Commentary - Psalm 36:10-12

Bird's-eye view

This final section of Psalm 36 is a prayer that flows directly from the preceding meditation. Having first diagnosed the wicked man's functional atheism (vv. 1-4) and then having soared in his description of God's magnificent, cosmic attributes (vv. 5-9), David now brings it all home. He makes a direct appeal to God, asking that the glorious realities he just described would be applied to him and to God's people. This is a prayer for preservation. It is a request for God to continue His covenant faithfulness to those who are in covenant with Him, and to protect them from the arrogant and violent machinations of the ungodly. The psalm concludes not with a request for judgment, but with a Spirit-inspired vision of it. The psalmist sees the final state of the wicked as an accomplished fact. They are down, and they are not getting up. It is a statement of settled faith in the ultimate justice of God.

The structure is simple: a petition for continued blessing (v. 10), a petition for protection from specific threats (v. 11), and a concluding vision of the enemy's utter ruin (v. 12). This is the logic of faith. Because God is who He is (vv. 5-9), His people can confidently ask for His blessing and protection, and can rest in the certainty that all opposition to Him and His kingdom will ultimately come to nothing.

Outline

Context In The Psalms

Psalm 36 stands as a wisdom psalm that starkly contrasts the way of the wicked with the way of the righteous. This is a central theme throughout the Psalter, beginning with Psalm 1. The psalm begins with an oracle concerning the wicked man's rebellion, which is rooted in a lack of the fear of God. It then pivots to a glorious hymn praising God's attributes, particularly His lovingkindness (hesed), faithfulness, righteousness, and judgments. This movement from the darkness of human sin to the brilliant light of God's character is common in the Psalms. It provides the necessary backdrop for the believer's prayers. We do not pray into a void; we pray to the God who has revealed Himself. The final three verses serve as the personal application of these truths, a prayer that God would act consistently with His character on behalf of His people. The psalm's confident conclusion about the fate of the wicked echoes the assurance found in psalms like Psalm 37 and 73, which wrestle with the prosperity of the wicked but conclude with their certain destruction.

Key Issues

From Meditation to Supplication

There is a right way to move from theology to prayer. David has just spent several verses meditating on the bedrock attributes of God. His lovingkindness is in the heavens, His faithfulness reaches to the clouds, His righteousness is like the great mountains, and His judgments are a great deep (vv. 5-6). From this God flows a river of pleasures, a fountain of life (vv. 8-9). A man who has been thinking about a God like that does not then pray small, timid, or uncertain prayers. His prayer is shaped by his vision of God.

Because God's lovingkindness is steadfast and eternal, David can ask Him to "continue" it. Because God's righteousness is like a mountain range, he can ask for it to be extended to the upright. He is asking God to be God. He is praying in alignment with God's revealed character. This is the essence of effective prayer. It is not about bending God's will to ours, but about aligning our requests with His revealed will and character, asking Him to act for His own glory in the ways He has promised. The conclusion of this psalm is therefore not a desperate plea, but a confident appeal based on established truth.

Verse by Verse Commentary

10 Continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You, And Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

The prayer begins here. The word for "continue" means to draw out, to prolong. David is standing in a river of God's covenant loyalty, His hesed, and he asks God to let that river keep flowing. This is not the prayer of someone trying to earn God's favor, but of someone who is already enjoying it and asks for it to persist. And to whom does this river flow? To "those who know You." This is not about mere intellectual knowledge. In the Bible, to "know" God is to be in a personal, intimate, covenant relationship with Him. It is the difference between knowing about the President and knowing your own father. This knowledge is transformative. It is what produces the second characteristic: being "upright in heart." An upright heart is not a perfect heart, but an undivided heart, a heart that is sincere and oriented toward God. The two phrases describe the same person from different angles. True knowledge of God makes a man's heart straight, and a straight heart is one that truly knows God. To such people, David prays that God would continue to extend His righteousness, His just and saving action in the world.

11 Let not the foot of pride come upon me, And let not the hand of the ungodly drive me away.

Having asked for the continuation of positive blessings, David now prays for protection from specific, negative threats. The first is "the foot of pride." This is a vivid image. He sees arrogance personified, as a powerful man coming to stomp on him, to crush him underfoot. Pride is the essential sin of the wicked man described at the beginning of the psalm. The man who has no fear of God before his eyes is a man who is monumentally impressed with himself. This pride manifests itself in oppressive action. The second threat is "the hand of the ungodly." This refers to the wicked man's active efforts to dislodge him, to "drive me away." This could mean driving him from his home, his land, his place in society, or from his place of refuge in God. It is the malicious action of those who hate the righteous. So David prays for deliverance from both the arrogant attitude and the aggressive action of his enemies. He is asking God to be his shield against both the trampling foot and the shoving hand.

12 There the workers of wickedness have fallen; They have been thrust down and cannot rise.

The psalm ends with a sudden shift in tense and perspective. David is no longer praying. He is seeing. He says, "There they have fallen." It is as though in the midst of his prayer, God granted him a vision of the final outcome. He sees the battlefield after the war is over. The "workers of wickedness" are not just stumbling; they have fallen. The verb tense suggests a completed action with ongoing results. This is not something he hopes will happen; he sees it as already done. The victory is so decisive that he adds, "They have been thrust down and cannot rise." They were not just clumsy; they were thrown down by a superior power. And their fall is permanent. There is no getting back up. This is the end of all those who set themselves against the Lord and His anointed. Their pride leads to their fall, and their fall is catastrophic and irreversible. The psalm that began with the wicked man flattering himself in his own eyes ends with him flat on his face, unable to move. This is the settled confidence that faith in the God of verses 5-9 provides.

Application

We live in a world that is shot through with the pride of man. The functional atheism that David diagnosed in his day is the state religion of ours. Men flatter themselves, devise mischief, and have no fear of God before their eyes. As Christians, we are often made to feel like the targets of both the foot of pride and the hand of the ungodly. We are told our views are contemptible, and there are constant efforts to drive us out of the public square. What are we to do?

First, we must do what David did. We must lift our eyes from the dirt of human rebellion to the glories of our God. We must meditate on His covenant love, His faithfulness, His righteousness, and His justice until our souls are steady. We must remember that we are those who, by grace, "know Him" and are being made "upright in heart."

Second, we pray. We ask Him to continue His goodness to us. We ask Him to protect us from the arrogant assaults of a hostile world. We pray that He would not let the wicked succeed in their attempts to shove us into irrelevance or silence.

And last, we must see by faith what David saw. The final victory is not in doubt. The workers of wickedness have already fallen. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the decisive blow was struck. The foot of pride was crushed by the heel of the woman's seed. The ungodly hand that nailed Christ to the tree was overthrown when God's hand raised Him from the dead. The judgment is not a future "maybe," it is a present reality that is simply working its way out in history. Therefore, we do not have to be frantic. We can be faithful, knowing that in the end, all our enemies will be thrust down, and they will not be able to rise.