to judge · preposition + verb, qal active participle, masculine plural construct
soul
נַפְשֽׁוֹnaf.Sho
H5315
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
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 121:5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
Psalms 16:8 I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Psalms 73:23 Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand.
Psalms 110:5 The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
Psalms 140:12 I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the right of the poor.
Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is t…
Proverbs 22:22-23 Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate:
Psalms 68:5 A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 109:21–end
David, having denounced God's wrath against his enemies, here takes God's comforts to himself, but in a very humble manner, and without boasting.
I. He pours out his complaint before God concerning the low condition he was in, which, probably, gave advantage to his enemies to insult over him: "I am poor and needy, and therefore a proper object of pity, and one that needs and craves thy help." 1. He was troubled in mind (Psa 109:22): My heart is wounded within me, not only broken with outward troubles, which sometimes prostrate and sink the spirits, but wounded with a sense of guilt; and a wounded spirit who can bear? who can heal? 2. He apprehended himself drawing near to his end: I am gone…
For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor,.... Of the Messiah, as in Psalm 109:22 at whose right hand the Lord was, to guide and direct, help and assist, protect and defend, Psalm 16:8, or of his people, who are poor in every sense; but the Lord is on their side, and is a present help in time of trouble, Psalm 46:1.
To save him from those that condemn his soul: the Messiah: from his judges, the high priest and Jewish sanhedrim, and Pilate the Roman governor, who condemned him to death; but he committed his spirit, or soul, to God, who received it, and raised his body from the dead; and would not suffer it to see corruption, as a testimony of his innocence: or the soul of the poor sai…
Psalm 109:28-31
28. They shall curse, but thou shalt bless: when they arise, they shall be put to shame; but thy servant shall rejoice. 29. My adversaries shall be clothed with shame, and covered with their own confusion, as with a garment. 30. I will praise Jehovah greatly with my mouth; and I will extol him in the midst of the great, [315] 31. Because he standeth at the right hand of the poor, to deliver his soul from condemnations. [316]
28. They shall curse. Interpreters are divided in their opinions about the meaning of these words. One class would render them as expressive of a desire or wish: Let them curse, provided that thou bless: let them arise, and be clothed with confusion Ano…
The Church Fathers
Because he stood at the right hand of the poor man. The devil stood at the right hand of Judas: but for me the Lord stood at my right hand. That he might save my soul from those who persecute it. My soul, he says, he will save. And elsewhere he says: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." He who is sorrowful, had a faculty of feeling. For a soul without feeling has no perception, a soul without feeling has neither perception nor pain: for where there is pain and sadness, there is feeling. If then he had sadness, if he had pain, then he had also feeling: for feeling is pain. If, then, they should wish to say to us: We do not say that he had feeling, for this reason, lest he seem to have sin; let us answer them: Did he have a body like us, or did he not have one? If they say, he had one, let us answer them: Then he had also the sufferings of our body. Everyone understands what I say. But if they deny that he had the passions or lusts of the body, then we say to them, that he did not have a body either. And let us say to them: Just as he had a true body like ours, and yet did not have the sin of the body; so also he had a true soul, and did not have the sin of the soul. Let us therefore confess that he had a true body and a true soul. For if the Lord did not take upon himself all the things that are man's, he did not save man. But if he took a body, and did not take a soul: then he saved the body, but he did not save the soul. Yet we wish rather that our soul be saved than our body. The Lord therefore took upon himself both body and soul, that he might save both, that he might save the whole man, just as he also created him. If, then, they say that the Lord did not take on feeling for this reason, that he might not sin, and they suppose this, that whoever has had human feeling cannot conquer it, let them tell us: Did John the Baptist have feeling, or did he not? In that time, in which he was in the desert, did he sin? Assuredly they say that he did not sin. Indeed, our Lord too says: "Amen I say to you, there has not been among those born of women a greater than John the Baptist." Did Peter have feeling, or did he not, and the rest of the holy apostles? If, then, the apostles conquered human feeling, did the Lord fear to take on feeling, lest he be conquered by it? And while they wish to glorify the Lord, they disparage him. How do they disparage him? by…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Hands, The · Right hand, illustrative: (Standing at,) of protection — Right hand, illustrative: (Standing at,) of protection
Poor, The · God: Protects — God: Protects
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The cry for help is renewed in the closing strophe, and the Psalm draws to a close very similarly to Ps 69 and Ps 22, with a joyful prospect of the end of the affliction. In Psa 109:27 the hand of God stands in contrast to accident, the work of men, and his own efforts. All and each one will undeniably perceive, when God at length interposes, that it is His hand which here does that which was impossible in the eyes of men, and that it is His work which has been accomplished in this affliction and in the issue of it. He blesses him whom men curse: they arise without attaining their object, whereas His servant can rejoice in the end of his affliction. The futures in Psa 109:29 are not now agai…
The psalmist had been accused of being clothed with curses (109:18); now he asks that his accusers be clothed with disgrace and humiliation.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 109:31
For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.
For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor. God will not be absent when his people are on their trial; he will hold a brief for them and stand in court as their advocate, prepared to plead on their behalf. How different is this from the doom of the ungodly who has Satan at his right hand (Ps 109:6). To save him from those that condemn his soul. The court only met as a matter of form, the malicious had made up their minds to the verdict, they judged him guilty, for their hate condemned him, yea, they pronounced sentence of damnation upon the very soul of their victim: but what mattered it? T…
