After reminding us listeners once again how “great and awesome” YHWH is, this psalmist notes that “[t]he King’s strength also loves justice” — referring literally to David, not figuratively to YAH.
Further, with a fearsome image of the Ark of the Covenant, the Lord’s mobile home, the psalmist claims that David has “established equity; / [and] executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.”
Then he name-drops Moses, Aaron and Samuel as “priests … who called upon [YAH’s] name,” and got quick responses because they “kept His testimonies and the ordinance He gave them.”
Now the clincher — for me, anyway: “You were to them God-Who-Forgives, / Though You took vengeance on their deeds.” But did YAH actually punish them? And what about David himself?
Are the people who make laws for everyone else to follow ever punished? Don’t political power and greed — the green-backed gods — always have final say on what’s legal and what’s just?
If they didn’t have the last word, then Moses would have been truly punished for murder; Aaron, for idolatry; Samuel, for genocide; and David, for adultery, murder and psalm-writing that sucks.