Psalm 40:9

Note

A man pulled out of the pit opens his mouth before the gathered people. What he tells them is, before it is his own story, the righteousness of God. In Hebrew he says, quite literally, that he has brought righteousness as news.

Psalm 40 is a psalm of David. He waited patiently for the LORD, and "He lifted me up from the pit of despair, out of the miry clay" (Psalm 40:2), and set his feet upon a rock. "He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God" (Psalm 40:3). Then comes the confession that God wanted obedience rather than sacrifice, and the words "Here I am, I have come" (Psalm 40:7). Hebrews hears these as the words of Christ "when Christ came into the world" (Hebrews 10:5). Our verse follows directly. Read with Hebrews, the one who came to do God's will now speaks in the great assembly. Yet the psalm does not end in thanksgiving. It turns back to a prayer under new troubles and closes, "I am poor and needy" (Psalm 40:17).

"I proclaim" is basar (בָּשַׂר), a piel perfect in the first person singular, bisarti, ‘I have brought news.’ Its object is righteousness, tsedeq, with no article and no further description, and the place is "the great assembly," qahal rav. The news simply is righteousness. The next verse unfolds what kind: "I have not covered up Your righteousness in my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and salvation" (Psalm 40:10). This is not a righteousness the psalmist achieved but the LORD's own, His faithfulness in rescuing the one who cried to Him. "I do not seal my lips," he says, and calls God to witness: "as You, O LORD, do know" (Psalm 40:9).

The Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, renders the verb εὐηγγελισάμην, an aorist of euangelizomai, the New Testament's word for preaching the gospel. For "assembly" it uses ἐκκλησία, the word the New Testament uses for the church. Read in Greek, the line sounds almost like ‘I preached the gospel of righteousness in the great church.’

The English versions show the range. The KJV says "I have preached righteousness in the great congregation," and "preached" is the word English Christians have long used for gospel preaching. The LSV keeps the news-bringing sense: "I have proclaimed tidings of righteousness." The BSB puts it in the present, "I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly," as an ongoing practice. The Korean Bibles divide in a similar way: the 흠정역 follows the KJV with 선포하였사오니, ‘I proclaimed,’ while the 개역한글 says 의의 기쁜 소식을 전하였나이다, ‘I told the glad news of righteousness.’

Wesley glosses "Righteousness" simply as "Thy faithfulness," and widens the great congregation: "not only to the Jews, but also to all nations; to whom Christ preached by his apostles" Wesley, pointing to Ephesians, where Christ "came and preached peace to you who were far away" (Ephesians 2:17). Matthew Henry reads the passage as a prophecy of redemption in Christ: "Now the purchase of our salvation is made, the proclamation is sent forth, calling us to come and accept it" Matthew Henry. And he dwells on the lips that were not sealed: "Whoever undertook to preach the gospel of Christ, would be under great temptation to conceal it" Matthew Henry.

Paul says that "the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that comes by faith from start to finish" (Romans 1:17). In Psalm 40 the one who tells that righteousness to the assembly is not someone who has left all trouble behind but someone who still calls himself poor and needy. Not keeping God's rescue hidden in one's heart: that is where this verse's kind of news-telling begins.