Judge Me – Psalm 7:1-13

Celebrity Bill Cosby, convicted for rape and imprisoned in 2018, was released from prison on June 30, 2021, due to a technicality, something that created great consternation for the many women he was accused of molesting and for other victims of sexual abuse.  When Indira Henard, director of the DC Rape Crisis Center, learned of Cosby’s release, she says, “I put on the news and there it was, and my heart just dropped.  I thought about how all our survivors would be feeling.”  Victims find it hard to pursue legal process when it appears there is little “reasonable chance of getting justice.”  Cosby’s release is not an indication of his innocence, though he is claiming such.

David faced a charge of wrongdoing and claimed his innocence, but look what he said about God’s judgment.

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah

Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.  Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high.

The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.  Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous— you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!  My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.  God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.  (Psalm 7:1-13 ESV)

David had been slanderously accused by this Cush fellow but maintained his innocence and integrity.  If he had done what he was accused of, he would deserve God’s judgment, but he didn’t and so he appeals to God as judge to deliver him from his enemies.

Yahweh judges and tests the minds and hearts of all the peoples of earth in His righteousness.  We long for God’s judgment and an end to the wicked and the establishment of the righteous.  If the wicked do not repent, and that option is certainly open to them, then God will bring deadly punishment to them.  He feels indignation every day, even as we do, at the horror that humans perpetrate against one another.  If we walk in integrity we have Yahweh as our shield and savior.