Psalms 143:2
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Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
This psalm, as those before, is a prayer of David, and full of complaints of the great distress and danger he was in, probably when Saul persecuted him. He did not only pray in that affliction, but he prayed very much and very often, not the same over again, but new thoughts. In this psalm, I. He complains of his troubles, through the oppression of his enemies (Psa 143:3) and the weakness of his spirit under it, which was ready to sink notwithstanding the likely course he took to support himself (Psa 143:4, Psa 143:5). II. He prays, and prays earnestly (Psa 143:6), 1. That God would hear him (Psa 143:1-7). 2. That he would not deal with him according to his sins (Psa 143:2). 3. That he would not hide his face from him (Psa 143:7), but manifest his favour to him (Psa 143:8). 4. That he would guide and direct him in the way of his duty (Psa 143:8, Psa 143:10) and quicken him in it (Psa 143:11). 5. That he would deliver him out of his troubles (Psa 143:9, Psa 143:11). 6. That he would in due time reckon with his persecutors (Psa 143:12). We may more easily accommodate this psalm to ourselves, in the singing of it, because most of the petitions in it are for spiritual blessings (which we all need at all times), mercy and grace. A psalm of David.
Open source ↗143:2 All people are guilty before God (Rom 3:20-24).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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Surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Therefore no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law. For the law merely brings awareness of sin.
How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand?
If we say we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar, and His word is not in us.
know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
Do You open Your eyes to one like this? Will You bring him into judgment before You?
What is man, that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and deliver them to an enemy who takes them as captives to his own land, whether far or near,
maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”