Psalms 54:5

He will repay the evil to my enemies. Destroy them in your truth.

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Other translations

WEBBE

He will repay the evil to my enemies. Destroy them in your truth.

BSB

He will reward my enemies with evil. In Your faithfulness, destroy them.

KJV

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies: cut them off in thy truth.

ASV

He will requite the evil unto mine enemies: Destroy thou them in thy truth.

BBE

Let the evil works of my haters come back on them again; let them be cut off by your good faith.

Original Hebrew

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The early church

"Turn away evil things unto mine enemies" [Psalm 54:5]. So however green they are, so however they flourish, for the fire they are being reserved. "In Your virtue destroy Thou them." Because to wit they flourish now, because to wit they spring up like grass: do not thou be a man unwise and foolish, so that by giving thought to these things thou perish for ever and ever. For, "Turn Thou away evil things unto mine enemies." For if you shall have place in the body of David Himself, in His virtue He will destroy them. These men flourish in the felicity of the world, perish in the virtue of God. Not in the same manner as they flourish, do they also perish: for they flourish for a time, perish for everlasting: flourish in unreal good things, perish in real torments. "In Your strength destroy," whom in Your weakness You have endured.
Augustine of Hippo · d. 430Expositions on the Psalms

Commentary

Matthew Henry · Verses 4–7

Behold, God is mine Helper. If we are for him, he is for us; and if he is for us, we need not fear. Every creature is that to us, and no more, which God makes it to be. The Lord will in due time save his people, and in the mean time he sustains them, and bears them up, so that the spirit he has made shall not fail. There is truth in God's threatenings, as well as in his promises; sinners that repent not, will find it so to their cost. David's present deliverance was an earnest of further deliverance. He speaks of the completion of his deliverance as a thing done, though he had as yet many troubles before him; because, having God's promise for it, he was as sure of it as if it was done already. The Lord would deliver him out of all his troubles. May he help us to bear our cross without repining, and at length bring us to share his victories and glory. Christians never should suffer the voice of praise and thanksgiving to cease in the church of the redeemed.

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Spurgeon · Verse 5

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies. They worked for evil, and they shall have their wages. It cannot be that malice should go unavenged. It were cruelty to the good to be lenient to their persecutors. It is appointed, and so it must ever be, that those who shoot upward the arrows of malice shall find them fall upon themselves. The recoil of their own gun has often killed oppressors. Cut them off in thy truth. Not in ferocious revenge is this spoken, but as an Amen to the sure sentence of the just Judge. Let the veracity of thy threatenings be placed beyond dispute, the decree is right and just, let it be fulfilled. It is not a private desire, but the solemn utterance of a military man, a grossly injured man, a public leader destined to be a monarch, and a man well trained in the school of Moses, whose law ordains eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.

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Cross-references

11

Topics

Cross-references: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Hebrew and Greek data from STEPBible.org (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0. Library: sources.