Psalm 5: Morning Prayer for Protection

Psalm 5 is a morning lament. The psalmist orders his prayer at daybreak and watches, the way a priest might lay wood on the altar at the dawn sacrifice and then wait for the smoke to rise. The musical heading "for the flutes" translates the Hebrew "nehiloth," one of the more obscure terms in the Psalter. We do not know with confidence what instrument or tune it specified, only that the editors of the collection thought it mattered enough to preserve. Verses 4 through 6 contain some of the strongest language in the whole book about God's hatred of evil. The boastful cannot stand before His eyes and the bloodthirsty are an abomination to Him. Against that wall of refusal the psalmist sets his own access in verse 7: "by Your great mercy, I will come into Your house." The Hebrew word behind "mercy" here is "chesed," the covenant loyalty God pledges to His people. Entry into the sanctuary is not earned by personal merit but granted by that covenant love.

The imagery in verse 9 is unforgettable. "Their throat is an open grave" treats the deceitful mouth as a body cavity already opening onto death, the speech itself carrying the smell of the tomb. Hebrew poetry tends to think of speech as a whole-body event, not just words but tongue and throat and lips together, and this verse exploits that habit to chilling effect. Paul quotes this in Romans 3:13: "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." He stitches the line into his catena of indictments to argue that all people stand under the same moral need, and his argument depends on the psalm's embodied view of corruption. What David said of his enemies, Paul says of all of us apart from grace.