Jehovah, thou hast heard the desire of the meek, thou hast established their heart thou causest thine ear to hear,
Psalm 10 spends sixteen verses staring at an oppressor who acts as if God were blind. Then the psalm turns and speaks to God as one who has already listened. Verse 17 is that turn: the prayer is answered, and the answer begins further back than the prayer itself. (The ESV says "the afflicted." Older translations use "the humble," and the writers quoted here follow that wording.)
The verse belongs to the psalm's closing praise. That praise is sung before the rescue has come.
(vv. 16-18) Anticipating God's intervention, the godly celebrate with praise His answer to their appeal. The judgment of the wicked, summed up in Antichrist, will usher in the everlasting kingdom of the Lord — "The Lord is King for ever." As for the godly, their prayer will be answered, their heart established, their sufferings over. Never again will "the man of the earth" terrify them.
The verse names three acts of God, and their order matters. He does not overhear a desire that came from nowhere. The desire He answers is the desire He produced.
Jehovah has heard the desire of the humble. He prepared their heart, and then listened. That hearing will be in judging — in being Judge for the fatherless and the oppressed. So the man of the earth, the one whose strength and hope were there, should oppress no more.
What God stirs up in a person, He commits Himself to satisfy.
God will fill the hungry because He Himself has stirred up the hunger. As with prayer, when God prepares the heart to pray, He prepares His ear to hear (Ps. 10:17). So with spiritual hunger: when God prepares the heart to hunger, He will prepare His hand to fill.
The verse does not say God hears the desire of the eloquent or the deserving. Humility is not a decoration on prayer; it is what makes prayer prayer at all.
A spiritual prayer is a humble prayer: "Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble." Prayer is asking for charity, and that needs humility. It is fitting to see a poor nothing lying at the feet of its Maker: "Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes" (Gen. 18:27). The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends. God accepts broken expressions when they come from broken hearts.
If God's ear follows the heart He prepares, the state of the heart is no side issue in prayer.
How few of the countless prayers continually offered — often sincerely, too — spring from a well so deep and pure! We are invited to make our requests known to God, whatever the burdened heart is aware of. How great is His grace! But prayer to God is always tied to communion, the state of the heart before Him. "If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." How often the heart groans, yet not to Him! "They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds" (Hos. 7:14). "You will prepare their heart, you will cause your ear to hear." Fruitfulness to God, and the promise that He answers all prayer, are inseparably tied to abiding in Him.
Commentators also read the psalm as a picture of Israel's future. Verse 17 is the relief on the far side of the trouble.
"The Lord is King forever and ever" (v. 16). The challenge of the antichrist will have been completely silenced. No such challenge will ever rise again. Christ will reign for the thousand years of peace, and for eternity nothing can change His title of all authority. The nations that dared to attack His land will have perished. The psalmist voices the gratitude of the humble: the Lord has heard their prayer, and He will also prepare their heart for the unmixed blessing that will be theirs (v. 17).
The prepared heart does not arrive alone.
This passage shows the Lord's kingdom that lasts forever. With it come the deliverance of the land of Israel from foreign rule, the humbling of the people before God, and His preparation of their heart.
- Prepared — God works first: He prepared their heart, and then listened. The prayer He answers is the prayer He produced.
- Humbled — the desire He hears is the humble one. The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends.
- Heard — when God prepares the heart to pray, He prepares His ear to hear; when He stirs hunger, He prepares His hand to fill.
- Abiding — His ear follows the heart He prepares. So answered prayer grows out of communion with Him, not out of many words.
- Delivered — the hearing ends in judging. Prayer answered, heart established, suffering over, the oppressor silenced under a King who reigns forever.
To do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed one, that the man of the earth may terrify no more.
Psalm 10 spends seventeen verses watching a wicked man do as he pleases — hurting the poor, boasting, and leaving God out of his thinking. The last verse answers all of it in one sentence, and raises one question: who is this "man of the earth"?
This verse finishes the sentence before it. One writer follows the steps: God prepares, hears, then judges.
Jehovah has heard the desire of the humble. He prepared their heart, and then listened. That listening will be in judging — in being Judge for the fatherless and the oppressed. So the man of the earth, the one who had his strength and hope there, should no more oppress.
The verse names two people God acts for: the fatherless and the oppressed. One writer shows what that action costs the oppressor, and what it gains the world.
So, in perfect righteousness He champions the cause of the fatherless and the oppressed over "the man of the earth," so that all oppression may cease (v. 18). The dreadful end of the man of sin will mean the greatest relief and blessing for the whole world.
Older translations end this verse "that the man of the earth may no more oppress," and the writers below quote from them. Hebrew has more than one word for "man," and the choice here matters.
In the Old Testament several words are used for "man." One of them is enosh, which we are told carries the sense of "frail mortal man," and is almost a term of contempt. This is the word used when the Psalmist asks his question in Psalm 9: "Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail" — and again, "Put them in fear, O Lord; that the nations may know themselves to be but men." It is used once more in Psalm 10, when he speaks of "the man of the earth."
The second half of the title matters too. This man can look impressive, but his reach stops at the ground.
Enosh may look like quite a big man to himself, and to others. When he rises to his full height he may do many pretentious things. He may defy God. He may oppress those who fear God. But after all, he is only "the frail, mortal man of the earth." With heaven he has nothing to do.
One writer traces every side of this man's evil back to a single root.
He persecutes the poor, but it is his pride that moves him to do it. He is covetous and "blesses the covetous" (v. 3), and his pride leads him to boast of this evil trait. Again, he has no desire for God: "God is not in all his thoughts" (v. 4), and this is because of the pride of his countenance. He completely shuts God out of his thoughts. Self-sufficiency fills him, and he imagines that he will never be moved.
One writer reads the phrase as pointing past any local tyrant to a final one, with a careful limit on how far the Psalms take it.
The book of Psalms speaks of this coming one in prophecy, in his character as "the man of the earth" (Ps. 10:18), and also as "the bloody and deceitful man" (Ps. 5:6). These descriptions do fit the wicked in general in the coming crisis. Yet there is one person, and only one, to whom they can refer in the fullest sense. It is the character of the Antichrist, and not his person, that is before us in these and other Psalms.
The oppressor is a man. So is the One who removes him, and that contrast closes the psalm.
So the godly are carried forward in thought to the setting up of the kingdom in power on earth. Nothing less than this is God's design, and nothing less will meet the need of His tried, persecuted, earthly people. And we should notice who will bring this happy outcome about: One who is a man, and could die. He will show everyone that the wicked one of Psalm 10 is only a man of the earth. That is the man who in the pride of his heart banishes God from his thoughts and sneers at his enemies. He must give way before the power of the Son of Man, who, though He has died, will return as man to reign.
- Heard. God prepares the desire of the humble before He answers it. The prayer itself is His gift.
- Judged. His way of listening is to act as Judge; the fatherless and the oppressed get a courtroom, not just sympathy.
- Frail. The oppressor's title is his sentence — enosh, frail mortal man. The earth is his whole domain; he has nothing to do with heaven.
- Proud. What makes him wicked is pride: it drives the cruelty, the greed, and the shutting of God out of his thoughts.
- Overthrown. A man of the earth falls before the Son of Man, and when he falls, oppression itself ends — relief for the whole world.