Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee.
Destroy - Hebrew, 'Deal with them us guilty;' 'bring on them the penalty of guilt' х ha'ªshiymeem (H816)]: cf. margin, Psalms 34:21. These imprecatory denunciations do not prove that the Old Testament is a lower standard than the Gospel (cf. Matthew 5:44 with 38); but are predictions of the afore-appointed doom of the transgressors (Jude 1:4): also they express David's concurrence in it as the sentence of God. David pronounces God's sentence against them, not as his personal enemies, but as opposers of God and His Anointed: and only against the finally impenitent (Psalms 7:12). 'What God does, and must do, that man not merely may, but must wish' (Hengstenberg). 'David speaks in the form of a wish concerning what he certainly foresees, showing how we must not be dissatisfied with the known determination of God which He has unalterably fixed' (Augustine, Sermon Twenty-two, 'Ad Scrip.') Compare 1 Samuel 15:35; 1 Samuel 16:1; Psalms 139:21; Revelation 14:10. Joy in the destruction of God's foes becomes the child of God alike in the Old and New Testaments.
Let them fall by (Hebrew, min, from; owing to) their own counsels - like Haman (Esther 7:9-10).