1 God is a refuge and stronghold for us,
A help in troubles most readily to be found.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth do change,
And the mountains reel into the heart of the sea.
3 Let its waters roar and foam;
Let mountains shake at its pride. Selah.
[Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God.]
4 [There is] a river--its branches make glad the city of God
The sanctuary of the tabernacles of the Most High.
5 God is in her midst; she shall not be moved:
God shall help her at the morning dawn.
6 Nations roared, kingdoms were moved:
He gave forth His voice, the earth melts.
7 Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God. Selah.
8 Come, behold the deeds of Jehovah,
Who has made desolations in the earth.
9 Quelling wars to the end of the earth:
The bow He breaks, and hews the spear in splinters;
The chariots He burns in the fire.
10 "Desist, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted in the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
11 Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God. Selah.
There are two events, one or other of which probably supplies the
historical basis of this and the two following psalms. One is
Jehoshaphat's deliverance from the combined forces of the bordering
nations (2 Chron. xx.). Delitzsch adopts this as the occasion of
the psalm. But the other more usually accepted reference to the
destruction of Sennacherib's army is more probable. Psalms xlvi. and
xlviii. have remarkable parallelisms with Isaiah. The noble contrast
of the quiet river which makes glad the city of God with a tossing,
earth-shaking sea resembles the prophet's threatening that the
effect of refusing the "waters of Shiloah which go softly" would be
inundation by the strong and mighty river, the Assyrian power. And the
emblem is expanded in the striking language of Isa. xxxiii. 21: "The
glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams;
wherein shall go no galley with oars." Encircled by the flashing
links of that broad moat, Jerusalem sits secure. Again, the central
thought of the refrain in the psalm, "The Lord of hosts is with us,"
is closely allied to the symbolic name which Isaiah gave as a pledge
of deliverance, "Immanuel, God with us."
The structure is simple. The three strophes into which the psalm
falls set forth substantially the same thought, that God's presence
is safety and peace, whatever storms may roar. This general theme
is exhibited in the first strophe (vv. 1-3) in reference to natural
convulsions; in the second (vv. 4-7) in reference to the rage of
hostile kingdoms; and in the third (vv. 8-11) men are summoned to
behold a recent example of God's delivering might, which establishes
the truth of the preceding utterances and has occasioned the psalm.
The grand refrain which closes the second and third strophes should
probably be restored at the end of ver. 3.
In the first strophe the psalmist paints chaos come again, by the
familiar figures of a changed earth, tottering mountains sinking in
the raging sea from which they rose at creation, and a wild ocean
with thunderous dash appalling the ear and yeasty foam terrifying
the eye, sweeping in triumphant insolence over all the fair earth.
It is prosaic to insist on an allegorical meaning for the picture.
It is rather a vivid sketch of utter confusion, dashed in with three
or four bold strokes, an impossible case supposed in order to bring
out the unshaken calm of those who have God for ark in such a deluge.
He is not only a sure refuge and stronghold, but one easy of access
when troubles come. There is little good in a fortress, however
impregnable, if it is so difficult to reach that a fugitive might be
slain a hundred times before he was safe in it. But this high tower,
which no foe can scale, can be climbed at a thought, and a wish lifts
us within its mighty walls. The psalmist speaks a deep truth, verified
in the spiritual life of all ages, when he celebrates the refuge of
the devout soul as "most readily to be found."
As the text stands, this strophe is a verse too short, and ver.
3 drags if connected with "will not we fear." The restoration of
the refrain removes the anomaly in the length of the strophe, and
enables us to detach ver. 3 from the preceding. Its sense is then
completed, if we regard it as the protasis of a sentence of which
the refrain is the apodosis, or if, with Cheyne and others, we take
ver. 3, "Let its waters roar," etc.--what of that? "Jehovah of hosts
is with us." If the strophe is thus completed, it conforms to the
other two, in each of which may be traced a division into two pairs
of verses. These two verse-pairs of the first strophe would then be
inverted parallelism,--the former putting security in God first, and
surrounding trouble second, the latter dealing with the same two
subjects, but in reversed sequence.
The second strophe brings a new picture to view with impressive
suddenness, which is even more vividly dramatic if the refrain is not
supplied. Right against the vision of confusion comes one of peace.
The abrupt introduction of "a river" as an isolated noun, which
dislocates grammatical structure, is almost an exclamation. "There
is a river" enfeebles the swing of the original. We might almost
translate, "Lo! a river!" Jerusalem was unique among historical cities
in that it had no great river. It had one tiny thread of water, of
which perhaps the psalmist is thinking. But whether there is here the
same contrast between Siloam's gentle flow and the surging waters of
hostile powers as Isaiah sets forth in the passage already referred
to (Isa. viii. 6), the meaning of this gladdening stream is the
ever-flowing communication of God Himself in His grace. The stream is
the fountain in flow. In the former strophe we hear the roar of the
troubled waters, and see the firm hills toppling into their depths.
