The final stanza (vv. 19, 20) does not take Kaph as it should do, but Qoph. Hence some critics suspect that this pair of verses has been added by another hand, but the continuity of sense is plain, and is against this supposition. The psalmist was not so bound to his form but that he could vary it, as here. The prayer of this concluding stanza circles round to the prayer in ver. 13, as has been noticed, and so completes the whole psalm symmetrically. The personal element in ver. 13 has passed away; and the prayer is general, just as the solo of praise in ver. 1 broadened into the call for a chorus of voices in ver. 12. The scope of the prayer is the very judgment which the previous stanza has contemplated as certain. The devout man's desires are moulded on God's promises, and his prayers echo these. "Let not mortal man grow strong," or rather "vaunt his strength." The word for _man_ here connotes weakness. How ridiculous for him, being such as he is, to swell and swagger as if strong, and how certain his boasted strength is to shrivel like a leaf in the fire, if God should come forth, roused to action by his boasting! Ver. 20 closes the prayer with the cry that some awe-inspiring act of Divine justice may be flashed before the "nations," in order to force the conviction of their own weakness home to them. "Set terror for them," the word _terror_ meaning not the emotion, but the object which produces it, namely an act of judgment such as the whole psalm has had in view. Its purpose is not destruction, but conviction, the wholesome consciousness of weakness, out of which may spring the recognition of their own folly and of God's strength to bless. So the two parts of the psalm end with the thought that the "nations" may yet come to know the name of God, the one calling upon those who have experienced His deliverance to "declare among the peoples His doings," the other praying God to teach by chastisement what nations who forget Him have failed to learn from mercies. PSALM X. 1 (ל) Why, Jehovah, dost Thou stand far off? Why veilest [Thine eyes] in times of extremity? 2 Through the pride of the wicked the afflicted is burned away; They are taken in the plots which these have devised. 3 For the wicked boasts of his soul's desire, And the rapacious man renounces, contemns, Jehovah. 4 The wicked, by (lit., according to) the uplifting of his nostrils, [says,] He will not inquire; There is no God, is all his thought. 5 His ways are stable at all times; High above [him] are Thy judgments, remote from before him; His adversaries--he snorts at them. 6 He says in his heart, I shall not be moved; To generation after generation, [I am he] who never falls into adversity. 7 Of cursing his mouth is full, and deceits, and oppression; Under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.