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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
69:9-12 I Bear Your Reproach. The idea of reproach, introduced in v. 7, dominates this section. Here the song is speaking of the current condition: the reproaches that fall on the singer are not really the proper response of other godly people to his wrongs; they are instead the weapons of those who reproach God, scorning God himself, his covenant, and his faithful people. They even turn the signs of devout mourning and repentance (fasting, sackcloth) into an occasion to mock and humiliate the pious person. (Even though the singer is a penitent, he is still consumed with zeal for God's house, i.e., is loyal to the covenant and its ordinances.)
69:9 zeal for your house has consumed me. In John 2:17, Jesus' disciples remember this text after Jesus has driven the livestock merchants and money-changers out of the temple. Jesus embodies the ideal pious member of God's people, which is the calling of the Davidic king (though unlike all the heirs of David before him, Jesus does not have "folly" and "wrongs" [Ps. 69:5] to repent of; cf. John 8:46). The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. In Rom. 15:3, Paul applies this text to Jesus, because he saw Jesus as the ideal covenant member who was willing to suffer reproach for the sake of God's truth. In this he is an example to the Roman Christians, for whom the issue of the weak and the strong probably included elements of shame in Roman society: Romans are known to have looked down upon those with Jewish scruples about food (the weak). The faithful Christian should be willing to suffer the scorn that some people might heap on him if he has close fellowship with the socially "unworthy"; nothing, not even social reproach, should be allowed to prevent these Christians from worshiping together.
