David fears being “drag[ged] away with the wicked” (verse 3) to the “pit,” a word that can mean a dungeon for offenders (verse 1). He cries to God at the prospect of being unfairly charged and counted as a corrupt ruler. This is a major theme of the psalms, but not one that most of us in comfortable Western societies can easily understand. “Nothing stings so sharply as injustice, and nothing should; so these verses are not simply vindictive, but put into words the protest of any healthy conscience at the wrongs of the present order, and the conviction that a day of judgment is a moral
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