Word of Encouragement (5/12/2026)

O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Do not sweep my soul away with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men, in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes. (Ps. 26:8-10)

David’s prayer is that the Lord does not sweep his soul away with sinners. This is so because he saw himself as different from bloodthirsty sinners. He did not wish to share the same fate as such people.

David describes them as sinners. Is David being self-righteous here, excluding himself from other sinners? Most likely not. He would not have denied that he, too, was a sinner, in the sense that he, too, was guilty of many sins. How can he, then, set himself apart from them? What David means by “sinners” here is not necessarily those who sin, but those who refuse to repent of their sins or to acknowledge their sins as sins. They sin in willful opposition to God and His law, not out of weakness. They sin habitually, not occasionally. Their sin is in the spirit of a wholesale defiance of God’s lordship over them, not a momentary relapse. It is not that they have no sense of right and wrong, but whatever ethical standard they have is self-made, not divinely established.

David also describes them as “bloodthirsty men.” Maybe he had specific enemies of his in mind, who were particularly evil. Everyone is a sinner, but not everyone can be described as a bloodthirsty man. He goes on to further describe them as those “in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes.” Do you see the escalation? There are evil devices (or wickedness) in the hands of these bloodthirsty men. And there are bribes in their right hands. In ancient Hebrew culture, the right side was associated with authority and power. If so, this verse implies that bribes are the worst of evil devices. How can that be?

We can think of many “evil devices,” such as murder, intimidation, libel, kidnapping, etc. In what way are bribes so much worse than these and others? It must be that bribes pervert the system of justice. Evil men will commit evil deeds. But as long as the system of justice is intact, such evil deeds can be punished and thereby suppressed. But no such measures can be expected when the judges accept bribes from wicked people and pervert justice in the court of law. If evil is called good and good is called evil, when the wicked go scot-free and the good are thrown into jail, hopelessness will permeate throughout the whole society. More than anything, bribes destroy the fabric of social order and allow evil to multiply. No wonder David didn’t want to have anything to do with such people!

God did hear David’s prayer. But this was not because he was better than those bloodthirsty sinners. His only plea was, “O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.”  This longing was answered in Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of people that sinners like David and us can be justified by faith (Rom. 4:5) and become children of God (John 1:12). Let us meditate on this wonderful truth until our joy of salvation is renewed.