Now we behold the gentle flow of the river, gliding through the city,
with music in its ripples and sunshine in its flash and refreshment
in its waters, parting into many arms and yet one in diversity, and
bringing life and gladness wherever it comes. Not with noise nor
tumult, but in silent communication, God's grace and peace refresh the
soul. Power is loud, but Omnipotence is silent. The roar of all the
billows is weak when compared with the quiet sliding onwards of that
still stream. It has its divisions. As in old days each man's bit of
garden was irrigated by a branch led from the stream, so in endless
diversity, corresponding to the infinite greatness of the source and
the innumerable variety of men's needs, God's grace comes. "All these
worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man
severally." The streams gladden the city of God with the gladness of
satisfied thirsts, with the gladness which comes from the contact of
the human spirit with Divine completeness. So supplied, the city may
laugh at besiegers. It has unfailing supplies within itself, and the
enemy may cut off all surface streams, but its "water shall be sure."
Substantially the same thought is next stated in plain words: "God is
in the midst of her." And therefore two things follow. One is unshaken
stability, and another is help at the right time--"at the turn of the
morning." "The Lord is in the midst of her"--that is a perennial fact.
"The Lord shall help her"--that is the "grace for seasonable help."
He, not we, determines when the night shall thin away its blackness
into morning twilight. But we may be sure that the presence which is
the pledge of stability and calm even in storm and darkness will flash
into energy of help at the moment when He wills. The same expression
is used to mark the time of His looking from the pillar of cloud and
troubling the Egyptians, and there may be an allusion to that standing
instance of His help here. "It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons"; but this we may know--that the Lord of all times will always
help at the right time; He will not come so quickly as to anticipate our
consciousness of need, nor delay so long as to let us be irrevocably
engulfed in the bog. "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
When He heard _therefore_ that he was sick, He abode two days still in
the same place where He was." Yet He came in time.
With what vigour the short, crashing clauses of ver. 6 describe the
wrath and turbulence of the nations, and the instantaneous dissolving
of their strength into weakness at a word from those awful lips!
The verse may be taken as hypothetical or as historical. In either
case we see the sequence of events as by a succession of lightning
flashes. The hurry of the style, marked by the omission of connecting
particles, reflects the swiftness of incident, like _Veni, vidi,
vici_. The utterance of God's will conquers all. At the sound of that
voice stillness and a pause of dread fall on the "roar" (same word as
in ver. 3) of the nations, like the hush in the woods when thunder
rolls. He speaks, and all meaner sounds cease. "The lion hath roared,
who shall not fear?" No material vehicle is needed. To every believer
in God there is an incomprehensible action of the Divine Will on
material things; and no explanations bridge the gulf recognised in the
psalmist's broken utterances, which declare sequence and not mode of
operation: "He uttered His voice, the earth melted."
Again the triumph of the refrain peals forth, with its musical
accompaniment prolonging the impression. In it the psalmist gives
voice, for himself and his fellows, to their making their own of the
general truths which the psalm has been declaring. The two names of
God set forth a twofold ground for confidence. "Jehovah of hosts" is
all the more emphatic here since the Second Book of the Psalter is
usually Elohistic. It proclaims God's eternal, self-existent Being,
and His covenant relation, as well as His absolute authority over the
ranked forces of the universe, personal or impersonal, spiritual or
material. The Lord of all these legions is with us. When we say "The
God of Jacob," we reach back into the past and lay hold of the Helper
of the men of old as ours. What He has been, He is; what He did, He
is doing still. The river is full to-day, though the van of the army
did long ago drink and were satisfied. The bright waters are still as
pellucid and abundant as then, and the last of the rear-guard will
find them the same.
The third strophe summons to contemplate with fixed attention the
"desolations" made by some great manifestation of God's delivering
power. It is presupposed that these are still visible. Broken bows,
splintered spears, half-charred chariots, strew the ground, and Israel
can go forth without fear and feast their eyes on these tokens of
what God has done for them. The language is naturally applied to the
relics of Sennacherib's annihilated force. In any case it points to a
recent act of God's, the glad surprise of which palpitates all through
the psalm. The field of history is littered with broken, abandoned
weapons, once flourished in hands long since turned to dust; and the
city and throne of God against which they were lifted remain unharmed.
The voice which melted the earth speaks at the close of the psalm;
not now with destructive energy, but in warning, through which tones
of tenderness can be caught. God desires that foes would cease their
vain strife before it proves fatal. "Desist" is here an elliptical
expression, of which the full form is "Let your hands drop"; or, as
we say, "Ground your weapons," and learn how vain is a contest with
Him who is God, and whose fixed purpose is that all nations shall
know and exalt Him. The prospect hinted at in the last words, of a
world submissive to its King, softens the terrors of His destructive
manifestations, reveals their inmost purpose, and opens to foes the
possibility of passing, not as conquerors, but as subjects, and
therefore fellow-citizens, through the gate into the city.