Praying Psalms That Perplex

What can we do with verses that sound self-righteous?

Somewhere near Toluca, Montana. Personal photo, 2022.

Praying psalms and other Scripture has been a recurring theme here lately. If you haven’t yet, it could be helpful to start by reading In 2025, Pray the Bible.

At some point, you might also take a look at Pray a Psalm Right Now and When You Pray Scripture, Are Tangents Okay?

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My Righteousness?

Here’s something you likely won’t hear a Christian say:

Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity within me.

Yet, those words are found in Psalm 7, verse 8. And they were originally prayed by David, the king of Israel.

You can find similar statements in psalms 18, 26, 35, 119, and others. This is perplexing for at least a couple reasons.

First, we might wonder how they could possibly be consistent with what the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (3:23)

Or perhaps even more to the point:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. (Romans 3:10b–12)

As Christians, we know that our righteousness isn’t our own. We are credited with Jesus’ righteousness, which is granted to us by faith:

For our sake he (God the Father) made him (Jesus Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

If our righteousness is from Christ and not ourselves, then doesn’t Psalm 7:8 get things backward? It’s a reasonable question to ask.

And if you’re using the psalms as a springboard for your own prayers, verses like this present more than just a theological puzzle. They raise practical questions about how we might pray. And how we should think of ourselves in relation to God.

So how might we go about praying in response to Psalm 7:8 and verses like it? For starters, I’ll offer something I’ve said before: don’t overthink this prayer practice. It’s meant to lift some of the burden that prayer often carries. It’s not intended to tie you in theological knots. It shouldn’t make you anxious that you aren’t praying “the right way.”

Keep it simple. Just read the text. And then pray your honest response. Again, here’s Psalm 7:8:

Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity within me.

I might then pray something like this:

Lord God, I can’t imagine saying something like that to you. It makes me uneasy because I don’t feel very righteous. But Lord, I know you are completely righteous. I know you have perfect integrity. Help me to grow in righteousness and integrity, Lord.

You’ll notice how my prayer response is different from what the psalmist said. This brings up an important insight that applies to praying any psalm:

• You don’t need to copy what the psalmist says or even necessarily to pray in a similar way. Rather, just respond to God honestly. If doing that produces a prayer that’s quite different from what you read, that’s fine.

Another option for responding to verses like this is to simply ask the Lord for help to understand them.

Father, I don’t get why anybody would say that. If any of us were judged according to our own righteousness, wouldn’t we be toast? Help me to understand why this is in your Word.

A Benjaminite’s Betrayal

As we’ve seen, you can pray in response to verses that you don’t fully understand. Yet, the more you come to grasp their meaning, the more it opens up possibilities for your conversation with God. We’ll first dig a little deeper into what’s going on in Psalm 7. Then, at the end, we’ll circle back to consider what this could mean for our own prayer.

To gain some more insight, let’s take a look at the introduction to Psalm 7 and its first verse:

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

Oh Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;

save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,

lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,

rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

Today, the psalms can feel like a spiritual buffet. They offer every flavor to choose from, so you may just pick out what suits your mood and put it on your plate. But of course, for the original authors, the psalms were responses to real-life situations—and often dangerous ones.

The Bible never pinpoints who Cush the Benjaminite was. One possibility is that he was among Saul’s servants who pursued David and threatened his life (1 Samuel 22:6). As Israel’s first king, Saul stood to lose a lot of power if Israel accepted David as the new ruler. So Saul tried to have David—his own son-in-law—killed.

When David talks about his pursuers in Psalm 7, they aren’t a metaphor. And the people who wanted him dead were often hot on his trail.

With that in mind, let’s look at Psalm 7:8 again. This time we’ll include verse 9:

The Lord judges the peoples;

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness

and according to the integrity that is in me.

Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,

and may you establish the righteous—

you who test the minds and hearts,

O righteous God!

As Christians, we’re familiar with our sinfulness being contrasted against God’s perfect righteousness. As we saw earlier, this is what Paul does in Romans 3:23:

For all have sinned and fall short of the righteousness of God.

But David is doing something different in Psalm 7. He’s contrasting his righteousness with the wickedness of his pursuers. The fact that all people have sinned doesn’t erase the fact that one person’s righteousness can be far greater than that of another. To see this in practical terms, think of Mother Theresa. She wasn’t morally perfect. Yet, she was far more righteous than Osama bin Laden.

Here’s an image that helps: If you place a candle next to the sun, no matter how large or bright the candle is, it won’t compare. The sun is far, far more radiant. Just as no candle’s light can compare to the sun, no human’s righteousness can compare to God’s.

Now just picture two candles. Imagine two different ones sitting side-by-side. In this case, one candle might in fact burn much more brightly than another.

With this in mind, let’s go back to Psalm 7. As we’ve seen, David prays boldly here. He speaks with moral clarity. That’s because he knows that for all his flaws, he’s still much more righteous than the wicked Cush.

It’s also helpful to understand what David means by “judge me, O Lord.” He’s not talking about the kind of everlasting judgment that the word may bring to mind. Instead he’s asking the Lord to vindicate him in the here-and-now, to give him victory over Cush.

A Prayer for Justice

At this point, it might seem like we’ve drifted from our original goal: simply praying a psalm. So why should we bother thinking through all of that? After all, as I said earlier, you don’t have to understand a verse perfectly to pray in response to it.

Here’s one reason: someday you’ll find yourself in David’s shoes. Hopefully, you’ll never have people like Saul’s men literally threatening your life. But you will face opposition. Sooner or later, you will face real resistance from real people in your walk with God.

And the Bible speaks plainly to all of life’s circumstances—even the most difficult. Whatever we’re facing in life, psalms can meet us there. We’re reminded that we can, and must, rely on God in the times of greatest difficulty.

That being said, when you encounter some kind of opposition in your life, are you going to pray word-for-word, “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness”?

Probably not. For good reason, talking like that to God makes Christians uneasy.

But you can certainly pray with an understanding that our integrity matters to God, imperfect though it is. And you can pray with confidence that God cares about delivering justice to his people.

Consider chapter 18 in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus shared a parable with a similar theme:

He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”

And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Luke 18:2–8a

It’s a powerful reminder to keep praying—to pray when it’s hard, to pray when we feel exhausted. And yes, to pray for justice when you face unjust opposition.

Maybe you don’t face any obvious opposition in your life right now. Give thanks for that! You can still pray on behalf of the many Christians who do, including those around the world who face persecution.

Try praying part of Psalm 7 right now. Just step into it and try. It may well bring up questions I haven’t spoken to in this post. I’ll offer more thoughts on the subject, but also keep in mind that this is where a church community and Christian friends are priceless. It’s in dialogue with one another that we gain wisdom.

For now, take some time to pray. The bottom line: don’t worry about “getting it right.” Just pray honestly.

The Lord judges the peoples;

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness

and according to the integrity that is in me.

Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,

and may you establish the righteous—

you who test the minds and hearts,

O righteous God!

My shield is with God,

who saves the upright in heart.

Psalm 7:8-10

Many blessings! Thank you to those who made it this far. And don’t forget to leave a comment and share how praying the Bible is going for you!