Psalms 55:9

PLEA FOR GOD TO DESTROY THE PLANS OF THE WICKED

"Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongue;

For I have seen violence and strife in the city.

Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof:

Iniquity also and mischief are in the midst of it.

Wickedness is in the midst thereof:

Oppression and guile depart not from its streets"

"Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongue" (Psalms 55:9).

"David wanted his enemies destroyed by `dividing their tongues' (confusing their counsel); and this prayer was fully and effectively answered. Hushai and Ahithophel gave opposite counsel to Absalom; and Absalom followed the advice of Hushai. Ahithophel, knowing that such advice would destroy Absalom, went out and hanged himself (2 Samuel 15-17)."[10]

Both King David of Israel and the Son of David, the Christ, were betrayed by a close friend, who as a consequence of his deeds went out and hanged himself. It is difficult not to see a type of Judas Iscariot in this.

In this paragraph, notice the seven words which describe conditions in Jerusalem: violence, strife, iniquity, mischief, wickedness, oppression, and guile. The Jerusalem Bible personifies these,[11] but we cannot find any good reason for such a personification, Taken in the aggregate, they describe the frightful condition of a sorely troubled city. This writer once heard Mayor Bob Wagner of New York City describing a similar condition there, saying that, "The spirit of the jungle has invaded the heart of the great city."

Spurgeon's description of Jerusalem's sufferings under those conditions is a classic.

Alas, poor Jerusalem, to be thus the victim of sin and shame! Virtue reviled and vice regnant! Her solemn assemblies were broken up, her priests fled, her king a fugitive, and troops of reckless villains, parading her streets and sunning themselves on her walls, and vomiting their blasphemies in her sacred shrines. Here was cause enough for the sorrow which so plaintively utters itself in these verses.[12]