Psalm 83:
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Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 Job Proverbs
Psalm 83
Complete Concise
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 (v. 8), who were at the head of the alliance and to whom all the
other states here mentioned were auxiliaries. We have the story 2 Chr. 20:1,
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 (v. 1-8). 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 (v. 9-18). 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.
A song
or psalm of Asaph.
Verses 1-8
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 (2 Chr. 20:11),
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, 2 Chr. 20:14, etc.); "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. 62:4), and to make a prey
of those whom the
Lord has set apart for himself, Ps. 4:3. 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.
2:1.
The nations are angry, Rev. 11:18. 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," Ps. 2:5. (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. 5:2), 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. 12:9), 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.
Verses 9-18
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 (Jdg. 4:15) 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. Jdg. 5:31,
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, v. 11, 12. 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 (Isa. 64:11), 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, Jdg. 7:25), and
like
Zeba and Zalmunna, whom Gideon himself slew, Jdg. 8:21. "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. 20:26. 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," Ps. 1:4. 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, v. 14. 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 (Heb. 6:8) 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, v. 16-18. 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 (Isa. 26:11), 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
(Dan. 12:2) shall redound to the everlasting honour and praise of that God to
whom vengeance belongs.
Psalm 83:
| Darby
| Geneva
| Gill
| Jamieson Faussett Brown
| Matthew Henry
| Matthew Henry Concise
| Spurgeon
| Wesley
| Index
| Bible Gateway |
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 Job Proverbs
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