A Psalm of David. Judge me, O LORD; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide.

A Psalm of David. The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

A Psalm of David. 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.

A Psalm of David. Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength.

A Psalm and Song at the dedication of the house of David. I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.

A Psalm of David, Maschil. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed. I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

A Psalm of David. Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me.

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes.

13:2 plague of leprosy. The dread disease of leprosy in ancient times was not only loathsome, but contagious and incurable. Therefore, the seemingly cruel isolation of the leper was necessary for the survival of the tribe. Because of the malady’s character, the Scriptures make it also to be a type of the dread disease of sin, which also is humanly contagious and incurable, eventually becoming loathsome and lethal (compare Psalm 38:3-11; Isaiah 1:6; James 1:15).

21:6 bore his ear. This ordinance is very significant, being the first given after the ten commandments. This first ordinance and those that follow center first on the most humble members of society (the slaves–recognizing the then-universal existence of slavery, and ameliorating the practice), then on other people, then on property–thus establishing God’s priorities. Second, right at the beginning of the dispensation of Law, we are given a typological picture of God’s Servant, who would someday come to bear the curse of the Law for us, saving us by His grace. The slave, with full right to be set free in his seventh year, chooses rather to stay in the will of his master, listening to his voice only–symbolized and sealed by the opening in his ear. Just so, Christ said prophetically: “Mine ears hast thou opened:...Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:6-8). The fulfillment of this prophecy is described in Hebrews 10:5-10. There, the opening of the ears of the servant is included in the preparation of the Lord’s human body “to do thy will, O God... By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:7,10).

25:23 the land is mine. The principle of divine ownership of the land applies not only to Israel, but to all nations (Psalm 24:1; Acts 17:26). The principle applies with special emphasis to the true Christian, whose very body belongs to the Lord (I Corinthians 6:19,20).

9:12 nor break any bone. See also Exodus 12:46, Psalm 34:20. The Passover lamb was to be without blemish, which meant also that, although he was to be slain, none of his bones could be broken. The lamb was intended, of course, to be a type of the coming Lamb of God, whose bones were providentially kept from being broken on the cross (John 19:33-36).

14:34 each day for a year. This verse provides essentially the only Biblical argument for the fanciful “year/day” school of prophetic interpretation, which arbitrarily converts prophetic “days” into years, especially in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. But this verse was spoken explicitly as a judgment on the faithless generation of Israelites, not as an arbitrary key to future prophecy. All males twenty years old or above would die during their forty years in the desert. Thus only Joshua and Caleb, who were excepted because of their faith, were more than sixty years old when the Israelites finally crossed the Jordan, even though God through Moses had indicated the normal life span at the time to be seventy or eighty years (Psalm 90:10). Joshua actually lived to age 110 and Caleb was still in full strength at age eighty-five (Joshua 14:10-11; 24:29).

15:31 despised the word. Nowhere did the Mosaic laws provide any offerings whereby the willful sinner–one who had deliberately and intentionally rebelled against God’s Word–could receive forgiveness. The example in Numbers 15:32-36 graphically illustrates this truth. David’s experience, however, as described in the Psalm 51 (also in II Samuel 12:9-13), illustrates the fact that a genuine believer could be spared and restored through sincere repentance and confession. Nevertheless, even in such a case, severe temporal chastisement was incurred (II Samuel 12:14-18).

16:30 the pit. The word for “pit” here is sheol, which is the equivalent of hades (commonly translated “hell”) in the New Testament, so that this event was no ordinary earthquake, but was indeed a “new thing.” Korah and his followers descended “quick” (that is, “alive”) deep into the great cavity at the center of the earth where the spirits of the lost–both men and angels–are now confined (note also Psalm 55:15).

21:33 Og the king of Bashan. The Bashanites were apparently another tribe of Amorites who had established their own separate kingdom, with the giant Og as their king (note Deuteronomy 3:11; 4:47). The great victories over these two Ammonite kings, Sihon and Og, were long celebrated in tradition and song (e.g., Psalm 135:10-12; 136:16-22). The land of Bashan was evidently a fertile plateau just east of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, and north of the Amorite kingdom ruled by Sihon.

23:21 not beheld iniquity. God had repeatedly punished the Israelites for their sins, yet, by the great principle of justification by grace through faith, these could all be forgiven and forgotten (Psalm 103:3; Jeremiah 31:34).

24:8 an unicorn. The unicorn was a real animal. See footnotes for Job 39:9 and Psalm 92:10.