Ver.  10.  In  the  room  of  the  prayer,  appears  now  the  hope
grounded  upon  the  righteousness  of  God,  which  manifests  itself
in  defence  of  the  righteous,  and  for  the  destruction  of  the  wicked.
My  shield  is  with  God,  who  delivers  the  upright  in  heart.  The
i)y  cannot  mean  precisely  loith  here.  Wherever  this  appears  to
be  the  sense,  the  connection  with  the  radical  meaning  upon  must
still  be  able  to  be  pointed  out.  Here  the  use  of  the  preposition
may  be  explained  thus,  that  the  shield  stands  figuratively  for
defence ;  either  it  devolves  on  God  to  protect  me,  to  hold  His
shield  over  me  (comp.  Judges  xix.  20,  "  All  thy  wants  are  upon
me,"  it  lies  upon  me  to  relieve  them ;  Ps.  Ivi.  12,  "  Thy  vows
are  upon  me,  O  God"),  or  my  defence  rests  upon  God,  has  Him
for  its  foundation.  This  latter  supposition  is  favoured  by  Ps.
Ixii.  7,  "  Upon  God  is  my  salvation  and  my  glory."  In  that
David  expects  deliverance  only  on  the  ground  of  God's  saving
the  upright,  he  supplies  a  new  evidence  of  his  having  a  good
conscience.
Yer.  11.  God  judges  the  righteous,  and  the  Almighty  is  angry
every  day.  This  is  David's  double  ground  of  hope.  For  he  is
a  righteous  man,  and  his  enemies  are  the  ungodly.  Many  take
OQW  as  a  subst.,  and  pns  as  the  adjective  belonging  to  it :  God
is  a  righteous  judge.  But  the  parallelism  with  DJJJ  requires  that
tiDIC  also  should  be  taken  as  a  participle  standing  for  the  verb
finite.  This  is  confirmed  by  a  comparison  with  ver.  8.  To  the
"  Judge  me,  O  Lord,  according  to  my  rigiiteousness,"  there,


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THE  BOOK  OF  PSALMS.
