(1) The alphabetic arrangement is begun in its completest form. Every clause of the first stanza begins with Aleph.

(3) When.—Literally, in the turning of mine enemies back, which may be either when they turned, or because they turned, or possibly with both ideas combined. The older versions have when. Psalms 9:2-3 form one sentence, “I will be glad and rejoice in thee . . . when mine enemies are turned back, (when) they fall and perish at thy presence.”
Fall.—Better, stumble through weakness. So the LXX., “are weak.”

(4) Thou hast maintained my right.—Literally, thou hast made my judgment, as the LXX. and Vulg. For this confidence in the supreme arbiter of events compare Shakespeare:—
“Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon you!
Heaven is above all yet. There sits a Judge
That no king can corrupt.”—Henry VIII.

(5) Put out.—Better, blotted out. The family is extinct and its name erased from the civil register. (See Psalms 69:28; Psalms 109:13.) The Daleth stanza is wanting.

(6) O thou enemy . . .—This vocative gives no intelligible meaning. Translate, As for the enemy, they are made an utter wreck and perpetual ruin.
Destructions.—Properly, desolations, ruins, from a word meaning “to be dried up.”
Come to a perpetual end.—Properly, are completed for ever.
Thou hast destroyed.—Some understand the relative: “the cities which thou hast destroyed.”
Their memorial.—Better, their very memory is perished; literally, their memory, theirs. (Comp. “He cannot flatter, he”—Shakespeare, King Lear). The LXX. and Vulg. read, “with a sound,” referring to the crash of falling cities. Some would substitute enemies for cities, but they lose the emphasis of the passage, which points to the utter evanishment from history of great cities as a consequence and sign of Divine judgment. Probably the poet thinks of Sodom and Gomorrha, whose overthrow left such a signal mark on the thought of Israel. We think of the mounds of earth which alone represent Nineveh and Babylon.
“’Mid far sands,
The palm-tree cinctured city stands,
Bright white beneath, as heaven, bright blue,
Leans over it, while the years pursue
Their course, unable to abate
Its paradisal laugh at fate.
One morn the Arab staggers blind
O’er a new tract of earth calcined
To ashes, silence, nothingness,
And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess
Whence fell the blow.”—R. BROWNING: Easter Day.

(7) But the Lord shall endure.—Better, but Jehovah sits enthroned for ever, being in close parallelism with the next clause, “For judgment has erected his throne.”

(8) And he . . . .—Better, and he it is who. The pronoun is emphatic.

(9) The Lord also.—Better, but let Jehovah.
Refuge.—Properly, a stronghold: a citadel into which the persecuted would retreat.
Oppressed.—Properly, crushed.
Trouble.—From root meaning “to cut off from.” Sc., “provisions,” “water,” and the like. Its cognate in Jeremiah 14:1; Jeremiah 17:8, means “drought.” The phrase “in times of trouble” recurs in Psalms 10:1.

(10) They that know.—They who know the name of Jehovah will trust Him, because they know it to be a watchword of strength and protection.
Seek.—From root meaning “to tread” or “frequent a place,” possibly with allusion to frequenting the courts of the Temple.

(12) When.—Better, for he maketh inquisition; literally, the seeker of bloods: i.e., “the avenger of blood.” The allusion is to the goel, the nearest relative of the murdered man, who must, according to Oriental custom, avenge him. The verbs are better in the past, “remembered,” “forgot not.”
Them—i.e., the sufferers to be mentioned now.
Humble.—This follows the Hebrew margin. Better here, the afflicted. In the Hebrew the two readings give two forms from the same root, generally taken to have, one of them, an ethical, the other, a physical sense; but the distinction is not borne out by Biblical use.

(15) Comp. Psalms 7:16.

(16) The Lord.—Better, Jehovah hath made himself known. He hath executed judgment, snaring the wicked in the work of his own hands.
Higgaion. Selah.—Higgaion occurs three times in the Psalms—here. Psalms 19:14, and Psalms 92:4 (Heb.). In the two latter places it is translated; in Psalms 19:14, “meditation;” in Psalms 92:4, “solemn sound.” Both meanings are etymologically possible, but the word apparently, indicates some change in the music, or possibly, as joined with selah, a direction to some particular part of the orchestra.

(17) The wicked.—This is a most unfortunate rendering. The true translation is, the wicked shall return, as in LXX. and Vulg. (not “be turned”) to the grave, i.e., to dust, according to the doom in Genesis 3:19, or to the unseen world, as in Job 30:23; Psalms 90:1-3; or the verbs may be imperative, as in LXX. and Vulg., let them return. The verse is closely connected with the previous one. The wicked are bringing about their own destruction, and so witnessing to the righteous judgment of Jehovah. There is an intensity about the original word, lisheôlah, with its double sign of direction, “right down to the world of death.” And all.—Better, the heathen all, forgetters of God.

(18) Not alway.—In the original the negative comes emphatically at the commencement, ruling both clauses, as in Psalms 35:19.
The expectation of the poor.—The sufferer’s hope will at some time be realised: the hope of being righted. In this confidence the psalmist goes on to call on Jehovah to appear as judge.

(19) Let not man prevail.—Better, let not mere man be defiant.

(20) Put them in fear.—There is a difficulty about the reading. The LXX., Vulg., and Syriac read “place a lawgiver or master over them.” So Syriac, “law.” Hitzig conjectures, “set a guard upon them.” With the present reading apparently the rendering should be, put a terror upon them: i.e., “give such a proof of power as to trouble and subdue them.”