He Brought Me Up Out of a Horrible Pit
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. 3 He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh. 4 Blessed is the man who makes Yahweh his trust, and doesn’t respect the proud, nor such as turn away to lies. 5 Many, Yahweh, my God, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. They can’t be declared back to you. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be counted. 6 Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering. 7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come. It is written about me in the book in the scroll. 8 I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.” 9 I have proclaimed glad news of righteousness in the great assembly. Behold, I will not seal my lips, Yahweh, you know. 10 I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly. 11 Don’t withhold your tender mercies from me, Yahweh. Let your loving kindness and your truth continually preserve me. 12 For innumerable evils have surrounded me. My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart has failed me. 13 Be pleased, Yahweh, to deliver me. Hurry to help me, Yahweh. 14 Let them be disappointed and confounded together who seek after my soul to destroy it. Let them be turned backward and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. 15 Let them be desolate by reason of their shame that tell me, “Aha! Aha!” 16 Let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let such as love your salvation say continually, “Let Yahweh be exalted!” 17 But I am poor and needy. May the Lord think about me. You are my help and my deliverer. Don’t delay, my God.
A rescue already accomplished, a statement that sacrifice was never what God wanted, and then trouble again.
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand.
The waiting comes first and it is emphasized by the Hebrew, which repeats the verb: waiting, he waited. What is described afterward happened at the end of a delay long enough to need mentioning.
The pit is a cistern with a mud floor, the standard prison of that world — a place where a man cannot climb out because there is nothing solid to push against. The contrast is exact: mire, then rock.
He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh.
The song is not composed in gratitude; it is put there, as part of the rescue rather than a response to it.
Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering.
A startling line to find in a book of temple worship, and it is not an attack on the sacrificial system, which the same collection assumes throughout. It is the prophets' consistent point stated by a worshiper: the machinery was never the object. You have opened my ears — literally dug them — is the phrase that explains what was wanted instead, and the next verses spell it out.
7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come. It is written about me in the book in the scroll. 8 I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.”
The letter to the Hebrews quotes this passage in full as the words of Christ entering the world, and builds an entire argument on it: he takes away the first, that he may establish the second Hebrews 10:5–9. The reasoning is that a text inside the sacrificial system announces that the system was not the point, and names obedience as what replaces it.
In the psalm itself the claim is already large. A man says that the scroll is about him and that God's law is not on tablets but inside him — which is what the new covenant later promises to everyone Jeremiah 31:33.
I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly.
The law is kept inside; the righteousness is not. The psalm distinguishes carefully between what is internalized and what is announced.
For innumerable evils have surrounded me. My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart has failed me.
The psalm collapses back into distress, and the closing verses reappear almost word for word as the seventieth psalm. A man who has been pulled out of a pit is in trouble again by the end of the same poem, which the collection records without any attempt to smooth it.
settled What this mark means