“Saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him.”
The statement that people say God has forsaken the psalmist establishes the taunt that the enemies use: if God truly cared, the psalmist would not suffer. The claim that no one pursues to rescue articulates that deliverance has not yet come. This verse articulates the psychological torture of the taunt: enemies use the delay of divine aid to suggest abandonment.
Church Fathers on Psalms 71:11
1. In all the holy Scriptures the grace of God that delivers us commends itself to us, in order that it may have us commended. This is sung of in this Psalm, whereof we have undertaken to speak....This grace the Apostle commends: by this he got to have the Jews for enemies, boasting of the letter of the law and of their own justice. This then commending in the lesson which has been read, he says thus: “For I am the least of the Apostles, that am not worthy to be called an…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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