Psalms 35 - Introduction

XXXV.

This psalm opens in a warlike tone, so as to suggest a soldier for its author, and for its occasion the eye of some battle. But we soon (Psalms 35:7; Psalms 35:11) perceive that these warlike expressions are only metaphors, and that the foes of the poet are malicious slanderers and scoffers of the pious Israelites — it may be the court party in the time of one of the later kings, or, more probably, the anti-national party (see Note, Psalms 35:16) at a later time, the innovators affected by Persian or Grecian influence.

Few good critics, at all events, consider the psalm Davidic. Some ascribe it to Jeremiah. But whoever was its author, it expresses, not an individual feeling alone, but that of a community despised and maligned for its piety, and appealing to Jehovah against its oppressors, with that longing for retributive justice which in an individual becomes, in a Christian view, wickedly vindictive, but to the Old Testament Church was the vindication of the Divine honour which was pledged to do justice to the chosen but afflicted people. The parallelism is fine and well sustained.