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P S A L M S
PSALM LXXXIII.
This psalm is the last of those that go under the name of Asaph. It is
penned, as most of those, upon a public account, with reference to the
insults of the church’s enemies, who sought its ruin. Some think it was
penned upon occasion of the threatening descent which was made upon the
land of Judah in Jehoshaphat’s time by the Moabites and Ammonites,
those children of Lot here spoken of
(ver. 8),
who were at the head of the alliance and to whom all the other states
here mentioned were auxiliaries. We have the story
where it is said, The children of Moab and Ammon, and others besides
them, invaded the land. Others think it was penned with reference to
all the confederacies of the neighbouring nations against Israel, from
first to last. The psalmist here makes an appeal and application,
I. To God’s knowledge, by a representation of their designs and
endeavours to destroy Israel,
II. To God’s justice and jealousy, both for his church and for his own
honour, by an earnest prayer for the defeat of their attempt, that the
church might be preserved, the enemies humbled, and God glorified,
This, in the singing of it, we may apply to the enemies of the
gospel-church, all anti-christian powers and factions, representing to
God their confederacies against Christ and his kingdom, and rejoicing
in the hope that all their projects will be baffled and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against the church.
| Complaints against Enemies. | |
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A song or psalm of Asaph.
1 Keep not thou silence, O God:
hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.
2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee
have lifted up the head.
3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and
consulted against thy hidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a
nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are
confederate against thee:
6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and
the Hagarenes;
7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the
inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children
of Lot. Selah.
The Israel of God were now in danger, and fear, and great distress, and
yet their prayer is called, A song or psalm; for singing psalms
is not unseasonable, no, not when the harps are hung upon the
willow-trees.
I. The psalmist here begs of God to appear on the behalf of his injured
threatened people
(v. 1):
“Keep not thou silence, O God! but give judgment for us against
those that do us an apparent wrong.” Thus Jehoshaphat prayed upon
occasion of that invasion
Behold, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy
possession. Sometimes God seems to connive at the unjust treatment
which is given to his people; he keeps silence, as one that either did
not observe it or did not concern himself in it; he holds his peace, as
if he would observe an exact neutrality, and let them fight it out; he
is still, and gives not the enemies of his people any disturbance or
opposition, but seems to sit by as a man astonished, or as a mighty
man that cannot save. Then he gives us leave to call upon him, as
here, “Keep not thou silence, O God! Lord, speak to us by the
prophets for our encouragement against our fears” (as he did in
reference to that invasion,
&c.); “Lord, speak for us by the providence and speak against our
enemies; speak deliverance to us and disappointment to them.” God’s
speaking is his acting; for with him saying and doing are the same
thing.
II. He here gives an account of the grand alliance of the neighbouring
nations against Israel, which he begs of God to break, and blast the
projects of. Now observe here,
1. Against whom this confederacy is formed; it is against the Israel of
God, and so, in effect, against the God of Israel. Thus the psalmist
takes care to interest God in their cause, not doubting but that, if it
appeared that they were for God, God would make it to appear that he
was for them, and then they might set all their enemies at defiance;
for whom then could be against them? “Lord,” says he, “they are thy
enemies, and they hate thee.” All wicked people are God’s enemies (the
carnal mind is enmity against God), but especially wicked
persecutors; they hated the religious worshippers of God, because they
hated God’s holy religion and the worship of him. This was that which
made God’s people so zealous against them–that they fought against God:
They are confederate against thee,
v. 5.
Were our interest only concerned, we could the better bear it; but,
when God himself is struck at, it is time to cry, Help, Lord. Keep
not thou silence, O God! He proves that they are confederate
against God, for they are so against the people of God, who are near
and dear to him, his son, his first-born, his portion, and the lot of
his inheritance; he may truly be said to fight against me that
endeavours to destroy my children, to root out my family, and to ruin
my estate. “Lord,” says the psalmist, “they are thy enemies, for they
consult against thy hidden ones.” Note, God’s people are his hidden
ones, hidden,
(1.) In respect of secresy. Their life is hid with Christ in
God; the world knows them not; if they knew them, they would
not hate them as they do.
(2.) In respect of safety. God takes them under his special protection,
hides them in the hollow of his hand; and yet, in defiance of God and
his power and promise to secure his people, they will consult to ruin
them and cast them down from their excellency
(Ps. lxii. 4),
and to make a prey of those whom the Lord has set apart for
himself,
Ps. iv. 3.
They resolve to destroy those whom God resolves to preserve.
2. How this confederacy is managed. The devil is at the bottom of it,
and therefore it is carried on,
(1.) With a great deal of heat and violence: Thy enemies make a
tumult,
v. 2.
The heathen rage,
Ps. ii. 1.
The nations are angry,
Rev. xi. 18.
They are noisy in their clamours against the people whom they hope to
run down with their loud calumnies. This comes in as a reason why God
should not keep silence: “The enemies talk big and talk much; Lord, let
them not talk all, but do thou speak to them in thy wrath,”
(2.) With a great deal of pride and insolence: They have lifted up
the head. In confidence of their success, they are so elevated as
if they could over-top the Most High and overpower the Almighty.
