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94. Psalm 94

¹ The LORD is a God who avenges.
   O God who avenges, shine forth.
² Rise up, Judge of the earth;
   pay back to the proud what they deserve.
³ How long, LORD, will the wicked,
   how long will the wicked be jubilant?

    ⁴ They pour out arrogant words;
   all the evildoers are full of boasting.
⁵ They crush your people, LORD;
   they oppress your inheritance.
⁶ They slay the widow and the foreigner;
   they murder the fatherless.
⁷ They say, “The LORD does not see;
   the God of Jacob takes no notice.”

    ⁸ Take notice, you senseless ones among the people;
   you fools, when will you become wise?
⁹ Does he who fashioned the ear not hear?
   Does he who formed the eye not see?
¹⁰ Does he who disciplines nations not punish?
   Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge?
¹¹ The LORD knows all human plans;
   he knows that they are futile.

    ¹² Blessed is the one you discipline, LORD,
   the one you teach from your law;
¹³ you grant them relief from days of trouble,
   till a pit is dug for the wicked.
¹⁴ For the LORD will not reject his people;
   he will never forsake his inheritance.
¹⁵ Judgment will again be founded on righteousness,
   and all the upright in heart will follow it.

    ¹⁶ Who will rise up for me against the wicked?
   Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
¹⁷ Unless the LORD had given me help,
   I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
¹⁸ When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
   your unfailing love, LORD, supported me.
¹⁹ When anxiety was great within me,
   your consolation brought me joy.

    ²⁰ Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—
   a throne that brings on misery by its decrees?
²¹ The wicked band together against the righteous
   and condemn the innocent to death.
²² But the LORD has become my fortress,
   and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
²³ He will repay them for their sins
   and destroy them for their wickedness;
   the LORD our God will destroy them.

7. And they have said, God shall not see When the Psalmist speaks of the wicked as taunting God with blindness and ignorance, we are not to conceive of them as just exactly entertaining this imagination of him in their hearts, but they despise his judgments as much as if he took no cognisance of human affairs. Were the truth graven upon men’s hearts that they cannot elude the eye of God, this would serve as a check and restraint upon their conduct. When they proceed to such audacity in wickedness as to lay the hand of violence upon their fellow-creatures, to rob, and to destroy, it shows that they have fallen into a state of brutish security in which they virtually consider themselves as concealed from the view of the Almighty. This security sufficiently proves at least, that they act as if they never expected to be called to an account for their conduct. ²⁰²⁰ “Et certes une asseurance tant lourde monstre qu’ils pechent tout ainsi comme s’ils ne devoyent jamais estre appelez, rendre raison de leur vie.” — Fr. Though they may not then be guilty of the gross blasphemy of asserting in so many words that God is ignorant of what goes forward in the world, a mere nothing in the universe — the Psalmist very properly charges them with denying God’s providential government, and, indeed, avowedly stripping him of the power and function of judge and governor, since, if they really were persuaded as they ought of his superintending providence, they would honor him by feeling a reverential fear — as I have elsewhere observed at greater length. He intends to express the lowest and most abandoned stage of depravity, in which the sinner casts off the fear of God, and rushes into every excess. Such infatuated conduct would have been inexcusable even in heathens, who had never heard of a divine revelation; but it was monstrous in men who had been brought up from infancy in the knowledge of the word, to show such mockery and contempt of God.