to scratch · verb, qal jussive, 2nd person masculine singular
God
אֱלֹהֵ֥י'e.lo.Hei
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct
praise
תְ֝הִלָּתִ֗יte.hi.la.Ti
H8416
laudation · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 28:1 Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.
Psalms 83:1 Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.
Deuteronomy 10:21 He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.
Exodus 15:2 The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I…
Psalms 35:22-23 This thou hast seen, O LORD: keep not silence: O Lord, be not far from me.
Isaiah 42:14 I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour…
Jeremiah 17:14 Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.
Psalms 118:28 Thou art my God, and I will praise thee: thou art my God, I will exalt thee.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 109:1-5
It is the unspeakable comfort of all good people that, whoever is against them, God is for them, and to him they may apply as to one that is pleased to concern himself for them. Thus David here.
I. He refers himself to God's judgment (Psa 109:1): "Hold not thy peace, but let my sentence come forth from thy presence, Psa 17:2. Delay not to give judgment upon the appeal made to thee." God saw what his enemies did against him, but seemed to connive at it, and to keep silence: "Lord," says he, "do not always do so." The title he gives to God is observable: "O God of my praise! the God in whom I glory, and not in any wisdom or strength of my own, from whom I have every thing that is my praise, or…
Hold not thy peace,.... Or be not as a deaf or dumb man, or like one that turns a deaf ear and will give no answer; so the Lord seems to his people when he does not give an immediate answer to their prayers, and does not arise to help them; he seems to have forsaken them, and to stand at a distance from them; nor does he avenge them of their enemies; it is the Messiah, as man, that puts up this petition, and it agrees with Psalm 22:2.
O God of my praise; worthy of all praise, because of the perfections of his nature, and for the mercies he bestows; and is and ought to be the constant object of the praise of his people, and was the object of the praise of Christ; see Psalm 22:22, who praised…
Psalm 109:1-5
To the Chief Musician, a Psalm of David.
1. O God of my praise! be not silent; 2. Because the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit are opened upon me: they have spoken against me with the tongue of guile. 3. And they have encompassed me with the words of hatred, and have contended with me without cause. 4. On account of my love they have been opposed to me; but I gave myself to prayer. 5. They rendered to me evil for good, and hatred for love.
1 O God of my praise! be not silent In these words, which may be considered as an introduction to the psalm, David declares that he neither could find nor would desire any other than God to stand forward in vindication of the in…
The Church Fathers
To the end, a psalm of David. When it says "to the end," let us understand that it is spoken not of the present, but of the future. And if it is spoken of the future, then the prophecy is about Christ. O God, do not keep silent about my praise. That is: Judas betrayed me, the Jews persecuted me and crucified me, and they thought that they would destroy me utterly, to the end. But you, O God, do not keep silent about my praise. All the churches, day by day, praise the Lord, and the prayer of the Lord has been fulfilled, when he said: O God, do not keep silent about my praise. See of what dignity the priests are. The priests speak: and in the priests God does not keep silent about the praise of his Son.
The Psalm, then, begins thus: "O God, be not silent as to my praise; for the mouth of the ungodly, yea, the mouth of the deceitful is opened upon me" [Psalm 109:1]. Whence it appears, both that the blame, which the ungodly and the deceitful is not silent of, is false, and that the praise, which God is not silent of, is true. "For God is true, but every man a liar;" [Romans 3:4] for no man is true, except him in whom God speaks. But the highest praise is that of the only-begotten Son of God, in which He is proclaimed even that which He is, the only-begotten Son of God. But this did not appear, but, when His weakness appeared, lay hid, when the mouth of the ungodly and deceitful was opened upon Him; and for this reason his mouth was opened, because His virtue was concealed: and he says, "the mouth of the deceitful was opened," because the hatred which was covered by deceit burst out into language.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
A sign for help and complaints of ungrateful persecutors form the beginning of the Psalm. "God of my praise" is equivalent to God, who art my praise, Jer 17:14, cf. Deu 10:21. The God whom the Psalmist has hitherto had reason to praise will also now show Himself to him as worthy to be praised. Upon this faith he bases the prayer: be not silent (Psa 28:1; Psa 35:22)! A mouth such as belongs to the "wicked," a mouth out of which comes "deceit," have they opened against him; they have spoken with him a tongue (accusative, vid., on Psa 64:6), i.e., a language, of falsehood. דּברי of things and utterances as in Psa 35:20. It would be capricious to take the suffix of אהבתי in Psa 109:4 as genit. o…
Ps 109 The psalmist begins this lament with a general charge against his accusers: They do evil in return for good (109:1-5). At the end of the psalm, he turns to the Lord in prayer, asking for his protection (109:21-25) and vengeance (109:26-31).
109:1 The psalmist sees no evidence that God cares (see 28:1).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 109:1
Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
Hold not thy peace. Mine enemies speak, be thou pleased to speak too. Break thy solemn silence, and silence those who slander me. It is the cry of a man whose confidence in God is deep, and whose communion with him is very close and bold. Note, that he only asks the Lord to speak: a word from God is all a believer needs. O God of my praise. Thou whom my whole soul praises, be pleased to protect my honour and guard my praise. "My heart is fixed", said he in the former psalm, "I will sing and give praise", and now he appeals to the God whom he had praised. If we take care of God's honour he will take care of ours. We may look to him as the guardian of o…
