Catholic Commentary
Closing Doxology: Joy of the Righteous and Perpetual Praise
27Let those who favor my righteous cause shout for joy and be glad. Yes, let them say continually, “May Yahweh be magnified, who has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant!”28My tongue shall talk about your righteousness and about your praise all day long.
Psalms 35:27–28 depicts the psalmist calling for the community to celebrate God's justice and vindication while pledging personal, unceasing praise of God's righteousness. The passage moves from communal joy in divine justice to the speaker's individual vow to proclaim God's faithfulness and praise perpetually.
Joy at God's justice must be announced—the psalmist moves from summoning the community to praise to pledging his own tongue to eternal doxology.
In the allegorical reading championed by the Church Fathers, Psalm 35 was understood as a Psalm of Christ — the Innocent Sufferer par excellence, falsely accused, abandoned by those He had benefited, yet ultimately vindicated by the Father. Verse 27 then becomes a call to the Church — those who "favor the righteous cause" of Christ — to enter into the joy of the Resurrection. The "shout for joy" is nothing less than the Easter Alleluia. Verse 28, read Christologically, becomes the perpetual priestly praise of the risen Christ, who "always lives to make intercession" (Heb 7:25) and who in His glorified humanity gives unceasing worship to the Father. The tongue of the psalmist prefigures the Word Incarnate, who is Himself the full and final proclamation of the Father's righteousness. In the moral sense, the two verses together trace the interior journey of the soul from solidarity with others in praise to personal, sustained commitment to doxological living.
Catholic tradition illuminates these verses with singular depth at several levels.
The Righteousness of God and Justification: The ṣedāqāh proclaimed in verse 28 is not merely a moral attribute of God — it is God's saving, covenant-faithful action on behalf of His people. The Council of Trent (Session VI, Decree on Justification) affirmed that God's righteousness, when communicated to the soul, is not merely imputed but genuinely imparted, making the just person truly righteous by participation. The psalmist's praise of divine righteousness is therefore a praise of grace itself — of God's transforming fidelity.
Perpetual Praise and the Liturgy of the Hours: The pledge of verse 28 — praise "all day long" — has a direct institutional fulfillment in the Church's Liturgy of the Hours, which the Catechism describes as "the prayer of the whole People of God" (CCC 1175). St. Benedict, drawing on this Psalmic tradition, structured his Rule around the principle that "nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God" — the unceasing praise that is the monk's vocation, and in a broader sense, every Christian's.
St. Augustine on the Totus Christus: Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos interprets the closing praise of the Psalms as the voice of the whole Christ — Head and members together. Verse 28 is not one man's vow but the Church's perpetual doxology, a voice that will be fully perfected only in the eschatological liturgy of heaven (Rev 19:1-7).
Communal Dimension of Salvation: Verse 27 resists any privatization of faith. The joy of vindication draws the entire community of the righteous into praise — a profoundly Catholic instinct, consonant with Lumen Gentium's vision of the Church as the communio of those joined in Christ's saving mission.
These two verses offer a concrete challenge to Catholics today on two fronts. First, verse 27 calls us out of a purely individualistic piety. When God acts justly — in our lives, in the life of the Church, in the world — we are to draw others into that recognition and celebration. This might mean naming God's goodness explicitly in conversation, inviting friends to a Mass of thanksgiving, or participating actively in communal prayer rather than treating faith as a strictly private affair. Second, verse 28 presents a personal examination: what does your tongue actually do "all day long"? In an age of social media, ambient noise, and relentless commentary, the psalmist's vow to consecrate speech entirely to God's praise and righteousness is countercultural and demanding. Practically, this could mean beginning each morning with a brief act of praise — even a single verse of a Psalm — and returning to it at intervals throughout the day, gradually training the tongue in the habits of doxology. The Liturgy of the Hours, even in abbreviated form (Morning and Evening Prayer), is the Church's concrete institutional answer to verse 28, and these closing verses of Psalm 35 are a compelling personal invitation to embrace it.
Commentary
Psalms 35:27 — "Let those who favor my righteous cause shout for joy and be glad."
The Hebrew underlying "righteous cause" (צִדְקִי, ṣidqî) carries the sense of David's vindication or "right," his judicial innocence before God. Those who "favor" this cause — literally, those who "delight" (חֲפֵצִים, ḥăfēṣîm) in it — are not merely sympathizers but participants in a covenant relationship: they rejoice because God's justice is their justice, God's vindication is their vindication. The verbs "shout for joy" (יָרֹנּוּ, yārōnnû) and "be glad" (וְיִשְׂמְחוּ, wəyiśməḥû) are distinctively liturgical terms throughout the Psalter, used repeatedly in the context of worship in the sanctuary. This is not a quiet, interior satisfaction; it is the loud, embodied gladness of a congregation that has witnessed a divine act of justice. Significantly, the verse reaches a climax with the phrase, sometimes translated "May they say continually, 'Great is the LORD, who delights in the welfare of his servant'" — though the RSV rendering used here compresses this. That hidden doxology within the verse reveals that communal joy is not self-referential; it is always ordered toward the magnification of God's name. The righteous are glad because God is great, not merely because the psalmist has been vindicated.
Psalms 35:28 — "My tongue shall talk about your righteousness and about your praise all day long."
The shift to the first person singular is striking and deliberate. Having summoned the community to joy, David now makes a personal vow, a solemn liturgical pledge (cf. the todah tradition of votive praise). The phrase "all day long" (כָּל־הַיֹּום, kol-hayyôm) echoes the total, unreserved self-offering of the speaker. The tongue — the instrument of false accusation and slander throughout this Psalm (vv. 11, 20-21, where enemies speak lies against the psalmist) — is now reclaimed and consecrated to truth. What his enemies weaponized for destruction, David vows to sanctify for doxology. The word ṣedāqāh ("righteousness") used here is the same root as ṣidqî in verse 27, binding the two verses together: the righteousness that vindicates the servant becomes the righteousness that the servant proclaims. This is the typological movement of the whole Psalm in miniature: from suffering to praise, from accusation to proclamation, from the court of slander to the sanctuary of worship.