is painted with grand power with three or
four broad rapid strokes.

(6) Awake for me--Thou hast commanded judgment.

(7) Let the assembly of the nations stand round Thee,
And above it return Thou up on high.

(8) Jehovah will judge the nations.
Judge me, O Jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine
integrity in me!

Each smaller act of God's judgment is connected with the final
world-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; and
He, who at the last will be known as the universal Judge of all,
certainly cannot leave His servants' cause unredressed nor their cry
unheard till then. The psalmist is led by his own history to realize
more intensely that truth of a Divine manifestation for judicial
purposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints its
solemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. He sees the
gathered nations standing hushed before the Judge, and the Victor God at
the close of the solemn act ascending up on high where He was before,
above the heads of the mighty crowd (Psalm lxviii. 19). In the faith of
this vision, and because God will judge the nations, he invokes for
himself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, and
asks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. Nothing but the
most hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficulty
of such words. David is not speaking of his whole character or life, but
of his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to Saul.
The righteous integrity which he calls God to vindicate is not general
sinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of God, but his
blamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. His prayer that
God would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cry
for deliverance, which should, as by a Divine arbitration, decide the
debate between Saul and him. The whole passage in the psalm, with all
its lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the very
same thought which we find so prominent in his words to Saul, already
quoted, concerning God's judging between them and delivering David out
of Saul's hand. The parallel is instructive, not only as the prose
rendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond the
possibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory of
the date which we have assigned to the latter. It is so improbable as to
be almost inconceivable that t