4 You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,
     and evil cannot dwell with you.
5 Braggarts cannot stand in your sight;
     you hate all those who work wickedness.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
    the bloodthirsty and deceitful, O Lord, you abhor.
7 But as for me, through the greatness of your mercy I will go into your house;
     I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.
     . . .
9 There is no truth in their mouth;
     there is destruction in their heart;
     Their throat is an open grave;
     they flatter with their tongue.
10 Declare them guilty, O God;
     let them fall, because of their schemes.
     Because of their many transgressions cast them out,
     for they have rebelled against you.
     . . .
12 You, O Lord, will bless the righteous;
     you will defend them with your favor as with a shield.

If you read Psalm 5 with some uneasiness, that may be a good thing. It does sound much like the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple in a parable of Jesus: he brags of his righteousness, comparing himself to “others—extortioners, unjust, adulterers—and this tax collector.” Jesus’s verdict is that the other man in the temple, the tax collector, “went home justified,” and the Pharisee did not (Luke 18:9–14). In the psalm, there is, like that Pharisee’s prayer, the same clear distinction between myself and others, a division between (we can easily imagine the plural) us and them. “I” am among “the righteous,” whom God blesses; they, those others, are the thoroughly wicked whom God destroys.
     There is quite a large change in perspective from Psalm 5 (and other psalms like it) to the New Testament:

• There is a change in the people of God from a nation to a borderless fellowship, in which “there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free,” “no barbarian or Scythian,” no native, immigrant, American, Iranian, Mexican, Armenian, or Azerbaijani, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11).
• This new people of God welcomes sinners, prays for enemies, and practices mercy, as God does (Matthew 5:43–47). Its members are taught to absorb misfortune rather than treat each other as enemies (1 Corinthians 6:7).
• And this new people turn their awareness of sin away from the “others” to humble self-awareness, pointing the finger at themselves. In Romans 3:10–18 Paul takes some Old Testament accusation passages, including Psalm 5:9, to say that all humanity, including those who congratulate themselves on their goodness, is sinful—in need of God’s salvation through Christ.

     But there is something more direct for us here in the psalm. It reinforces the lesson of Psalm 1: don’t be fools about what company you keep or be dragged down into the sins of others. We can also hear Psalm 5 it as the complaint of Jesus against humanity (against us, that is), tempted to just let us be lost (as he might have been: Matthew 16:23), which makes the gospel of mercy and grace shine all the more. In short, Psalm 5 helps us not to expect the different parts of the Bible to be identical.

• Psalm 5 is quoted here from the Psalter in the 2016 American (Episcopal) Book of Common Prayer. I have changed the verse numbering to match what we see in most of our Bibles.
• These posts on the Psalms are in aid of the reading of the Psalms—one a day through the first five months of 2022—by members, attenders, friends, et al. of Together Church, Wyoming, MI.
• I’ll mention here again that I don’t even see, much less approve, the advertising that you may see on this page. See my post “What Is My Label? 1.”