Continue your love to those who know you,

    your righteousness to the upright in heart.

11 May the foot of the proud not come against me,

    nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

12 See how the evildoers lie fallen—

    thrown down, not able to rise!

Derek Kidner, in his ‘Tyndale’ commentary on Psalms 1-72, sees this as an example of a prayer of faith. The psalmist prays that God’s people, who have come to enjoy His love, will continue to do so (10). He also prays for protection (11), and in his final statement (12) he already sees the prayer answered and the wicked decisively dealt with.

Here is the Kidner quote. I found it wonderfully encouraging:

‘The psalmist finds himself stationed on the disputed ground between human wickedness (1-4) and divine grace (5-9); so he turns to urgent prayer. Twice he has praised the steadfast love of God (5,7); now let it reach out to the place of need (10!)…The last verse shows the victory already claimed; it speaks as though the scene were present and clearly visible…This is the faith defined in Hebrews 11:1 (Phillips) as ‘putting our full confidence in the things we hope for…being certain of things we cannot see’.

So the early eloquence was genuine. The evil which David portrayed in the first stanza he was ready to fight; the grace which he praised in the second he was ready to invoke; and, once invoked, to accept as given and as settling the matter.’