WEDNESDAY, JULY 11
Psalm 10:1-18
Genesis 18:23-26

... is better than the day before.

PETITION AGAINST OPPRESSORS OF THE POOR/ORPHANED

Although there is no title to Psalm 10, a good many commentators including Calvin consider this to be from “the sweet psalmist of Israel.” Calvin regards this Psalm as a complaint that “fraud, extortion, cruelty, violence and all kind of injustice, prevailed every where in the world.” How true! We say it this way today: “Big fish eat small fish.”

It is most ironical to see the wicked, mighty and powerful, the bully, while persecuting and eating up the poor and fatherless (v 2, 18), crawl and cringe before the powerful of his own kind, even the covetous (v 3). As to God, he wilfully dismisses Him from his mind (v 4), or imagines Him to have forgotten or to be blind to his crimes (v 11). He uses all kinds of stratagems to catch his prey. He lurks in the villages, like a lion in his den (v 8-9). He stoops in “humility” in order to conquer the unsuspecting.

Plumer says, “There is a consanguinity between all sins … Pride, cruelty, cunning, boasting, lust, covetousness, false peace, want of docility, practical atheism, spiritual blindness, contempt, cursing, deceit, fraud, mischief and vanity are a frightful sisterhood. The apostle James told us no new thing when he depicted (James 3:2-13) the dreadful evils of a wicked tongue (v 7). Death and life are in its power. There is no greater wickedness than that, which breaks out in words. It is amazing what mean artifices are resorted to by the best of the opposers of God’s truth and people, even by people commonly fair in other matters (v 7-8). The fawning, crouching, sycophantic part often played by the cruel and wicked can deceive none but the simple and inexperienced (v 10).”

When we are poor and fatherless, isolated and discarded, is it not wonderful to know from the Psalmist that we have a free recourse to God, the Judge of all the earth (Gen 18:25)? He is ever ready to hear the cries of the oppressed and have all their grievances redressed.

THOUGHT: “What a friend we have in Jesus … What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”
PRAYER: I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou heareth Thy children’s prayers.