Do not keep silent, O God of my praise! 2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful Have opened against me; They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. 3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, And fought against me without a cause. 4 In return for my love they are my accusers, But I give myself to prayer. 5 Thus they have rewarded me evil for good, And hatred for my love.
Psalm 109:1-5

David was no stranger to attacks from those who should have been his friends. For years Saul sought to kill him. His own son, Absalom, nearly succeeded in a coup d'état to steal his father’s kingdom.

One can hear David’s pain in Psalm 109.

But David’s pain was a faint pre-echo of the pain David’s greater son, Jesus, experienced at the hands of His own people, and others.

Read the first five verses thinking of Jesus crying out in Gethsemane to His Father, asking that the cup of suffering might pass from Him. Yet, only if it was His Father’s will.

Read verses two through three thinking of those who literally surrounded Him, mocking and taunting Him during His trials before the Sanhedrin. Before Pilate. Before Herod. And then again before Pilate.

Read verses four and five thinking of how the Jewish Messiah and the King of the Jews loved His people, but was mistreated in return for His love—love heard in His words, experienced by His compassion on the sick, the dying, the outcasts, and the downright sinful.

Truly He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).

Yet He gave His live to safe us! What a Savior!