Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Psalms Kapitel 10

This strophe, consisting of only three lines, describes his happiness which he allows nothing to disturb. The signification: to be lasting (prop. stiff, strong) is secured to the verb חיל (whence חיל ) by Job 20:21. He takes whatever ways he chooses, they always lead to the desired end; he stands fast, he neither stumbles nor goes astray, cf. Jeremiah 12:1. The Chethîb דרכו ( דּרכו ) has no other meaning than that give to it by the Kerî (cf. Psalms 24:6; Psalms 58:8). Whatever might cast a cloud over his happiness does not trouble him: neither the judgments of God, which are removed high as the heavens out of his sight, and consequently do not disturb his conscience (cf. Psalms 28:5, Isaiah 5:12; and the opposite, Psalms 18:23), nor his adversaries whom he bloweth upon contemptuously. מרום is the predicate: altissime remota. And הפיח בּ , to breathe upon, does not in any case signify: actually to blow away or down (to express which נשׁב or נשׁף would be used), but either to “snub,” or, what is more appropriate to Psalms 10:5, to blow upon them disdainfully, to puff at them, like הפּיח in Malachi 1:13, and flare rosas (to despise the roses) in Prudentius. The meaning is not that he drives his enemies away without much difficulty, but that by his proud and haughty bearing he gives them to understand how little they interfere with him.

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The ungodly is described as a lier in wait; and one is reminded by it of such a state of anarchy, as that described in Hosea 6:9 for instance. The picture fixes upon one simple feature in which the meanness of the ungodly culminates; and it is possible that it is intended to be taken as emblematical rather than literally. חצר (from חצר to surround, cf. Arab. hdr , hṣr , and especially hdr ) is a farm premises walled in (Arab. hadar , hadâr , hadâra ), then losing the special characteristic of being walled round it comes to mean generally a settled abode (with a house of clay or stone) in opposition to a roaming life in tents (cf. Leviticus 25:31; Genesis 25:16). In such a place where men are more sure of falling into his hands than in the open plain, he lies in wait ( ישׁב , like Arab. q‛d lh , subsedit = insidiatus est ei ), murders unobserved him who had never provoked his vengeance, and his eyes להלכה יצפּנוּ . צפה to spie, Psalms 37:32, might have been used instead of צפן ; but צפן also obtains the meaning, to lie in ambush (Psalms 56:7; Proverbs 1:11, Proverbs 1:18) from the primary notion of restraining one's self (Arab. ḍfn , fut. i. in Beduin Arabic: to keep still, to be immoveably lost in thought, vid., on Job 24:1), which takes a transitive turn in צפן “to conceal.” חלכה , the dative of the object, is pointed just as though it came from חיל : Thy host, i.e., Thy church, O Jahve. The pausal form accordingly is חלכה with Segol , in Psalms 10:14, not with Ṣere as in incorrect editions. And the appeal against this interpretation, which is found in the plur. חלכאים Psalms 10:10, is set aside by the fact that this plural is taken as a double word: host ( חל = חיל = חיל as in Obadiah 1:20) of the troubled ones ( כּאים , not as Ben-Labrat supposes, for נכאים , but from כּאה weary, and mellow and decayed), as the Kerî (which is followed by the Syriac version) and the Masora direct, and accordingly it is pointed חלכּאים with Ṣere . The punctuation therefore sets aside a word which was unintelligible to it, and cannot be binding on us. There is a verb הלך , which, it is true, does not occur in the Old Testament, but in the Arabic, from the root Arab. ḥk , firmus fuit , firmum fecit (whence also Arab. ḥkl , intrans. to be firm, fermé , i.e., closed), it gains the signification in reference to colour: to be dark (cognate with חכל , whence חכלילי ) and is also transferred to the gloom and blackness of misfortune.

(Note: Cf. Samachschari's Golden Necklaces, Proverb 67, which Fleischer translates: “Which is blacker: the plumage of the raven, which is black as coal, or thy life, O stranger among strangers?” The word “blacker” is here expressed by Arab. ahlaku , just as the verb Arab. halika , with its infinitives halak or hulkat and its derivatives is applied to sorrow and misery.)

From this an abstract is formed חלך or חלך (like חפשׁ ): blackness, misfortune, or also of a defective development of the senses: imbecility; and from this an adjective חלכּה = חלכּי , or also (cf. חפשׁי , עלפּה Ezekiel 31:15 = one in a condition of languishing, עלף ) חלכּה = חלכּי , plur. חלכּאים , after the form דּוּדאים , from דּוּדי , Ew. §189, g.

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The picture of the רשׁע , who is become as it were a beast of prey, is now worked out further. The lustrum of the lion is called סך Jeremiah 25:38, or סכּה Job 38:40: a thicket, from סכך , which means both to interweave and to plait over = to cover (without any connection with שׂך a thorn, Arab. shôk , a thistle). The figure of the lion is reversed in the second line, the עני himself being compared to the beast of prey and the רשׁע to a hunter who drives him into the pit-fall and when he has fallen in hastens to drag him away ( משׁך , as in Psalms 28:3; Job 24:22) in, or by means of (Hosea 11:4, Job 41:1), his net, in which he has become entangled.

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Now comes the confirmation of his cry to God: It is with Him entirely different from what the ungodly imagine. They think that He will not punish; but He does see (cf. 2 Chronicles 24:22), and the psalmist knows and confesses it: ראתה (defective = ראיתה Psalms 35:22), Thou hast seen and dost see what is done to Thine own, what is done to the innocent. This he supports by a conclusion a genere ad speciem thus: the trouble which is prepared for others, and the sorrow ( כּעס , as in Ecclesiastes 7:3) which they cause them, does not escape the all-seeing eye of God, He notes it all, to give it into (lay it in) His hand. “To give anything into any one's hand” is equivalent to, into his power (1 Kings 20:28, and frequently); but here God gives (lays) the things which are not to be administered, but requited, into His own hand. The expression is meant to be understood according to Psalms 56:9, cf. Isaiah 49:16: He is observant of the afflictions of His saints, laying them up in His hand and preserving them there in order, in His own time, to restore them to His saints in joy, and to their enemies in punishment. Thus, therefore, the feeble and helpless (read חלכּה or חלכּה ; according to the Masoretic text חלכה Thy host, not חלכה , which is contrary to the character of the form, as pausal form for חלכה ) can leave to Him, viz., all his burden ( יהבו , Psalms 55:23), everything that vexes and disquiets him. Jahve has been and will be the Helper of the fatherless. יתום stands prominent by way of emphasis, like אותם Psalms 9:13, and Bakius rightly remarks in voce pupilli synecdoche est, complectens omnes illos, qui humanis praesidiis destituuntur .

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