Psalms 74

Psalms 74. THE prayer to help the people sunk in the deepest misery, ver. 1 and 2, is followed by its basis, which consists of a picture of this misery, in ver. 3-9: the sanctuary is destroyed, and all traces of the presence of God among his people have disap-peared. The short prayer renewed in ver. 10 and 11 seeks, ver. 12-17, its support and stay in the consideration of the omnipotence of the God of Israel. At the conclusion, ver. 18 -23, the prayer breaks out in an expanded form. Expositors refer the Psalm partly to the Chaldean destruc-tion, and partly to the time of the Maccabees. But the reasons against the latter view which has been defended with much zeal by Hitzig, are perfectly decisive. The temple appears in the Psalm as entirely destroyed, and that by fire, in all its parts.

From 1 Mac. 4:38, where the condition in which Judas found the sanctuary is described, it is evident that at that time the chief buildings of the temple were untouched, and that it was only the gates that had been burnt. 2 Mac. 1:8, 8:33, are in entire accordance with this. The reason why the Jews, accord-ing to 1 Mac. 4:28, build the holy and the most holy place, is not because these had been destroyed, but because, as is almost in so many words affirmed in verse 43, the stones which had been removed, as being polluted, had to be replaced with others. This ground is perfectly sufficient for any unprejudiced person. To this we may add, that we find nothing here of what charac-terized the time of the Maccabees, no trace of an apostate party among the Jews themselves, which Venema in vain endeavours to discover in the Psalm, no trace of any attempt to bring the Israelites to idolatry, no trace of a religious war. We stand here entirely upon Assyrian-Chaldean ground, as will be obvious on comparing 2 Kings 18:18; 2 Kings 18:19. (compare particularly 19:4 with the 10th verse of our Psalm):-the contest is not, God against God, but Man against God. Finally, in 1 Mac. 7:16, 17, the closely allied Psalm, the lxxixth, is quoted in such a way as is done only with sacred scripture. The reasons against, the Chaldean destruction will be answered in the course of our exposition. In favour of it, we may yet further urge the agree-ment between our Psalm and the Lamentations, and Jeremiah 52:12. Several expositors, from the vivid representation of what was at the time going on in ver. 5 and 6, have been led to adopt the idea that the Psalm was composed at the time when the work of destruction had just begun. But verses 3, 7, and 8, are decisive against this; for there the destruction is repre-sented as already completely finished.

The author of the Psalm must have been one of the few Israelites who were left by the conquerors in the land. Asaph is named as the author of the Psalm. In those Psalms which bear his name, we must, when there are no strong rea-sons against it, conclude that the person meant is the Asaph who lived in the time of David. That he occupied a prominent place among the sacred poets, and that therefore there must be some of the Psalms of his composition, is evident from 2 Chronicles 29:30, according to which Hezekiah brought into use, in the worship of God, not only the songs of David, but also the songs of Asaph, and where Asaph is named the Seer, or the divinely illuminated, and from Nehemiah 12:46, where the days of the flower of Israelitish sacred poetry are called the days of David and of Asaph. For these reasons, we are perfectly justified in considering this Asaph as the author of Psa 50:73:78.: and these are perfectly sufficient of themselves to have procur-ed for him his poetic fame. But here we cannot have the least idea of the authorship belonging to David’s time. We must not, however, on this account, convict the title of a mistake: for just in proportion as the contents are decidedly and manifestly inconsistent with David’s age, was it unlikely that the title would announce that the Psalm was composed at that time. Asaph was the founder of a family of singers, who went by the name of the sons of Asaph, even in the time of Isaiah, compare 2 Chronicles 35:15, yea even in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, Ezekiel 2:41; Ezekiel 3:10, Nehemiah 7:44; Nehemiah 11:22. That the Holy Ghost, who inspired the founder, continued to exert his influence upon the members of this family from ageto age, is manifest from the example of Jehaziel, one of the sons of Asaph in Jehosaphat’s time, on whom the Spirit, of the Lord came down in the midst of the assembly, 2 Chronicles 20:14.

All the sacred compositions of the different members of this family, from time to time, were classed among the songs of Asaph, just as in the title of the 62. Psalm, Jeduthun stands for the Jedu-thunic choir. If the family had not possessed a founder so very famous in this department, these Psalms, like those which bear the name of the sons of Korah, would have had inscribed on their titles “the sons of Asaph.” The peculiarity of this Psalm is marked by the very fre-quent use of the נצה, for ever: ver. 1, 3, 10. It shews how the church of God, and particular individual believers, have to conduct themselves in times when every thing appears to be lost, and to lie in ruins. More particularly, we are instructed, that in such desperate circumstances, we have to overlook our-selves, and concentrate our regard upon the concerns and the glory of God: compare 2 Kings 19., where, at the Assyrian in-vasion, it is the conduct of the enemy directed against the Lord, that is most prominent, and that kindles zeal for his glory into a flame.

