Teach Me to Do Your Will
1 A Psalm by David. Hear my prayer, Yahweh. Listen to my petitions. In your faithfulness and righteousness, relieve me. 2 Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous. 3 For the enemy pursues my soul. He has struck my life down to the ground. He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead. 4 Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate. 5 I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your doings. I contemplate the work of your hands. 6 I spread out my hands to you. My soul thirsts for you, like a parched land. Selah. 7 Hurry to answer me, Yahweh. My spirit fails. Don’t hide your face from me, so that I don’t become like those who go down into the pit. 8 Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you. 9 Deliver me, Yahweh, from my enemies. I flee to you to hide me. 10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness. 11 Revive me, Yahweh, for your name’s sake. In your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble. 12 In your loving kindness, cut off my enemies, and destroy all those who afflict my soul, for I am your servant.
The last of the penitential psalms, and it opens by asking God not to hold a trial.
A Psalm by David. Hear my prayer, Yahweh. Listen to my petitions. In your faithfulness and righteousness, relieve me.
Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
The request is that the case not be heard, and the reason given is that there is no defense. Paul quotes the second clause twice in the argument that nobody is justified by the law Romans 3:20 Galatians 2:16, and the psalm reaches the conclusion first: no man living, without exception, and the writer includes himself in the phrase your servant.
For the enemy pursues my soul. He has struck my life down to the ground. He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead.
I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your doings. I contemplate the work of your hands.
The method of the seventy-seventh psalm, and the same three verbs — remember, meditate, contemplate. When the present supplies nothing, the past is examined deliberately.
I spread out my hands to you. My soul thirsts for you, like a parched land. Selah.
Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you.
Two requests, and both are causatives: cause me to hear, cause me to know. He is not asking to be told something but to be made able to take it in, which is a different admission.
Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness.
The psalm's center. Not teach me your will — teach me to do it, which is the harder request and the one that acknowledges where the difficulty actually lies. And the ground offered is not his sincerity but the goodness of the Spirit doing the leading.
Revive me, Yahweh, for your name's sake Psalms 143:11.
The appeal of a man who opened by admitting he has no case: everything is asked on the name rather than on the record.
settled What this mark means