If you have been paying close attention to the psalms preceding Psalm 7 and have been comparing them, you may have noticed a growth in the intensity of feeling on David's part. The first two psalms are introductory and are not by David, so far as we know. But the next ones, indeed, almost all the psalms in the psalter's first division (Psalms 1-41), are by David, and it is the earliest of these that show the growth I am talking about. 

The second half of the psalm, which begins with verse 8, contains such a radical change of mood that many commentators seem to be without any adequate explanation. They have supposed that something intervenes, like an oracle given to the psalmist by one of the priests. This is an unnecessary and mechanical explanation. What happened is that God heard and accepted David's prayer, as he himself tells us: “Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer (vv. 8-9).

Yet, in spite of the extremely black picture I am painting, the situation was not quite as hopeless as even the psalmist thought. Nor is it as hopeless as you might think. It may be that David felt under God's fierce disapproval and wrath. I am sure he did. I am sure that he felt that God had hidden his face and was nowhere to be seen or found. But God was still there, and he was David's God in spite of everything.

Yesterday we looked at the first feature of verses 1-7.  Today we look at the other three.
 
2. A loss of a sense of God's presence. A sense of being disapproved of by an angry God is bad enough, but sometimes in our depression the case seems even worse than this. What if God should not even be present? Suppose he has turned away from us or withdrawn himself? This is what David was feeling, which he indicates by the word "return" in verse 4.

In the New International Version the psalm is divided into four stanzas, which is right. But in terms of its content the psalm is best considered in two sections. In the first (vv. 1-7) David is in great distress. His whole person--body, soul and spirit--is in anguish. He senses the anger of God upon him for sin. He cannot sleep. In the second section (vv. 8- 10) he suddenly becomes aware of God's presence again and moves out of his depression into new faith and bold conduct.