Today’s Passage: Psalm 35
This is a hard prayer, and David prays it out loud. He is surrounded by people who have turned against him, and he asks God to contend with them, to take up a fight he cannot win on his own. What makes the wound so deep is that he once loved these very people. When they were sick he put on sackcloth and fasted for them, and he paced in grief as though a brother lay dying. Then he stumbled, and they gathered around him, not to help but to gloat. They repaid him evil for good. So he does the one faithful thing a man can do with an injury like that: he hands it up to God. These are hard words, and they are meant to be read as they stand, not softened into something gentler and not turned into permission for revenge. David does not pick up a weapon of his own. He asks the God who judges rightly to settle it for him.
As you read, hold this: They repaid me evil for good.
Context Of David
That is the whole of the heading. There is no dated event attached to it, and no accuser is named. Inside the psalm, courtroom words sit right beside battlefield words: contend, witnesses, and vindicate on the one side; shield, spear, and javelin on the other. Both kinds of danger, the legal and the physical, filled the long years when Saul hunted David, and the later years when a court could just as easily turn against him. The psalm never pins itself to a single day. It is a prayer written for that whole kind of season, and it has fit many of them since.
Psalm 35:1-3 (BSB)
Of David.
¹ Contend with my opponents, O LORD; fight against those who fight against me. ² Take up Your shield and buckler; arise and come to my aid. ³ Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers; say to my soul: “I am your salvation.”
Notice what he asks for. He wants God to pick up the fight, and he wants God to speak a word straight into his soul, “I am your salvation.” The shield and the spear are not in David’s hands at all. It is God who is armed here, and David who waits to be told that he is safe.
Psalm 35:4-8 (BSB)
⁴ May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame; may those who plan to harm me be driven back and confounded. ⁵ May they be like chaff in the wind, as the angel of the LORD drives them away. ⁶ May their path be dark and slick, as the angel of the LORD pursues. ⁷ For without cause they laid their net for me; without reason they dug a pit for my soul. ⁸ May ruin befall them by surprise; may the net they hid ensnare them; may they fall into the hazard they created.
Study notes A prayer, not a plan
Read the verbs again and see where they point. May they be driven back. May they fall. May their path be dark. Every one of them is aimed upward, toward God, and not outward toward the enemy. David never picks up the net himself, and he never digs the pit. These are hard lines, and we should let them stay hard rather than sanding them down into a passing mood; but neither should we mistake them for permission to strike back. David hands the whole matter of judgment over to God. He does not take to the street to settle it himself.
Psalm 35:9-10 (BSB)
⁹ Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD and exult in His salvation. ¹⁰ All my bones will exclaim, “Who is like You, O LORD, who delivers the afflicted from the aggressor, the poor and needy from the robber?”
Nothing has been won yet, and already he is rehearsing the praise. This is not denial, not a man pretending the trouble away. It is the settled trust of one who believes that the God he has asked will secure the outcome, so that the thanksgiving is as good as begun.
Psalm 35:11-12 (BSB)
¹¹ Hostile witnesses come forward; they make charges I know nothing about. ¹² They repay me evil for good, to the bereavement of my soul.
False testimony would sting badly enough on its own. But underneath it lies something worse still, evil handed back to him in return for good he had actually done. The very next verse shows us what that good was.
Psalm 35:13-14 (BSB)
¹³ Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting, but my prayers returned unanswered. ¹⁴ I paced about as for my friend or brother; I was bowed down with grief, like one mourning for his mother.
Word study Sackcloth, worn for someone else — saq (Psalm 35:13)
Hebrew: שַׂק (saq), pronounced sahk. Strong’s H8242. It is the coarse cloth a man put on when he mourned or humbled himself before God; Jacob wore it for Joseph, and Job wore it in his grief.
What startles here is the question of who David wore it for. Not for himself, but for the very people who now stand against him. The BSB notes that the line “my prayers returned unanswered” reads, more literally, returned to my bosom: the care he poured out came back to him unspent and settled again in his own chest. He did not fast for them because it was safe, or because he expected to be repaid. He did it because that was simply who he was toward them, long before any of this trouble began.
Psalm 35:15-16 (BSB)
¹⁵ But when I stumbled, they assembled in glee; they gathered together against me. Assailants I did not know slandered me without ceasing. ¹⁶ Like godless jesters at a feast, they gnashed their teeth at me.
When the roles reverse, none of that mercy is remembered. He stumbles, and they gather around him, not to see how he is doing but to enjoy the sight of it. His fall has become their entertainment.
Psalm 35:17-18 (BSB)
¹⁷ How long, O Lord, will You look on? Rescue my soul from their ravages, my precious life from these lions. ¹⁸ Then I will give You thanks in the great assembly; I will praise You among many people.
How long, he cries, and he has already waited longer than anyone could measure. Yet even here he looks past the trouble to the day of thanks, and the praise he promises on the far side of it will not be whispered in private. It will be lifted in the great assembly, out loud, among the crowd.
Psalm 35:19-21 (BSB)
¹⁹ Let not my enemies gloat over me without cause, nor those who hate me without reason wink in malice. ²⁰ For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land. ²¹ They gape at me and say, “Aha, aha! Our eyes have seen!”
"But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated Me without reason.’" John 15:25 (BSB)
Jesus Himself took up this very phrase, hatred without reason, and spoke it of the world’s hatred of Him. David’s complaint, it turns out, was never only his own. It reached forward to the Lord who would one day be hated without cause as well.
Psalm 35:22-25 (BSB)
²² O LORD, You have seen it; be not silent. O Lord, be not far from me. ²³ Awake and rise to my defense, to my cause, my God and my Lord! ²⁴ Vindicate me by Your righteousness, O LORD my God, and do not let them gloat over me. ²⁵ Let them not say in their hearts, “Aha, just what we wanted!” Let them not say, “We have swallowed him up!”
Aha sounds three times across the psalm, and every time it is the enemy’s word, the gloating shout of those who think they have won. What David asks God to prevent is not merely his own ruin. It is the victory cry that his ruin would place in their mouths.
Psalm 35:26-28 (BSB)
²⁶ May those who gloat in my distress be ashamed and confounded; may those who exalt themselves over me be clothed in shame and reproach. ²⁷ May those who favor my vindication shout for joy and gladness; may they always say, “Exalted be the LORD who delights in His servant’s well-being.” ²⁸ Then my tongue will proclaim Your righteousness and Your praises all day long.
Two groups stand at the end. The one is covered in shame for having delighted in his fall; the other shouts for joy, and their joy is not in David but in the God who is exalted. Even his own vindication is meant to point past himself. The psalm opened by asking God to draw a spear, and it closes with a tongue, the only weapon left in David’s hand now, and the only target it takes aim at is praise.
They repaid me evil for good.