Psalm 143-- A Psalm of David.
1 Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications! In Your faithfulness answer me, and in Your righteousness. 2 Do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight no one living is righteous. 3 For the enemy has persecuted my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me dwell in darkness, like those who have long been dead. 4 Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is distressed. 5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works; I muse on the work of Your hands. 6 I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land.
“‘Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications! In Your faithfulness answer me, and in Your righteousness.’ Forgiveness is not inconsistent with truth or righteousness, and the pardon which in mercy God bestows upon the sinner is bestowed in justice to the well beloved Son who accepted and discharged the sinner's obligations. This is an infinitely precious truth, and the hearts of thousands in every age have been sustained and gladdened by it. A good old Christian woman in humble life so fully realized this, that when a revered servant of God asked her, as she lay on her dying pillow, the ground of her hope for eternity, she replied, with great composure, ‘I rely on the justice of God;’ adding, however, when the reply excited surprise, ‘justice, not to me, but to my Substitute, in whom I trust.’” (Robert Macdonald, in "From Day to Day" 1879)
“‘Do not enter into judgment with Your servant’— “He doth not say, ‘with an enemy, a rebel, a traitor, an impenitent sinner;’ but ‘with thy servant,’ one that is devoted to thy fear, one that is consecrated to thy service, one that is really and indeed wholly thine, as much and as fully as he can be. — ‘for in Your sight no one living is righteous.’— As if he had said, ‘Lord, if the holiest, purest, best of men should come and stand before thee in judgment, or plead with thee, they must needs be cast in their cause. 'If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities,' alas! 'O Lord, who shall stand?'" Psa 130:3.” (Thomas Lye, 1621-1684) “Not the proudest philosopher among the Gentiles, nor the most precise Pharisee among the Jews; we may go yet further and say, not the holiest saint that ever lived, can stand righteous before that bar. God hath nailed that door up, that none can for ever enter by a law-righteousness into life and happiness.” (William Gurnall)
“Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for thou hast already entered into judgment with thy Son, and laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.’ (2)” (Matthew Henry) “‘For the enemy’— the spiritual Adversary, Satan the devil, and his demons— “‘has persecuted my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me dwell in darkness, like those who have long been dead.’ (3) That is, where I seem to be buried alive, and to have no more hopes of being restored to a happy condition in this world than those that have been long dead have of living again in it.” (Thomas Fenton)
"Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is distressed. But alas, “‘I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works.’ Meditation on the works of God “is as the plough before the sower, to prepare the heart for the duty of prayer; and as the harrow after the sower, to cover the seed when 'tis sown. As the hopper feeds the mill with grist, so does meditation supply the heart with matter for prayer.” (William Gurnall)— “‘I muse on the work of Your hands.’ I am thinking sometimes upon Jonah, how he was overwhelmed with waters and swallowed up of a whale, and yet at last delivered; sometimes I am thinking of Joseph, how he was bound and left desolate in a pit, and yet at last relieved; and then I meditate thus with myself,—Is God's power confined to persons? could he deliver them in their extremities, and can he not deliver me in mine?” (Sir Richard Baker) I even meditate on His great works of old— Creation, Fall and eternal Redemption.
“‘I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land.’ (6) —"He declareth his vehement affection to God by a very pretty similitude, taken from the ground which is thirsty by the long drought of summer, wherein the earth, rent in pieces, as it were, and with open mouth through long thirst, seeketh drink from heaven. By which he showeth that he came to God as destitute of natural substance, and therefore seeketh from above that which he lacked.“ (Archibald Symson) It was the Spirit or Comforter of old that David waits on, Jesus promised, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27)
7 Answer me speedily, O Yahweh; my spirit fails! Do not hide Your face from me, lest I be like those who go down into the pit. 8 Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for in You do I trust; cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to You. 9 Deliver me, O Yahweh, from my enemies; in You I take shelter. 10 Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness. 11 Revive me, O Lord, for Your name’s sake! For Your righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble. 12 In Your mercy cut off my enemies, and destroy all those who afflict my soul; for I am Your servant.
“‘Answer me speedily, O Yahweh; my spirit fails!’ Renews me by Your Spirit and Your word. “‘Do not hide Your face from me, lest I be like those who go down into the pit,’ of the earth never to rise again. “‘Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning,’ early, seasonable, and speedily, as this phrase is taken.” (Joseph Benson) Or perhaps from the grave on resurrection morning when we shall awaken in His likeness! “Cause me to hear this voice. It speaks every morning, but many ears are deaf to it. ”(W. Abbot) “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16)
“Deliver me, O Yahweh, from my enemies; in You I take shelter.’ We are inclined and enabled to good by the sanctifying Spirit. In the Christian religion, not only the precepts are good, but there goeth along with them the power of God to make us good. ‘Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God.’ (Thomas Manton) “‘Thy Spirit is good.’ The LXX read, ‘Let thy good Spirit lead me into the land of uprightness.’” (Joseph Sutcliffe) “Why is He so often called the good Spirit, but that all His operations tend to make men good and holy? Eph 5:9, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.’” (Thomas Manton) “‘Revive me,’ Quicken me by Your Spirit, ‘O Lord’— Who am no better than a living carcass, a walking sepulchre of myself. —‘for Your name’s sake!’- based not upon my merit.—“‘For Your righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.’ I can bring it in, but thou only canst bring it out...” (John Trapp) “He is troubled on every side, yet not removed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. He has no arm of flesh to trust to, and nothing within himself to support his hope; but with what simplicity, and energy of trust, does he betake himself to God, revolving ill his memory past seasons of deliverance, and staying his mind on the Power and Truth of Jehovah!” (John Fawcett)
“‘And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies.’ In thy goodness towards me, remove those enemies whose conduct towards me has been described in Psalms 143:3, Psalms 143:4. ‘And destroy all them that afflict my soul.’ This is David's ordinary prayer with respect to his enemies, whom be counts as God's adversaries, and the persecutors of faithful Israel (see Psalms 5:10; Psalms 7:9; Psalms 10:15; Psalms 28:4, Psalms 28:5; Psalms 35:4-6, Psalms 35:8, etc.). ‘For I am thy servant.’ Entitled, therefore, to thy special care and protection (cp. Psalms 27:9; Psalms 69:17; Psalms 86:2, Psalms 86:4, Psalms 86:16; Psalms 116:16, etc.).” (The Pulpit Commentary)
“These clauses... are read in the future tense, ‘thou shalt quicken--bring out--cut off—destroy’, in the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Arabic versions; and so may be considered as a prophecy of what would be the case of David and his enemies, or of the Messiah and his, here typified; as well as a prayer for those things; ‘for I am thy servant’; by creation, by redemption and grace; and by office, being set upon the throne for the service of God and his people, and therefore pleads for his protection and help; and the rather, as he was the servant of God; and not they, his enemies, as Kimchi observes.”(John Gill) In Matthew 13:24-30, the wheat and tares grew up together. But they are separated at harvest time. The friends of Yahweh will be resurrected or revived and live forever. In contrast, a thousand years later, the enemies of Yahweh will be resurrected, judged, and cut off again—the second death.