Psalms 69:27 Meaning: A Cry for Justice Against Evil

The English word iniquity (or crime in the WEB) translates a Hebrew term that can mean either sin itself or the punishment that sin deserves. Many older versions read, “Add iniquity unto their iniquity.” The commentators explain that the psalmist is asking God to treat their perverseness with perverseness, to let the consequences of their evil catch up with them. That is not a plea for God to make them sin more, but to let their own choices bring the ruin they deserve. The verb charge (or add, give) suggests an act of divine justice: give them what their iniquity has earned.

The phrase come into your righteousness is about access to God’s saving help. Throughout the Psalms, righteousness refers to God’s faithful action to rescue His people (Psalm 24:5). To come into that righteousness is to share in the deliverance and covenant blessing that flow from God’s character. The psalmist prays that his enemies will not experience that salvation, a weighty request that the New Testament later connects with those who stubbornly reject God’s anointed.

Together, these words frame a prayer that God would see the full measure of the evil done and respond with a justice that matches it, while protecting His own from the same fate.

Christians across the centuries have wrestled with this verse. Matthew Henry and many Reformed interpreters see it as a prophecy of the judgment on the Jewish nation for rejecting Christ, citing Paul’s quotation of the surrounding verses in Romans 11. Barnes and Gill note the ambiguity of the Hebrew word for iniquity: it could mean sin itself or the punishment for sin. Some, like Calvin, read it as a prayer that God would let sinners accumulate the consequences of their sin, not that He would make them sin more. Wesley paraphrases it as “Give them up to their own lusts.” The Cambridge Bible acknowledges the difficulty of these fierce words but takes them as the climax of the psalmist’s imprecation, not as words of his enemies. All traditions agree that this is not a license for personal revenge; it is a cry for God’s righteous order to prevail, a plea that those who violently oppose God’s people and God’s anointed will not escape His justice. The New Testament’s use of these verses confirms that they find their ultimate meaning in the rejection of Christ and the historical judgment that followed.