Psalm 12

To the chief musician upon Sheminith,
A Psalm of David.

1 Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth;
for the faithful fail from among the children of men.
2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour;
with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.

3 The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips,
and the tongue that speaketh proud things,
4 who have said, "With our tongue will we prevail,
our lips are our own; who is lord over us?"

5 "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy,
now will I arise," saith the LORD,
"I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."
6 The words of the LORD are pure words;
as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD,
thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
8 The wicked walk on every side,
when the vilest men are exalted.

JW: David begs help of God, having no man whom he could trust, ver. 1, 2; describes the wicked and assures himself, that God would punish them, and preserve the just, ver. 3-8.

[On verse 4:] 'Our own' - at our own disposal to speak what we please, who can control or restrain us.

[On verse 6:] 'Pure' - without the least mixture of falsehood; and therefore shall infallibly be fulfilled.

[On verse 8:] 'Walk' - they fill all places, and go about boldly and securely.

Even most psalms that cry out to God because of injustice end with some sort of note of confident expectation that God will indeed bring justice. This psalm appears as though it would do the same because there is a confidence that God will deliver (v. 5, 7) and that his words are pure, even when tried by fire (v. 6). But at the end there is this final statement of seeming futility. Why is that? This seems out of character with the rest of the psalms that express hope and expectation in the righteous judgment of God to uphold the righteous. Why does the psalmist end on this note of the exaltation and pride of the wicked? Perhaps even in the midst of maintaining a confident hope, it's healthy to maintain a realism that notices that things still are not as they should be. Our hope is not an escapist one that is just bent on getting by until we die so we can get out of this hell-hole called earth or until Christ comes again in final judgment. I actually think this concluding note in the Psalm is a good analogy for us who live in the inaugurated kingdom that is yet to be fulfilled. We live in between the "Christ is risen!" and the "Christ shall come again!" Until that last one takes place, there is still work to be done. Chesterton quipped in Orthodoxy that what the world needs are people who are both radically pessimistic and radically optimistic:

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?

There is not much good to be spoken of 'eloquence' in this psalm, is there? "Flattering lips" may help your GPA, but God sees the heart and whether what proceeds from our lips corresponds to what is found within. There's also something here about "pride" being connected to these lips. I wrote a post a couple of months ago about John Wesley's sermon on 'The Good Steward.' It's vital to be reminded that everything we have, are, and do, are not our own. There really is no such thing as pure proprietorship because everything has been given to us so that we may steward them rightly. That includes not only our money, but our bodies, our thoughts, and our words. When we aren't being good stewards, we're acting like proprietors. That is pride. "Our lips are our own." The humble instead cry, "With our tongue we will bless; our lips are not our own; the LORD is lord over us."