The psalm is without a title in the Hebrew for the reason of having a similar meaning to the preceding one.

Some one, perchance, hears a person saying, Judge me, O God, and he is amazed. For one usually says, May God pardon me; spare me, O God. Who is there who says, Judge me, O God? And sometimes in the psalm this very verse is placed at a pause point, that it may be proffered by the reader and answered by the people. Is there perhaps anyone whose heart is not deeply affected and who is not afraid to sing to God and say, Judge me, O God? And yet the people sing it, believing, and do not think that they wrongly desire what they have learned from the divinely inspired text; and if they little understand. . . . For it continued and showed in the words coming next what kind of judgment it meant, that it is not [the judgment] of damnation but of discerning. For the psalm says, Judge me, O God. What does it mean, Judge me, O God? And discern my cause from an unholy nation. . . . According to that mode whereby judgment is called distinction, All of us must be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ so that there a person may receive what he has done through the body, whether good or evil; for it is distinction that good things be distributed to the good, evil things to the evil. For if judgment were received always in regard to evilness, the psalm would not say, Judge me, O God.

Let a distinction be drawn between one who believes in you and one who does not. In weakness they are equal but in conscience far apart; there is parity of travail, disparity of desire. The desire of the ungodly will be extinguished, but what of the desire of the just? We should certainly be apprehensive about that, if the one who makes the promise were not totally reliable. The goal of our desire is the one who has promised; he will give us himself because he has already given us himself. He will give his immortal self when we are immortal, as he has already given himself to us as mortal in our mortality.

Dispatch your reliable assistance (by light referring to the support, and by truth to its reliability) . . . so that your reliable help may conduct me to the holy places and your holy temple.

Send your light and overcome my shadows. Send your truth and conquer my lying. Your light and truth lead me to your holy mountain and into your tabernacle. When I draw near, you lead me to the altar of God, where, although old, I become as a youth.

Your light and your truth: we have two names here but one single reality, for what else is God’s light, if not God’s truth? And what is God’s truth, if not God’s light? But both of these are the one Christ, who says, I am the light of the world. Whoever believes in me will not walk in darkness. I am the way, the truth and the life.^[1] He is light, and he is truth. May he come, then, and deliver us, distinguishing our cause from that of an unholy people even now; may he deliver us from the wicked and deceitful. May he separate wheat from weeds, for he will send in his angels at harvest time to collect from his kingdom all the things that make people stumble and throw them into a blazing fire, but his wheat they will gather into the barn.

The beam that emanates from light does not come after the light. True light never lacks a beam, having it as part of its substance to shine, just as it always has it as part of its substance to exist. But the manifestation of this beam has been called a sending, by which Christ appeared to the world. Although he filled all things with his invisible majesty, he came, nevertheless, to those who had not known him, as if from a very remote and deep seclusion. At that time, he took away the blindness of ignorance, as it has been written: For those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, a light has risen.^[1] Of course the light of truth has been sent out in prior ages to enlighten the holy fathers and prophets, as when David said, Send out your light and your truth. Of course the divinity of the Son has made clear the works of his presence in various ways and by many signs.^[2] Yet all these prefigurations and all these miracles bore testimony about that sending of which the apostle speaks: When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made from a woman, made under the Law.^[3]

The holy mount of God is Christ. His tabernacle indwells the virtues of the righteous.

What is the difference between confessing to him on the lyre and confessing to him on the psaltery? . . . Each of them is carried in the hands and plucked manually. . . . Each of them is good, provided that the player is skilled. . . . But here is the difference: the psaltery has its vaulted part at the top: that wooden, concave, sounding chamber, its drumlike piece, I mean, on which the strings are stretched and that gives them their resonance. The lyre has its hollow sounding chamber at the bottom. Accordingly our activities can be distinguished into those that are played on the psaltery and those played on the lyre, but both are pleasing to God and melodious in his ears. When we do something in harmony with God’s commandments, obeying his orders and careful to comply with his precepts, and when we feel no pain in the doing, that is the music of the psaltery. The angels do this all the time, and they never feel pain. But sometimes we do suffer from troubles, temptations and obstacles on earth. Our pain is only in our lower part, because it is due to our mortal condition and the debt of tribulation we contract from our primitive origins. Moreover, the things that give us pain are not above us. In these cases we are playing the lyre. The sweet sounds proceed from the lower part; we suffer as we sing our psalms; or rather, we sing and play the lyre. . . . All patient endurance is melody to God’s ears. But if you give way under tribulations like that, you have broken your lyre.

I shall console myself and . . . not allow myself to be alarmed by my thoughts but to hope in you, my God, to whom I should also give thanks, for from you it is also possible to hope for salvation.

From this it is clear that both psalms have the same meaning. Those using them encourage themselves to have stronger hope, overcome the feeling of discouragement and await the salvation from God that will doubtless be given them.