Psalm 9. Prayer and thanksgiving for the Lord’s righteous judgments.

This is a psalm which is full of the Lord’s great activities on behalf of the speaker, and, as a result of these, the certainty of the downfall of what is evil. One verse (6) gives an example of the kind of language running through the psalm, “O enemy, destructions are finished for ever!

It is important, as with each and all of the psalms, not to see all of this destruction of evil in terms of human affairs and what other people deserve. Psalms are spiritual, not political or even moralistic. While evil of any kind should be brought to an end, the greatest spiritual evils are those we find taking place within ourselves in our heart and our intentions, in our mind and its judgments and views of people and the world we live in.

The other meaning of all psalms is that they give expression to what was in the mind and heart of the Lord Jesus Christ during his life in the world, during his temptations and in both his humanity and his sense of his divinity. Psalm 9 can be seen to be full of these inner states, feelings and resolves of Jesus.

The psalm begins with an outpouring of personal praise of the Lord. No reason for this is given as yet, just adoration. The next few verses then turn to the Lord’s activity, his presence, his maintenance, his justice, rebuke and destruction of the wicked. (Arcana Caelestia 8227)

Verses 6-8 bring out the apparent power of what is evil. This is described as the destruction of cities and even of the memory that they once existed. This has an interesting spiritual meaning, because ‘cities’ represent what we have come to believe and to build up as our truth, like a ‘city’. When evil takes hold of a human mind, it brings darkness, confusion and violence to the extent that clear thinking and discernment comes to an end. (Heaven and Hell 505)

The psalm then moves into statements of the Lord being a refuge in times of trouble, as one who never forsakes one who seeks, and who does not forget the cry of the humble. This brings on renewed praise in the psalm. The spiritual idea here is that when we think about the Lord, who He is, what He does, how good He is, we begin to become aware of it all and affected by the Lord’s work on us and on everything. It evokes praise and thanksgiving. (Arcana Caelestia 456)

The last part of the psalm, from verse 13 becomes personal, beginning with a plea for mercy and for having been lifted up from death. This is followed by a realisation of how evil brings about its own downfall. Wickedness will be turned into hell and the poor and needy will not be forgotten. May all people come to know that they are but men, and that the Lord is over all.

8227. 'And the Egyptians were fleeing to meet it' means that they plunged themselves into the falsities arising from evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'fleeing to meet the sea' as plunging themselves into falsities arising from evil, which are meant by the waters of that sea, 8226. The situation is that a person who is ignorant of causes lying on more internal levels inevitably believes that the bad things which happen to the evil, such as their undergoing punishment, vastation, and damnation, and finally being cast into hell, are attributable to the Divine. That is exactly how it seems to him, since such things occur at the presence of the Divine, 8137, 8138, 8188. Even so, no such thing happening to them is attributable to the Divine, only to themselves. The Divine and His presence have one end alone in view, namely the protection and salvation of the good. When the Divine is present with them, protecting them from those who are evil, the evil feel all the more antagonistic towards them, and all the more antagonistic towards the Divine Himself; for they hate Him most of all. Those who hate good hate most of all the Divine. So they rush to the attack, and in the measure that they do so they subject themselves, in keeping with the law of order, to punishment, vastation, and damnation, and at length cast themselves into hell. From all this it becomes clear that the Divine, that is, the Lord, does only what is good and does nothing bad to anyone; rather, those ruled by evil subject themselves to such miseries. This is what is meant when it says that the Egyptians fled to meet the sea; that is, they plunged themselves into the falsities arising from evil.

[2] On this subject something further must be said. The belief also exists that bad things are attributable to the Divine because He allows them and does not take them away. And one who allows something and does not take it away when he has the power to do so appears to will it and so to be the cause of it. But the Divine allows it because He cannot prevent it or take it away. The Divine wills only what is good; if therefore He were to prevent or remove bad things, that is to say, the miseries of punishment, vastation, persecution, temptation, and the like, He would be willing something bad. For then the people who must suffer them could not have their faults corrected and evil would increase until it held sway over good. The situation is like that with a king who acquits the guilty. He is the cause of the ill done by them subsequently in his kingdom, and he is the cause of the resulting lawlessness of others, not to mention that the evil person becomes more deeply immersed in evil. Therefore although a good and righteous king has the power to cancel punishments, yet he cannot, for if he cancels them he does not do what is good but what is bad. It should be recognized that all forms of punishment as well as of temptation in the next life have good as their end in view.