The Psalms are a collection of emotional and poetic reflections, which provide a unique view as to how the enemy is invoked in prayer and worship. Accordingly, to gain further insight into the nature of enmity in Scripture, one must consider how enmity is used as a literary device in the Old Testament. Whilst the ‘enemy’ of the New Testament is labelled and personified, the ‘enemy’ of the Old Testament changes throughout the course of Israel’s checkered history, depending on the nations they are fighting or the tyrants they are oppressed by. However, it is the messianic/eschatological outlook of the Psalter that can finally raise the tension between the ideal of righteousness and the reality of sin by pointing to the future Son of David as the ultimate righteous one. Each of the two psalms also gives some particular nuance to our understanding of righteousness. Furthermore, this ideal of righteousness is bound up with the ideal of the Davidic king who is both the defender of the righteous and the righteous sufferer. A canonical study of the claims of righteousness contained in Psalms 17 and 18 confirms the psalmic presentation of the righteous as someone who exhibits a wholesome piety and moral integrity, with an utter dependence on God’s grace. Four discoveries from the canonical study are found to be particularly useful for this topic: the canonical grouping of Psalms 15-24, the wisdom theme, the royal theme, and the righteousness theme. However, the canonical approach to the Psalms, by its attention to the canonical shaping of the Psalter, holds more promise in unlocking the meaning of the “self-righteous” psalms. This paper will examine various approaches to the Psalms, and demonstrate that formal, literary and semantic studies have their valid but limited values. Treating these claims as sub-Christian sentiments or distorting their meaning will not do justice to the Psalms, nor will it help us in understanding and appropriating these psalms. Some extraordinary claims of one’s own righteousness in the Psalms have been an acute problem for reformed Christians who believe in sola fide and sola gratia.
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