“They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.”
The petition that God would repay the enemies for their wickedness and bring them down articulates the prayer for divine justice and judgment on those who pursue the righteous. The reference to God's wrath indicates that the psalmist trusts in divine anger against those who oppose God's people; God's righteous judgment will correspond to the enemies' wickedness. The request that God bring them down suggests the petition for the reversal of their apparent power and dominance. This verse moves the psalm from articulation of threat to petition for divine judgment, establishing that God's wrath will accomplish what human strength cannot.
Church Fathers on Psalms 56:6
1. Just as when we are going to enter into any house, we look on the title to see whose it is and to whom it belongs, lest perchance inopportunely we burst into a place whereunto we ought not; and again, in order that we may not through timidity withdraw from that which we ought to enter: as if in a word we were to read, These estates belong to such an one or to such an one: so on the lintel of this Psalm we have inscribed, “At the end, for the people that from holy men were…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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