Skip to content
Imprecation
59
The watching enemy · When Saul sent men to watch the house

They go round about the city like dogs

17 verses
Common metre 8.6.8.6
BPW 59A
Show
Summary

The setting is a house under watch. The enemy is described with one repeated image — dogs circling the walls at nightfall, grinning and returning — and the psalm answers their refrain with its own: God is my defence, the God of my mercy.

The petition is not that they be annihilated but that they be scattered and made an object lesson: consume them not, lest my people forget; make them wander, that they may know that God rules in Jacob. The two strophes end differently — the first in the LORD laughing at the nations, the second in the singer singing aloud of mercy in the morning, which is the psalm’s last word.

Outline
1–10
First strophe: deliver me, and see

Enemies lie in wait without cause; God is asked to awake and behold; the dogs’ refrain closes with the LORD laughing at them.

St. 1 · 1–5Defend me; awake to visit the nations
St. 2 · 6–8The dogs return at evening; God laughs
St. 3 · 9–10Refrain: my strength, my defence
11–17
Second strophe: scatter them, that they may know

Not consumed but scattered, so that the lesson is kept; the prowling refrain returns, and is answered by a morning song.

St. 4 · 11–13Scatter them; let them know God rules in Jacob
St. 5 · 14–15The dogs again, wandering for meat
St. 6 · 16–17I will sing of thy mercy in the morning

Stanza divisions provisional — to be conformed to the Book of Psalms for Worship. References NASB.