Psalms 74:1-2

Ver. 1 and 2.-Ver. 1. An Instruction of Asaph- Why, O God, hast thou cast us of for ever, does thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture? Ver. 2. Remember thy congre-gation, which thou hast acquired of old, thine inheritance which thou redeemest, Mount Zion, on which thou hast dwelt.-On “thou hast cast off” compare at Psalms 43:2; Psalms 44:23; and on “for ever,” at Psalms 13:1, and Lamentations 5:20, “why wilt thou forget me for ever”. A feeble faith supposes in the severe visitations of God, that all is over for ever. The object of the Psalm is to deliver the congregation of God from these thoughts; and hence its title, a Psalm of Instruction. The smoke comes into notice as the attendant of fire: compare Psalms 18:8. That בצאן is not to be connected with the “anger” but with the “smoke”, is evident from the fundamental passage, Deuteronomy 29:20, “the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man,” and from the parallel passage, similar to our verse, and referring to it, Psalms 80:5, “Lord God, how long wilt thou smoke against the prayer of thy people.” That the מרעית is not the “feeding”, but the “food”, is evident,–besides the form, from Hosea 13:6, (compare Michaelis), and Jer. 25:36,also 10:21, where the “pasture” stands for the “flock who feed on it.” Israel is named the pasture-flock of the Lord, be-cause he gave them possession of the fertile land of Canaan. Compare Hosea 13:6, Jeremiah 25:36; Jeremiah 25:38.

The reference is pecu-liarly appropriate for the times of the captivity, when Israel was driven away from his rich pasture: compare Psalms 79:13; Psalms 100:3. Calvin: “It is to be observed that the faithful, when oppress-ed by the profane, lift their eyes to God, as if struck by his hand. For they knew that it was only in consequence of the anger of the Lord that the profane had been permitted to injure them. And hence, under the conviction that they have not to fight with flesh and blood, but that they are afflicted through the just judgment of God, they consider that the pro-per cause and fountain of all their troubles, is, that God, whose favour had formerly imparted to them salvation, had now cast them off, and considered them as no longer worthy of being his flock."-The Psalmist grounds, in verse 2nd, his prayer for the deliverance of Israel, upon the election of God, and upon the manifestations of this given from the earliest antiquity, which would not permit him to dissolve the connection of love which, through his grace, had so long existed. Moses, in Deuteronomy 9:26; Deuteronomy 9:29, based his prayer that the Lord would not cast off his people, upon their deliverance from Egypt. God acquired his congre-gation, by delivering it from the bondage of Egypt. In the second clause, גלאת occupies the place of a noun:�think of“thou hast redeemed,"-think of the redemption, compare verse 18. נהלה שבט, the inheritance-rod, is the staff with which the inheritance is measured; שבט = המדה קנה, the land-surveyor’s rod, Ezekiel 40:3 : and this is used as גורל, the lot, is for the portion, for the inheritance itself. Others explain “thy in-heritance-tribe,” and refer to Isaiah 63:17. But the fundamental passage is in favour of the measuring-rod, Deuteronomy 32:9, “but the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his inheritance-line,” (compare Psalms 105:11); and שבט, tribe, is never used to denote the whole of Israel. This peculiar expression occurs again in Jeremiah 10:16; Jeremiah 51:19,-a reference, which can scarcely be acci-dental.

Psalms 74:3-11

Ver. 3.-9.-Ver. 3. Lift up thy footsteps to the eternal ruins, the enemy has destroyed every thing in the sanctuary. Ver. 4. Thine adversaries roar in the midst of thy places of revelation, they make their signs for signs. Ver. 5. He makes himself looklike one lifting up the axe in a forest thicket. Ver. 6. And now they break down its carved work all at once with hatchet and hammer. Ver. 7. They set thy sanctuaries on fire, they dese-crate to the ground the habitation of thy name. Ver. 8. They say in their hearts, We will recompense it all at once, we will burn all the places of the revelation of God in the land. Ver. 9. We see not our signs, and there is no longer any prophet, and there is no one by us who knows how long.-In reference to the משאות, ruins, in verse 3, compare at Psalms 73:18. The Psalmist speaks of eternal ruins, because the complete destruc-tion had cut off all human hope of a restoration. The prayer for deliverance from misery runs on, in the second clause, into a description of that misery, which is carried forward as far as verse 9th. This description begins with the general expression: “the enemy in the sanctuary has laid every thing waste.” Then follows its developement in detail; the whole scene of destruction is pictured forth in vivid colours before the eyes:–they roar, they lift the axe, they cut down, they burn. In the 8th verse, the conclusion assumes the general form of the intro-ductory clause: they burn all the places of revelation of God in the land. In verse 4, the reading ך~יד,עEומ with a Iod, whichis given by very many MSS. and editions, and is in agreement with the plu. in verse 8, is proved to be the correct one, by the feminine suffix which refers to it in verse 6.

