“Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know. They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft. But I, when they were sick— I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest. I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning. But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing; like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth.” -Psalm 35:11–16
David’s grief comes from the treachery of ingrates who were treated as brothers when they despaired. Instead of standing by him or praying for him in his affliction, they repaid evil for good by mocking him, asking him unanswerable questions.
We don’t know what those questions were but we can imagine the kind of complex questions of which there is not a way to answer without implicating oneself falsely. i.e., Have you stopped stealing from your boss yet? To say, yes, means you had been stealing. To say, no, means you are still stealing from him. Probably, the mocking questions were more in line with how they chided our Lord on the cross:
“And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”” -Matthew 27:39–40
David loved these men like brothers in their time of need and these men treated David like a criminal drug before a lynch mob in the public square. Poetically speaking, they didn’t just kick him while he was down, they wore the shoes he bought them while doing it.
But theirs is not the last word. The Lord sees and he won’t stand idle forever.