Psalms 12 - Introduction

XII.

The tradition of the Davidic authorship must be discarded here. The psalm is an elegy, but not for personal suffering. It is a lament over the demoralisation of men and the corruption of social life. Neither faith nor law are left; falsehood, duplicity, and hypocrisy succeed everywhere, and the honest men are so lost in the mass of wickedness that they seem to have disappeared altogether. We find similar complaints in Micah 7:2; Isaiah 57:1, and Jeremiah 5:1. But God has not left Himself without a witness. Prophetic voices have been raised — perhaps Isaiah’s — in noble assertion of truth and justice, and the poet recalls one such voice, proclaiming the coming and the establishment of a righteous kingdom upon earth, the hope of which had already become the consolation and stay of the faithful.

The insertion of this oracle in Psalms 12:5 interferes with the rhythm, which else is even and regular.

For Title, see Introduction to Psalms 6.