The plural is to be explained as מקדשים is, compare at Psalms 68:35. The tem-ple, according to many expositors, got the name of “the place of meeting,” because the people met there for public worship.

But there is a manifest allusion to the name of the tabernacle: “The Tabernacle of meeting.” Now the import of this name is expressly given in Exodus 25:8; Exodus 29:42; Exodus 29:43; Exodus 29:45; Exodus 29:46, Numbers 17:19 :-the tabernacle was so called, not because the people as-sembled there, but because God met the people there: compareBeitr. P. III. p. 628, et seq. Inasmuch as אל מועד is the place where God himself dwells among his people, it appears to be the very height of all that is dreadful, that even there the enemies roar, (comp. Lamentations 2:7, “they have made a noise in the house of the Lord”), and lift up the signs of their dominion. if מעוך be rightly interpreted, it will be impossible to enter-tain the idea that the Psalm was composed during the time of the Maccabees. In this case the word would denote the synagogues.

It is, however, far too lofty a word to admit ofbeing thus used. The prerogative of the temple would be in-jured.

There was only one place in the land which God chose to put his name there, Deuteronomy 12:5; Deuteronomy 12:11. The signs of the ene-mies must, at all events, be interpreted as “the signs of their dominion.” The connection will not allow of any thing else. When they let their signs be seen in the house of the Lord, their object can only be to proclaim themselves as masters of that house. The word never signifies usages. There is no- thing said as to what the signs consisted of, because nothing depends on that. But inasmuch as the Chaldeans, and also the Assyrians (compare Isaiah 10:13) made their own strength their God, (compare Habakkuk 1:11; Habakkuk 1:16, and Delitzsh on the last passage), and concerned themselves very little about religion, there is no rea-son whatever for supposing that the enemies brought in the images of their gods into the temple as signs of their dominion, and set up the worship of them there.

The signs of their dominion are rather to be considered as of a military character; and the more so that the description directs attention not only to the setting up of military standards, but to the whole furious conduct of the enemies, for example, their shouts, their ges-tures, verse 5:-where formerly every thing had testified of the dominion of God, now every thing testifies of the dominion of the heathen. The sense in the 5th verse is: they destroy and cut down with as much indifference as if they were felling trees in a forest.

The subject is the enemy of verse 3. The suffix in פתוהיה cannot, except arbitrarily, be referred to an omitted noun, or be taken as standing in a general sense. It refers, ac-cording to the usual construction of the plural with the femi-nine, to מועדים in verse 4; and the reference is quite a natu-ral one, inasmuch as the temple has all along been the subject spoken of. Before the Chaldeans set fire to the temple, which, according to Jeremiah, happened a month after the capture of the city, (Jeremiah 52:12), they removed out of it all the precious metals, ver. 17. 2 Kings 25:13. 2 Chronicles 36:18. But they could not get at these without destroying the walls, which, according to 1 Kings 6. and vii., were in part overlaid with the purest gold, and especially without destroying the beautiful carved work on the walls, spoken of in 1 Kings 6:29. There are no traces of any such destruction in the time of the Macca-bees.

The second temple, from its poverty, had not so much to tempt the avarice of the enemies. Moreover, such a work supposes that the temple was devoted to entire destruction,which was not the case in the time of the Maccabees.

At that time it was merely devoted to heathen worship. Instead ofמקדשך, in verse 7, many MSS. and editions read מקדשיך in the plural, thy sanctuaries; compare at Psalms 68:35. The cir-cumstance that the plural rarely occurs is in favour of this read-ing. And it becomes necessary, if we refer the first clause of ver. 8 to the sanctuary. “ They desecrate to the ground” is illus-trated by Lamentations 2:2, “he has thrown down to the ground, de-secrated.” There was nothing in the least like this in the time of the Maccabees. The temple was not then levelled to the ground, and thus polluted. It remained standing.

