Psalm 35:1-14 NKJV
35 Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me;
Fight against those who fight against me.
2 Take hold of shield and buckler,
And stand up for my help.
3 Also draw out the spear,
And stop those who pursue me.
Say to my soul,
“I am your salvation.”
4 Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor
Who seek after my life;
Let those be turned back and brought to confusion
Who plot my hurt.
5 Let them be like chaff before the wind,
And let the angel of the Lord chase them.
6 Let their way be dark and slippery,
And let the angel of the Lord pursue them.
7 For without cause they have hidden their net for me in a pit,
Which they have dug without cause for my life.
8 Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly,
And let his net that he has hidden catch himself;
Into that very destruction let him fall.
9 And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord;
It shall rejoice in His salvation.
10 All my bones shall say,
“Lord, who is like You,
Delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him,
Yes, the poor and the needy from him who plunders him?”
11 Fierce witnesses rise up;
They ask me things that I do not know.
12 They reward me evil for good,
To the sorrow of my soul.
13 But as for me, when they were sick,
My clothing was sackcloth;
I humbled myself with fasting;
And my prayer would return to my own heart.
14 I paced about as though he were my friend or brother;
I bowed down heavily, as one who mourns for his mother.
Like Psalm 31 from Sunday, the voice speaking in Psalm 35 is the voice of Christ Himself, and the psalm’s theological context is the drama of His Passion and death. Among the many truths that the Lord taught the fledgling Church on the night of His betrayal, the very sobering truth was that believers would suffer persecution just as He did: “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you” (Jn. 15:18). Thus began the night’s prediction of the coming sufferings of the Church for Jesus’ sake. The Lord went on to say, “If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you.” (15:20)
The Passion of Jesus Christ and the subsequent suffering of His Church are not mere historical phenomena. Palms such as these, that have the Church praying in the voice of Jesus and praying as the suffering Church, bring them to be psalms and prayers of anyone who in God’s Word of truth can say: “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith: that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:8-11)
The vindication within this psalm is not some sort of petty revenge. Salvation is attained by God’s vindication of His own righteousness in the resurrection of Christ, “who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised for the sake of our justification” (Rom. 4:25). This truth is the key to the psalm. It is the prayer of those who are in Christ still struggling as they fill up in their flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ Jesus (Col. 1:24).
Let us pray: O Lord, ever-fix our eyes of faith upon Christ’s merits for us and bring us to rejoice in Your vindication. Amen.