(3.) With a great deal of art and policy: They have taken crafty
counsel,
v. 3.
The subtlety of the old serpent appears in their management, and they
contrive by all possible means, though ever so base, ever so bad, to
gain their point. They are profound to make slaughter
(Hos. v. 2),
as if they could outwit Infinite Wisdom.
(4.) With a great deal of unanimity. Whatever separate clashing
interest they have among themselves, against the people of God they
consult with one consent
(v. 5),
nor is Satan’s kingdom divided against itself. To push on this
unholy war, they lay their heads together, and their horns, and their
hearts too. Fas est et ab hoste doceri–Even an enemy may
instruct. Do the enemies of the church act with one consent to
destroy it? Are the kings of the earth of one mind to give their power
and honour to the beast? And shall not the church’s friends be
unanimous in serving her interests? If Herod and Pilate are made
friends, that they may join in crucifying Christ, surely Paul and
Barnabas, Paul and Peter, will soon be made friends, that they may join
in preaching Christ.
3. What it is that is aimed at in this confederacy. They consult not
like the Gibeonites to make a league with Israel, that they might
strengthen themselves by such a desirable alliance, which would have
been their wisdom. They consult, not only to clip the wings of Israel,
to recover their new conquests, and check the progress of their
victorious arms, not only to keep the balance even between them and
Israel, and to prevent their power from growing exorbitant; this will
not serve. It is no less than the utter ruin and extirpation of Israel
that they design
(v. 4):
“Come, let us cut them off from being a nation, as they cut off
the seven nations of Canaan; let us leave them neither root nor branch,
but lay their country so perfectly waste that the name of Israel may
be no more in remembrance, no, not in history;” for with them they
would destroy their Bibles and burn all their records. Such is the
enmity of the serpent’s seed against the seed of the woman. It is the
secret wish of many wicked men that the church of God might not have a
being in the world, that there might be no such thing as religion among
mankind. Having banished the sense of it out of their own hearts, they
would gladly see the whole earth as well rid of it, all its laws and
ordinances abolished, all its restraints and obligations shaken off,
and all that preach, profess, or practise it cut off. This they would
bring it to if it were in their power; but he that sits in heaven
shall laugh at them.
4. Who they are that are drawn into this confederacy. The nations that
entered into this alliance are here mentioned
(v. 6-8);
the Edomites and Ishmaelites, both descendants from Abraham, lead the
van; for apostates from the church have been its most bitter and
spiteful enemies, witness Julian. These were allied to Israel in blood
and yet in alliance against Israel. There are no bonds of nature so
strong but the spirit of persecution has broken through them. The
brother shall betray the brother to death. Moab and Ammon were the
children of righteous Lot; but, as an incestuous, so a degenerate race.
The Philistines were long a thorn in Israel’s side, and very vexatious.
How the inhabitants of Tyre, who in David’s time were Israel’s firm
allies, come in among their enemies, I know not; but that Assur
(that is, the Assyrian) also is joined with them is not strange,
or that (as the word is) they were an arm to the children of
Lot. See how numerous the enemies of God’s church have always been.
Lord, how are those increased that trouble it! God’s heritage
was as a speckled bird; all the birds round about were against
her
(Jer. xii. 9),
which highly magnifies the power of God in preserving to himself a
church in the world, in spite of the combined force of earth and
hell.
| Prophetic Imprecations. | |
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9 Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as
to Jabin, at the brook of Kison:
10 Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the
earth.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their
princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna:
12 Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in
possession.
13 O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the
wind.
14 As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the
mountains on fire;
15 So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid
with thy storm.
16 Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O
LORD.
17 Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them
be put to shame, and perish:
18 That men may know that thou, whose name alone is
JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.
The psalmist here, in the name of the church, prays for the destruction
of those confederate forces, and, in God’s name, foretels it; for this
prayer that it might be so amounts to a prophecy that it shall be so,
and this prophecy reaches to all the enemies of the gospel-church;
whoever they be that oppose the kingdom of Christ, here they may read
their doom. The prayer is, in short, that these enemies, who were
confederate against Israel, might be defeated in all their attempts,
and that they might prove their own ruin, and so God’s Israel might be
preserved and perpetuated. Now this is here illustrated,
I. By some precedents. Let that be their punishment which has been the
fate of others who have formerly set themselves against God’s Israel.
The defeat and discomfiture of former combinations may be pleaded in
prayer to God and improved for the encouragement of our own faith and
hope, because God is the same still that ever he was, the same to his
people and the same against his and their enemies; with him is no
variableness.
1. He prays that their armies might be destroyed as the armies of
former enemies had been
(v. 9, 10):
Do to them as to the Midianites; let them be routed by their own
fears, for so the Midianites were, more than by Gideon’s 300 men. Do to
them as to the army under the command of Sisera (who was general under
Jabin king of Canaan) which God discomfited
at the brook Kishon, near to which was Endor. They became as dung on
the earth; their dead bodies were thrown like dung laid in heaps,
or spread, to fatten the ground; they were trodden to dirt by Barak’s
small but victorious army; and this was fitly made a precedent here,
because Deborah made it so to aftertimes when it was fresh.
