1 Known in Judah is God,
In Israel is His name great.
2 And in Salem was His tent [pitched],
And His dwelling in Zion.
3 There He shivered the lightnings of the bow,
Shield and sword and battle. Selah.
4 Effulgent art Thou [and] glorious
From the mountains of prey [everlasting mountains?].
5 Spoiled are the stout of heart, they slumber [into] their sleep,
And none of the men of might have found their hands.
6 At Thy rebuke, O God of Jacob,
Both chariot and horse are sunk in deep sleep.
7 Thou! dread art Thou,
And who can stand before Thee, in the time of Thine anger?
8 From heaven didst Thou make judgment heard,
Earth feared and was stilled,
9 At the rising of God for judgment
To save all the afflicted of the earth. Selah.
10 For the wrath of man shall praise Thee,
[With] the residue of wraths Thou girdest Thyself.
11 Vow and pay to Jehovah your God,
Let all around Him bring presents to the Terrible One.
12 He cuts down the [lofty] spirit of princes,
A dread to the kings of the earth.
In contents and tone this psalm is connected with Psalms xlvi. and
xlviii. No known event corresponds so closely with its allusions
as the destruction of Sennacherib's army, to which the LXX. in
its superscription refers it. The singer is absorbed in the one
tremendous judgment which had delivered the dwelling-place of Jehovah.
His song has but one theme--God's forth-flashing of judgment on Zion's
foes. One note of thankfulness sounds at the close, but till then all
is awe. The psalm is divided into four strophes, of three verses each.
The former two describe the act; the latter two deal with its results,
in an awed world and thankful praise.
The emphatic words in the first strophe are those which designate
the scene of the Divine act. The glow of humble pride, of wonder and
thankfulness, is perceptible in the fourfold reiteration--"in Judah,
in Israel, in Salem, in Zion"; all which names are gathered up in
the eloquent "There" of ver. 3. The true point of view from which to
regard God's acts is that they are His Self-revelation. The reason
why Israel is the object of the acts which manifest His name is that
there He has chosen to dwell. And, since He dwells there, the special
act of judgment which the psalm celebrates was there performed. "The
lightnings of the bow" picturesquely designate arrows, from their
swift flight and deadly impact. (Compare Psalm xlvi. 9.)
The second strophe (vv. 4-6) comes closer to the fact celebrated, and
describes, with magnificent sweep, brevity, and vividness, the death
sleep of the enemy. But, before it shows the silent corpses, it lifts
one exclamation of reverence to the God who has thus manifested His
power. The word rendered "Effulgent" is doubtful, and by a slight
transposition of letters becomes, as in ver. 7 which begins the next
strophe, "dread." In ver. 4 _b_ the rendering "more excellent than,"
etc., yields a comparison which can scarcely be called worthy. It
is little to say of God that He is more glorious than the enemies'
"mountains of prey," though Delitzsch tries to recommend this
rendering, by supposing that God is represented as towering above "the
Lebanon of the hostile army of peoples." The Hebrew idiom expresses
comparison by the preposition _from_ appended to the adjective in
its simple form, and it is best here to take the construction as
indicating point of departure rather than comparison. God comes forth
as "glorious," from the lofty heights where He sits supreme. But
"mountains of prey" is a singular phrase, which can only be explained
by the supposition that God is conceived of as a Conqueror, who has
laid up His spoils in His inaccessible store-house on high. But the
LXX. translates "_everlasting_ mountains," which fits the context
well, and implies a text, which might easily be misinterpreted as
meaning "prey," which misinterpretation may afterwards have crept into
the body of the text. If this alteration is not adopted, the meaning
will be as just stated.
Ver. 5 gives some support to the existing text, by its representation
of the stout-hearted foe as "spoiled." They are robbed of their might,
their weapons, and their life. How graphically the psalmist sets
before the eyes of his readers the process of destruction from its
beginning! He shows us the warriors falling asleep in the drowsiness
of death. How feeble their "might" now! One vain struggle, as in the
throes of death, and the hands which shot the "lightnings of the bow"
against Zion are stiff for evermore. One word from the sovereign
lips of the God of Jacob, and all the noise of the camp is hushed,
and we look out upon a field of the dead, lying in awful stillness,
dreamlessly sleeping their long slumber.
The third strophe passes from description of the destruction of the
enemy to paint its widespread results in the manifestation to a
hushed world of God's judgment. In it anger and love are wondrously
blended; and while no creature can bear the terrible blaze of His
face, nor endure the weight of His onset "in the time of His anger,"
the most awful manifestations thereof have a side of tenderness and
an inner purpose of blessing. The core of judgment is mercy. It is
worthy of God to smite the oppressor and to save the "afflicted," who
not only suffer, but trust. When He makes His judgments reverberate
from on high, earth should keep an awed stillness, as nature does when
thunder peals. When some gigantic and hoary iniquity crashes to its
fall, there is a moment of awed silence after the hideous tumult.
The last strophe is mainly a summons to praise God for His manifestation
of delivering judgment. Ver. 10 is obscure. The first clause is
intelligible enough. Since God magnifies His name by His treatment of
opposing men, who set themselves against Him, their very foaming fury
subserves His praise. That is a familiar thought with all the Scripture
writers who meditate on God's dealings. But the second clause is
hard. Whose "wraths" are spoken of in it? God's or man's? The change
from the singular ("wrath of man") to plural ("wraths") in _b_ makes
it all but certain that God's fulness of "wrath" is meant here. It
is set over against the finite and puny "wrath" of men, as an ocean
might be contrasted with a shallow pond. If so, God's girding Himself
with the residue of His own wrath will mean that, after every such
forth-putting of it as the psalm has been hymning, there still remains
an unexhausted store ready to flame out if need arise. It is a stern and
terrible thought of God, but it is solemnly true. His loving-kindness
out-measures man's, and so does His judicial judgment. All Divine
attributes partake of Infinitude, and the stores of His punitive anger
are not less deep than those of His gentle goodness.
Therefore men are summoned to vow and pay their vows; and while Israel
is called to worship, the nations around, who have seen that field of
the dead, are called to do homage and bring tribute to Him who, as
it so solemnly shows, can cut off the breath of the highest, or can
cut down their pride, as a grape-gatherer does the ripe cluster (for
such is the allusion in the word "cuts down"). The last clause of the
psalm, which stands somewhat disconnected from the preceding, gathers
up the lessons of the tremendous event which inspired it, when it sets
Him forth as to be feared by the kings of the earth.