Psalms 10:12

The six strophes, in which the consecutive letters from מ to צ are wanting, are completed, and now the acrostic strophes begin again with ק. In contrast to those who have no God, or only a lifeless idol, the psalmist calls upon his God, the living God, to destroy the appearance that He is not an omniscient Being, by arising to action. We have more than one name of God used here; אל is a vocative just as in Psa 16:1; Psa 83:2; Psa 139:17, Psa 139:23. He is to lift up His hand in order to help and to punish (נשׂא יד, whence comes the imperat. נשׂא = שׂא, cf. נסה Psa 4:7, like שׁלח יד Psa 138:7 and נטה יד Exo 7:5 elsewhere). Forget not is equivalent to: fulfil the לא שׁכח of Psa 9:13, put to shame the שׁכח אל of the ungodly, Psa 10:11! Our translation follows the Kerמ ענוים. That which is complained of in Psa 10:3, Psa 10:4 is put in the form of a question to God in Psa 10:13 : wherefore (על־מה, instead of which we find על־מה in Num 22:32; Jer 9:11, because the following words begin with letters of a different class) does it come to pass, i.e., is it permitted to come to pass? On the perf. in this interrogative clause vid., Psa 11:3. מדּוּע inquires the cause, למּה the aim, and על־מה the motive, or in general the reason: on what ground, since God's holiness can suffer no injury to His honour? On לא תדרשׁ with כּי, the oratio directa instead of obliqua, vid., on Ps 9:21.

David here, upon the foregoing representation of the inhumanity and impiety of the oppressors, grounds an address to God, wherein observe, I. What he prays for. 1. That God would himself appear (Psa 10:12): "Arise, O Lord! O God! lift up thy hand, manifest thy presence and providence in the affairs of this lower world. Arise, O Lord! to the confusion of those who say that thou hidest thy face. Manifest thy power, exert it for the maintaining of thy own cause, lift up thy hand to give a fatal blow to these oppressors; let thy everlasting arm be made bare." 2. That he would appear for his people: "Forget not the humble, the afflicted, that are poor, that are made poorer, and are poor in spirit. Their oppressors, in their presumption, say that thou hast forgotten them; and they, in their despair, are ready to say the same. Lord, make it to appear that they are both mistaken." 3. That he would appear against their persecutors, Psa 10:15. (1.) That he would disable them from doing any mischief: Break thou the arm of the wicked, take away his power, that the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared, Job 34:30. We read of oppressors whose dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged (Dan 7:12), that they might have time to repent. (2.) That he would deal with them for the mischief they had done: "Seek out his wickedness; let that be all brought to light which he thought should for ever lie undiscovered; let that be all brought to account which he thought should for ever go unpunished; bring it out till thou find none, that is, till none of his evil deeds remain unreckoned for, none of his evil designs undefeated, and none of his partisans undestroyed." II. What he pleads for the encouraging of his own faith in these petitions. 1. He pleads the great affronts…

10:12-15 With confidence that the wicked will be held responsible for their deeds and that the Lord will care for the helpless, the psalmist prays intensely for rescue from evil.