In verse 8, the נינם has the connecting vowel Kamets instead of Tseri, as is the case with נירם in Numbers 21:30; it is from ינה, to rage, here, to destroy in a rage. The suffix is generally supposed to allude to the Israelites, and a reference is made to Psalms 83:4. But we must refer it to the sanctuaries, as this word forms the subject throughout the whole passage, and especially in the parallel clause. That by “the places of revelation of God” we are to understand the temple, with all its apartments, is evident from the word itself, (compare at verse 4), from the whole con-nection, (compare at verse 3), and from the first clause, in which the “all at once” corresponds to the expression here “all in the land.” The expression, “all in the land,” has been incorrectly supposed not to be applicable to the temple. The sanctuaries in Jerusalem, were all the places of revelation of God that were in the land; and the circumstance, that when the temple was destroyed, there was not another such place to be found, must have peculiarly aggravated the pain which an Israelite felt, and was a proof of the extent to which God’s honour was at stake, and his interests endangered. The assertion of those who are in favour of the Maccabean origin of the Psalm, that these words describe the destruction of the synagogues, is met by the remark, that in all the copious accounts which we have of the transac-tions of these times, there is nothing said of any such work of destruction. The “signs of the Israelites,” in verse 9, are the signs of the dominion of their God, whose places had been oc-cupied by the signs of the enemies, verse 4. The wonderful works of God, Psalms 78:43; Psalms 86:17, form the most promi-nent of these, by which the people had been delivered, when in similar circumstances, on former occasions, such as the bondage of the Egyptians or the invasion of the Assyrians.

Then fol-lows prophecy,-of the cessation of which the prophet express-ly complains in the second clause, which stands related to the first as the particular to the general. The expression, “there is no longer any prophet,” has very incorrectly been maintained to favour the Maccabean reference: it is, however, altogether against it, For it takes for granted that the people of the Lord had a little while ago enjoyed the presence of pro-phets.

It is only of fresh wounds that the Psalmist complains; he cannot be understood as expressing a desire for something of which the people had been deprived for a hundred years, and with the want of which they had long since become familiar. The words are to be explained from Ezekiel 7:26, where it is threatened, “and they seek (in vain) the face of the prophet,” from Lamentations 2:9, “and their prophets find not the face of the Lord,” and from 1 Samuel 28:6; 1 Samuel 28:15, according to which Saul got no answer from the Lord through the prophets. Jeremiah did indeed survive the destruction of the temple, (and to this reference has been made in support of the Maccabean exposition), but his prophetical office terminated with it. It was assuredly the cessation of his office that more immediately gave occa-sion to the painful cry: there is no longer any prophet. This standing ruin of the prophetical class proclaimed, even in louder accents than the non-appearance of other prophets, that God was no longer Israel’s King. It was necessary, that along with the other signs of the dominion of God, this one also should cease for a long period of time, that the people might be taught how they had treated it, wherein they had offended, and might, at the same time, be led with tears of repentance to seek its re-turn.a By the “knowing how long,” is meant a living know-ledge.

The exact length of the captivity had been foretold by Jeremiah as fixed; but on the first infliction of the stroke, no man could take the comfort of this announcement, and no man ought to have done so, till the infliction had served its purpose.Ver. 10 and 11.-Ver. 10. How long, O God, shall the adver-a Arnd: “Such punishments were frequently inflicted upon the Jews, as it is written: At that time there was no word of God, and no prophet in the land. This is the most severe punishment and soul destitution, as, on the other hand, the pure word of God is the greatest consolation, as Jeremiah says, ch. xv: “thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.” This is not observed till God and the precious treasure are away. Then men may dig holes in the earth, and run after it like a hungry dog; but it cannot be found.“sary reproach, the enemy despise thy name for ever? Ver. 11. Why drawest thou back thy hand, and thy right hand? Recom- pense out of thy bosom.-In reference to the apparent contradic- tion, “how long-for ever,” in verse 10, compare at Psalms 13:2. “Thy right hand,” in verse 11, contains the more exact idea, just as “sun” stands related to “light” in verse 16. The righthand is the seat of strength. The annihilation, (compare כלה in Psalms 59:13), proceeds from the bosom of God, inasmuch as his omnipotent right hand is at the time reposing inoperative there. The reading of the text is ק.הe without the Iod, the morerare form: Proverbs 17:23, Job 19:27 : the Massorites, as usual, have substituted the more common form with Iod.aa Still Hitzig falsely maintains that the reading in the text is הוק. Hiller has given the correct explanation of this, and a whole class of similar cases, de Arcano Chethib. et Keri, p. 29: notandum est hie, ubi Vau aut Iod in vocalibus homogeneis quiescentes, in una lectione expressae, in altera neglectae fuerunt, placuisse Massorethis quiescentem in Chethibo transponere vel post vocalem ejus literam scribere heterogeneam: in margine autem vel transpositam quiescentem vel non transpositae quiescentis homogeneam, comp. p. 251.