So let all thy enemies perish, O Lord! that is, So they shall
perish.
2. He prays that their leaders might be destroyed as they had been
formerly. The common people would not have been so mischievous if their
princes had not set them on, and therefore they are particularly prayed
against,
Observe,
(1.) What their malice was against the Israel of God. They said,
Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession
(v. 12),
the pleasant places of God (so the word is), by which we may
understand the land of Canaan, which was a pleasant land and was
Immanuel’s land, or the temple, which was indeed God’s pleasant place
or (as Dr. Hammond suggests) the pleasant pastures, which these
Arabians, who traded in cattle, did in a particular manner seek after.
The princes and nobles aimed to enrich themselves by this war; and
their armies must be made as dung for the earth, to serve their
covetousness and their ambition.
(2.) What their lot should be. They shall be made like Oreb and
Zeeb (two princes of the Midianites, who, when their forces were
routed, were taken in their flight by the Ephraimites and slain,
and like Zeba and Zalmunna, whom Gideon himself slew,
“Let these enemies of ours be made as easy a prey to us as they were to
the conquerors then.” We may not prescribe to God, but we may pray to
God that he will deal with the enemies of his church in our days as he
did with those in the days of our fathers.
II. He illustrates it by some similitudes, and prays,
1. That God would make them like a wheel
(v. 13),
that they might be in continual motion, unquiet, unsettled, and giddy
in all their counsels and resolves, that they might roll down easily
and speedily to their own ruin. Or, as some think, that they might be
broken by the judgments of God, as the corn is broken, or beaten out,
by the wheel which was then used in threshing. Thus, when a wise
king scatters the wicked, he is said to bring the wheel over
them,
Prov. xx. 26.
Those that trust in God have their hearts fixed; those that fight
against him are unfixed, like a wheel.
2. That they might be chased as stubble, or chaff, before
the fierce wind. “The wheel, though it continually turn
round, is fixed on its own axis; but let them have no more fixation
than the light stubble has, which the wind hurries away, and nobody
desires to save it, but is willing it should go,”
Thus shall the wicked be driven away in his wickedness, and chased
out of the world.
3. That they might be consumed, as wood by the fire, or as briers and
thorns, as fern or furze, upon the mountains, by the flames,
When the stubble is driven by the wind it will rest, at last, under
some hedge, in some ditch or other; but he prays that they might not
only be driven away as stubble, but burnt up as stubble. And this will
be the end of wicked men
and particularly of all the enemies of God’s church. The application of
these comparisons we have
(v. 15):
So persecute them with thy tempest, persecute them to their
utter ruin, and make them afraid with thy storm. See how sinners
are made miserable; the storm of God’s wrath raises terrors in their
own hearts, and so they are made completely miserable. God can deal
with the proudest and most daring sinner that has bidden defiance to
his justice, and can make him afraid as a grasshopper. It is the
torment of devils that they tremble.
III. He illustrates it by the good consequences of their confusion,
He prays here that God, having filled their hearts with terror, would
thereby fill their faces with shame, that they might be ashamed of
their enmity to the people of God
ashamed of their folly in acting both against Omnipotence itself and
their own true interest. They did what they could to put God’s people
to shame, but the shame will at length return upon themselves. Now,
1. The beginning of this shame might be a means of their conversion:
“Let them be broken and baffled in their attempts, that they may
seek thy name, O Lord! Let them be put to a stand, that they may
have both leisure and reason to pause a little, and consider who it is
that they are fighting against and what an unequal match they are for
him, and may therefore humble and submit themselves and desire
conditions of peace. Let them be made to fear thy name, and perhaps
that will bring them to seek thy name.” Note, That which we should
earnestly desire and beg of God for our enemies and persecutors is that
God would bring them to repentance, and we should desire their
abasement in order to this, no other confusion to them than what may be
a step towards their conversion.
2. If it did not prove a means of their conversion, the perfecting of
it would redound greatly to the honour of God. If they will not be
ashamed and repent, let them be put to shame and perish; if they will
not be troubled and turned, which would soon put an end to all their
trouble, a happy end, let them be troubled for ever, and never
have peace: this will be for God’s glory
(v. 18),
that other men may know and own, if they themselves will not, that
thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH (that incommunicable, though not
ineffable name) art the Most High over all the earth. God’s
triumphs over his and his church’s enemies will be incontestable
proofs,
(1.) That he is, according to his name JEHOVAH, a self-existent
self-sufficient Being, that has all power and perfection in himself.
(2.) That he is the most high God, sovereign Lord of all, above all
gods, above all kings, above all that exalt themselves and pretend to
be high.
(3.) That he is so, not only over the land of Israel, but over all
the earth, even those nations of the earth that do not know him or
own him; for his kingdom rules over all. These are great and
unquestionable truths, but men will hardly be persuaded to know and
believe them; therefore the psalmist prays that the destruction of some
might be the conviction of others. The final ruin of all God’s enemies,
in the great day, will be the effectual proof of this, before angels
and men, when the everlasting shame and contempt to which sinners shall
rise
shall redound to the everlasting honour and praise of that God to whom
vengeance belongs.
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