Psalms 25 - Introduction

An alphabet of prayer and meditation, the utterance of a humble, yet confident faith. It falls into three equal divisions.

i. Prayer for protection, guidance, and pardon (Psalms 25:1).

ii. Reflections on the character of God (Psalms 25:8) and on His dealings with those who fear Him (12 14), separated by a prayer for pardon, which springs naturally out of Psalms 25:10.

iii. Renewed prayer for deliverance in distress (Psalms 25:15). Psalms 25:22 is a supernumerary verse, probably a later addition.

Thus the Psalmist begins and ends with prayer, and sustains and kindles faith and devotion by meditating on the truths of revelation.

The speaker is hardly "pious Israel personified." He is an individual, and speaks for and of individuals. Yet it may well be the case that he feels the sins and sufferings of his nation in some measure as though they were his own (e.g. Psalms 25:11; Psalms 25:19), and that his prayer for pardon and deliverance reaches beyond his own personal needs.

Thought and language shew the influence of the -Wisdom," or religious philosophy of Israel, embodied in the Book of Proverbs. But the Psalm has no distinct historical background, and might belong to almost any age.

It is one of the nine alphabetic Psalms (see Introd. p. lxiv). Each verse, usually consisting of two lines, begins with a letter of the alphabet. But as the text stands at present, a word (O my God) precedes the Bçthwith which the second line should begin; Vâuis omitted, or only represented by the second line of Psalms 25:5, instead of having a separate verse to itself; Qôphis wanting, and instead two verses (18, 19) begin with Rçsh; and a supernumerary verse beginning with Pçis added at the end. Some of these irregularities may be due to corruption of the text; but it is a curious fact that two of them, the absence of a separate verse for Vav, and the supernumerary Pçverse, are found again in Psalms 34. The two Psalms are clearly related; the one is a prayer, the other a thanksgiving; and they are probably by the same author.