Wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and guile depart not from her streets.
Wickedness dwells at the very center of the place described, and deceit and guile do not leave its streets but stay there openly and pervasively. The scene is one of entrenched corruption, where wrong is not hidden or passing but constant and public in the thoroughfares. Its setting is human wickedness standing under God's just anger against sin. That anger points to the just punishment due to persistent and incorrigible wrongdoers, yet it stands alongside His mercy and loving-kindness.
Psalm 55 is a prophetic word picture revealing Christ's inner experience as He faced life-and-death struggles with the enemy. This verse belongs to that portrayal of the darkness He endured. It belongs to the prophecy of His humiliation as man's substitute, in which He took man's weaknesses, infirmities, and sins upon Himself. He did so so fully as to identify Himself with man in all man's failings and sufferings, and weighed down by them He poured out His soul in agony for God's help. That bearing of man's burden shows the greatness of the sacrifice He made for man.
Wickedness dwells at the very center of the place described, and deceit and guile do not leave its streets but stay there openly and pervasively. The scene is one of entrenched corruption, where wrong is not hidden or passing but constant and public in the thoroughfares. Its setting is human wickedness standing under God's just anger against sin. That anger points to the just punishment due to persistent and incorrigible wrongdoers, yet it stands alongside His mercy and loving-kindness.
Psalm 55 is a prophetic word picture revealing Christ's inner experience as He faced life-and-death struggles with the enemy. This verse belongs to that portrayal of the darkness He endured. It belongs to the prophecy of His humiliation as man's substitute, in which He took man's weaknesses, infirmities, and sins upon Himself. He did so so fully as to identify Himself with man in all man's failings and sufferings, and weighed down by them He poured out His soul in agony for God's help. That bearing of man's burden shows the greatness of the sacrifice He made for man.