Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Words of Yahweh Are Pure
Psalms 12:1-8
1 For the Chief Musician; upon an eight-stringed lyre. A Psalm of David. Help, Yahweh; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men. · WEB
In a society where speech has become worthless, the psalm sets God's words against everyone else's and lets the contrast stand.
Help, Yahweh; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men Psalms 12:1.
The opening is a single word in Hebrew, and it sounds like it: help. What follows is a diagnosis of a whole society, and its symptom is language.
Everyone lies to his neighbor. They speak with flattering lips, and with a double heart Psalms 12:2.
A double heart is literally a heart and a heart — one for saying and one for meaning. The psalm is not describing occasional dishonesty but a settled condition in which words have stopped carrying weight, and it identifies flattery rather than open lying as the characteristic form. Flattery is the lie that the hearer wants to believe.
With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us? Psalms 12:4.
The boast is quoted, and it is the psalm's sharpest observation. These men are not claiming to be honest; they are claiming that speech is private property, answerable to nobody. Who is lord over us is asked about the tongue specifically, and the assumption underneath it is that words are free because they are only words.
"Because of the oppression of the weak and because of the groaning of the needy, I will now arise," says Yahweh Psalms 12:5.
In the middle of a psalm about untrustworthy speech, God speaks. It is the only direct quotation of God here, and its placement is the argument: set against a society of double hearts is one voice that says what it will do. And what moves him is not the blasphemy of verse four but the groaning of people the lying has damaged.
Yahweh's words are flawless words, as silver refined in a clay furnace, purified seven times Psalms 12:6.
The contrast is complete. Human words in this psalm are counterfeit — flattering, doubled, self-owned; God's are refined metal, and the image is of something put through the fire until nothing false is left in it. Seven times is the number of completion rather than a count.
You will keep them, Yahweh. You will preserve them from this generation forever Psalms 12:7.
The English translations divide over whether them is the words or the oppressed people of verse five, and the Hebrew allows both. Nothing important is lost either way, since a promise to preserve the words is a promise to preserve the people the words were spoken about.
The wicked walk on every side, when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men Psalms 12:8.
The psalm ends without relief. Nothing has improved; the confidence in verse six was not a claim that the situation had changed.
settled What this mark means