Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Psalms · About this commentary
I Will Walk With Integrity
Psalms 101:1-8
1 A Psalm by David. I will sing of loving kindness and justice. To you, Yahweh, I will sing praises. · WEB
A king's job description written by himself, and it begins at home before it reaches the court.
I will sing of loving kindness and justice Psalms 101:1.
The two subjects of the psalm are named in the first line and they are the pair the collection consistently refuses to separate.
I will be careful to live a blameless life. When will you come to me? I will walk within my house with a blameless heart Psalms 101:2.
The question in the middle is unexplained and it is the most human thing in the psalm — a resolution interrupted by a complaint that God is taking his time. And the resolution itself begins indoors. Before anything is said about governing, the king commits to how he behaves in his own house, where nobody is watching and where, in David's case, the worst of it eventually happened.
I will set no vile thing before my eyes Psalms 101:3.
What is guarded is what he looks at, which is where the second book's great failure began — a man on a roof, looking 2 Samuel 11:2.
I will silence whoever secretly slanders his neighbor. I won't tolerate one who is arrogant and conceited Psalms 101:5.
The policy on appointments. What disqualifies a man from the king's service is not incompetence but two habits of speech and self-assessment, and the psalm treats both as things a ruler must actively remove rather than merely disapprove of.
My eyes will be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me Psalms 101:6.
The positive side of the same policy, and the criterion is faithfulness rather than ability. A king surrounded by such people gets a particular kind of advice, and a king surrounded by flatterers gets another.
He who practices deceit won't dwell within my house Psalms 101:7.
Morning by morning, I will destroy all the wicked of the land Psalms 101:8.
The closing line is severe and it describes the daily assize — the king sat in the gate each morning to hear cases, and the psalm commits to using that hour for its proper purpose rather than for favors.
Read against the history, the psalm is painful. Its author failed at almost every clause of it, beginning with the one about his own house. That the collection kept it is consistent with keeping the fifty-first psalm too: what a man resolved and what he did are both in the record.
held with reason What this mark means