Psalm 41 Jan. 23 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David.  1Blessed is he who considers the poor. Yahweh will deliver him in the day of evil. 2Yahweh will preserve him, and keep him alive. He shall be blessed on the earth, and he will not surrender him to the will of his enemies. 3Yahweh will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness. 4I said, Yahweh, have mercy on me! Heal me, for I have sinned against You. 5My enemies speak evil against me: When will he die, and his name perish? 6If he comes to see me, he speaks falsehood. His heart gathers iniquity to itself. When he goes outside, he tells it. 7All who hate me whisper together against me. They imagine the worst for me. 8An evil disease, they say, has afflicted him. Now that he lies he shall rise up no more. 9Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who ate bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me.  10But You, Yahweh, have mercy on me, and raise me up, that I may repay them. 11By this I know that You delight in me, because my enemy doesn’t triumph over me. 12As for me, You uphold me in my integrity, and set me in Your presence forever.  13Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, from everlasting and to everlasting! Amen and amen. 

Commentary

41:1 “The day of evil” ultimately refers to the day of judgment. In that day we will be as the poor who beg us for grace in this life; we should therefore be generous to them, even if their poverty, like our spiritual poverty, is ultimately the result of their own poor decision making and sin.
41:9 My own familiar friend- Quoted as Christ’s feelings about Judas in Jn. 13:18. Jesus called Judas his “friend” at the moment of betrayal (Mt. 26:50). The question of course is how could Jesus ‘trust’ Judas and feel hurt at the betrayal when He knew from the beginning who should betray Him (Jn. 6:70,71). One window on this is to remember that Jesus shared our human nature, and we have the possibility within that nature to know something very well about a person, and yet our love for them means that we still trust them. Samson’s love and trust in Delilah, when it was obvious she was going to betray him, is a parade example. The love of Christ was and is surpassing in its depth. Love isn’t cynical, but hopes all things; and He hoped for Judas, that somehow the humanly inevitable wouldn’t happen; just as God told prophets like Ezekiel from the start that Israel wouldn’t hear them, and yet He appeals for Israel to hear the words of those prophets. That same hopeful love is focused on us who are in Christ; that is the practical encouragement and comfort we can take from this insight into the Lord’s thinking about Judas.