSB)
¹ A Psalm of David. O LORD, hear my prayer. In Your faithfulness, give ear to my plea; in Your righteousness, answer me. ² Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.
See where the plea rests. It leans on God’s faithfulness and God’s righteousness, not on any case David could make for himself. Then verse 2 says the quiet part out loud. Do not judge me, for if the court were fair it would find no one living who stands in the right, and David knows well that he would be among them.
Study notes "No one alive is righteous before You"
Hebrew: יִצְדַּק (yitsdaq), from צָדַק (tsadaq), pronounced tsah-DAHK. Strong’s H6663. The word means to be just, to be in the right, to stand acquitted before God. And the line David draws is a total one. Not a few fall short, not hardly any, but every last one of the living. Paul would later gather up this same charge and lay it before the whole world.
"There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." Romans 3:10-12 (BSB)
This is not despair, and it is not an excuse either. It is the very reason anyone is heard at all, for what opens God’s ear is mercy asked for and not merit produced. The door of earning our own standing before God is simply shut. David cannot buy himself a hearing, and no one reading these words today can buy one either. It is the same gospel for all of us, in his day and in ours.
Psalm 143:3-4 (BSB)
³ For the enemy has pursued my soul, crushing my life to the ground, making me dwell in darkness like those long since dead. ⁴ My spirit grows faint within me; my heart is dismayed inside me.
Only now, after he has owned his guilt, does he speak of the chase. He is hunted and pressed down into the ground, shut up in a darkness like the grave while he is still very much alive. His spirit is going faint, and his heart is stunned within him.
Psalm 143:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works; I consider the work of Your hands. ⁶ I stretch out my hands to You; my soul thirsts for You like a parched land. Selah
So he turns around on purpose and looks backward, remembering what God has done in the days of old. This is not a way of escaping the present, and it brings him no relief yet. What the remembering does is stir up thirst, and it leaves him like cracked ground waiting on the rain.
Psalm 143:7-8 (BSB)
⁷ Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide Your face from me, or I will be like those who descend to the Pit. ⁸ Let me hear Your loving devotion in the morning, for I have put my trust in You. Teach me the way I should walk, for to You I lift up my soul.
The same ruach, pronounced ROO-akh. Strong's H7307, wind, breath, spirit. It can mean spirit, or breath, or wind. In verse 4 the form is רוּחִי (ruchi), his own spirit, and it is growing faint. In verse 7 the same word comes back here, failing and used up. Twice over, then, it is his own spirit that is running out. But verse 10 quietly changes the pronoun to רוּחֲךָ (ruchacha), Your Spirit, and this one he calls good and asks to lead him onto level ground. The prayer does not end with a stronger David. It ends with a Spirit that does not fail. that grew faint a moment ago is now spent altogether. If God stays silent, he says, it will leave him among those who go down to the Pit. So he asks for two things together: to hear God’s loving devotion in the morning, and to be shown the way he should walk, because he has nowhere left to plant his own feet.
Psalm 143:9-10 (BSB)
⁹ Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD; I flee to You for refuge. ¹⁰ Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God. May Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
The very ground that crushed him in verse 3 is the ground he now asks to be led across, only this time it is level under his feet. The danger has not fully lifted. Yet notice how the asking has already changed, moving from bare survival to the deeper request simply to be led.
Psalm 143:11-12 (BSB)
¹¹ For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me. In Your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble. ¹² And in Your loving devotion, cut off my enemies. Destroy all who afflict me, for I am Your servant.
The close of the psalm circles back to where it opened. God’s name, God’s righteousness, God’s loving devotion. And the last word of all is the same word from verse 2: Your servant. The name he owned when he stood under judgment is the very name he holds onto now as he asks to be rescued. Nothing else about him has changed, and nothing else needed to.
Do not enter into judgment with Your servant.