Psalm 5 Bible study: In the morning

The title says, "For the Chief Musician, with the flutes. A Psalm by David" (5:1). Then the psalm asks to be heard, three ways: "Give ear to my words, LORD. Consider my meditation" (5:1), and "Listen to the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for I pray to you" (5:2) (tap meditation). Then a time of day, twice: "LORD, in the morning you will hear my voice. In the morning I will lay my requests before you, and will watch expectantly" (5:3) (tap morning). Here is what almost everyone misses: in Hebrew the verse has no word for requests. It has the verb arakh (tap lay), which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "arrange or set in order", with nothing after it to say what is set in order. It is the verb of Abraham, who "laid the wood in order" (Genesis 22:9), and of "You prepare a table before me" (Psalm 23:5). And watch expectantly is tsafah (tap watch), the verb Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "look out or about, spy, keep watch", used of a watchman. In the morning he sets something in order before the LORD, and then he keeps watch.

Psalms 5:9→leads toMatthew 12:36-37

Psalm 5 is full of words. It opens, "Give ear to my words, LORD" (Psalm 5:1). It says of the LORD, "You will destroy those who speak lies" (Psalm 5:6), and of the psalmist's enemies, "For there is no faithfulness in their mouth … They flatter with their tongue" (Psalm 5:9). Jesus said, "I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment" (Matthew 12:36), and "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matthew 12:37). Jesus doesn't cite Psalm 5, so setting them together is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, words weighed before God, not on a shared English word. One reading hears Jesus speaking of the judgment of speech the psalm speaks of (Psalm 5:6), and saying it of every word that men speak, the hearer's own included. Another reads Jesus's words in their own setting, spoken after the Pharisees said he cast out demons by Beelzebul (Matthew 12:24), without pointing to this psalm.

עָרַךְarakhsay a-RAKH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "arrange or set in order". Strong's: "to set in a row, i.e. arrange, put in order". "In the morning I will lay my requests before you" (5:3). The Hebrew has no word for requests: the verb stands with nothing after it to say what is set in order. It is the verb of Abraham, who "laid the wood in order" (Genesis 22:9), of the priests, who "lay wood in order on the fire" (Leviticus 1:7), and of "You prepare a table before me" (Psalm 23:5). Job uses it of his cause: "I would set my cause in order before him" (Job 23:4).