Psalm 7: only those who don’t repent get punished by God
A righteous man cries out for justice in this psalm, and in the end he gets it. I wonder, how many of us are able to say with confidence, like David does in verses 3-5, that injustice has never stained our hands? Oh, I’m not talking about criminal deeds, I’m talking about things like gossping about our friends with others, about charging someone more when quoting them a fee, just because… or treating someone unfairly at work, just because…
If we were to sit down and think about everything we do, and why we do things, we’d see that our hands were dirty. Everyone’s hands are dirty, stained with injustice. It would seem that we all deserve our punishment. Again, the Bible offers a solution, and it’s the same, simple one. Look at verse 11: “… but a God at all times threatening for those who will not repent.” So the key is to repent. We may fall, we may blunder, but we should recognize that we did so and ask God to forgive us. It’s so simple, and yet so hard to do. Most often, our pride, our vanity stands in the way. That person deserves it, we say, they deserve what’s coming to them. Do they? Who’s to say that? Are we, who are just as guilty, to judge others?
A very good warning is included in this psalm as well, in verses 12-16. There’s no mistaking it here, we should not plan to bring others down. Judgment belongs to God, not to us, and this is a stern example of what happens to those who meddle with such things. He that does these things “falls into the snare he made himself. His spite recoils on his own head, his brutality falls back on his own skull.” Ouch! We’d do well to heed the warning and let God, the “upright judge”, handle such matters.
