Why Do You Boast of Mischief?
1 For the Chief Musician. A contemplation by David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, “David has come to Ahimelech’s house.” Why do you boast of mischief, mighty man? God’s loving kindness endures continually. 2 Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. 3 You love evil more than good, lying rather than speaking the truth. Selah. 4 You love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue. 5 God will likewise destroy you forever. He will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living. Selah. 6 The righteous also will see it, and fear, and laugh at him, saying, 7 “Behold, this is the man who didn’t make God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness.” 8 But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in God’s house. I trust in God’s loving kindness forever and ever. 9 I will give you thanks forever, because you have done it. I will hope in your name, for it is good, in the presence of your saints.
An informer whose report got eighty-five priests killed is addressed directly, and answered with a tree.
For the Chief Musician. A contemplation by David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, “David has come to Ahimelech’s house.” Why do you boast of mischief, mighty man? God’s loving kindness endures continually.
The heading points to one of the ugliest episodes in the books of Samuel. Doeg reported that a priest had given David bread and a sword; Saul ordered the priests executed, his own soldiers refused, and Doeg did it himself — eighty-five priests, and then the town 1 Samuel 22:18–19. The psalm is addressed to him.
For the Chief Musician. A contemplation by David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, “David has come to Ahimelech’s house.” Why do you boast of mischief, mighty man? God’s loving kindness endures continually.
The two halves of that verse are the whole psalm. A man is boasting; something else endures, and the juxtaposition is the answer.
Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.
The weapon named is a tongue, not a sword, and the comparison is to a razor — an instrument with a legitimate use, sharp enough to be effective and small enough to be carried unnoticed. What Doeg actually did with his hands was worse, and the psalm still locates the crime in the report he made.
3 You love evil more than good, lying rather than speaking the truth. Selah. 4 You love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue.
Twice, love. This is not a man who lied under pressure; the psalm accuses him of preferring it, and the specific relish is for words that consume people.
God will likewise destroy you forever. He will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living. Selah.
The verbs are those of uprooting a plant, and they set up the psalm's final image.
The righteous also will see it, and fear, and laugh at him, saying,
A difficult reaction to defend and it is not vindictive amusement. The sequence is see, fear, and then laugh — the fear comes first, and what is being laughed at is stated in the next verse: behold, this is the man who didn't make God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches Psalms 52:7. What is finally funny is the calculation, once it is complete.
But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in God’s house. I trust in God’s loving kindness forever and ever.
Against the uprooted man, a tree that is planted — and an olive at that, which takes decades to bear and then produces for centuries. In God's house, which is where Doeg had been detained before Yahweh 1 Samuel 21:7 on the day he saw what he later reported. Both men were in the sanctuary. Only one of them was rooted there.
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