Psalms 74:12-17

Ver. 12-17.-Ver. 12. And God is my king of old, who works salvation in the midst of the land. Ver. 13. Thou break-est through the sea by thy strength, thou cleavest through the heads of the dragons in the water. Ver. 14. Thou dashest to pieces the heads of leviathan, thou givest him for food to the people of the wilderness. Ver. 15. Thou cleavest the fountain and the flood, thou driest up the perpetual stream. Ver. 16. Thine is the day, thine also is the night, thou hast prepared light and the sun. Ver. 17. Thou hast set all the boundaries of the earth,–as to summer and winter, thou hast made them.-On verse 12, Calvin: “The faithful mingle contemplation with their prayers, in order that they may collect new power of faith, and grow more full of earnestness in prayer. For we know how difficult it is to rise above all doubts, and to feel free and joyful in prayer. Here also the faithful recall to their recollection the memorials of the compassion and the power of God, by which he has made it known throughout all generations that he is the king of his elected people.” God is named the King of Israel, as being their beloved deliverer, guardian, and provider. And inas-much as he has manifested himself as such of old, by the mighty deeds by which he delivered his people from Egypt, he mustcontinue yet farther to do so.

What he was, guarantees what he will be. The participle denotes the usual dealings of God. The plural ישועות point to the rich fulness of salvation. That we can-not, with Stier, explain “in the midst of the land,” as meaning in the midst of the earth,” is obvious from the reference to Exodus 8:22 and verse 8. The words denote the comprehensive nature of the salvation: whoever has obtained possession of the in-terior of a country has got the ascendancy over the whole boundaries,-whatever is done there, extends to the whole cir-cumference: compare, besides, Exodus 8:22, “that thou mayest know that I the Lord am in the midst of the land, i. e. over the whole extent of Egypt,” Isaiah 10:23. In ver. 13-17, the Psalm-ist turns to the contemplation of those mighty deeds, which im-plied divine omnipotence, to sink into which is so very com-fortable to helpless feebleness. That it is only the divine omni-potence, and not the love of God, that is brought before our minds, is evident from “thy power”, in the introduction, and from the consideration of every separate particular. The sevenfold repetition of the emphatic “thou” is assuredly not accidental, standing as it does in striking contrast to the powerless “I”: it forms in fact the delivering right hand which rescues it froth the deep waters. That the preterites in ver. 13-15, although they stand connected with a description of historical events, denote something going, something which God is still doing, (compare on the parallel passage Psalms 66:6, “he turns the sea into dry land,” &c.), is probable from “thou givest” in verse 14, and the mention of the floods in verse 15, while the history records the drying up of only one stream, the Jordan.

In verses 13 and 14, the only historical event is the restraining of the sea by God, in reference to the dividing of the Red Sea: the dragon and leviathan are merely poetical fi-gures. These appear as monarchs of the sea, and their subjec- tion as a sign of its.

The two ideas, the subjugation of the sea, and that of the great sea monsters, appear in connection in the passage Is. Ii. 9, 10, which the Psalmist had decidedly before his mind: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, who bringeth down pride, (not brought down, for in that case the 11th verse would not connect well,-it is, as here, something going on), pierces the dragon? Art thou not he who drieth up the sea, the waters of the great flood, who maketh the depthsof the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” and also inJob_26:12; Job 26:13, " by his hand he puts in motion the sea, andby his understanding he smites the pride of the raging sea: by his breath the heaven becomes clear, his hand pierceth the fly-ing serpent.” The last appears there as the Queen of the sea: compare also Psalms 104:26. The inhabitants of the wilderness, (compare at Psalms 72:9), are the inhabitants of the wilderness which bounds the sea, particularly the Arabian sea, the Ichthy-ophagi, who depend for their support upon the sea beasts cast up on the land. According to the common interpretation, the dragons and leviathan are intended figuratively to represent the Egyptians and Pharaoh, (compare Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 29:4, where the cro-codile occurs as the emblem of the Egyptians); and the inha-bitants of the wilderness are the beasts of the desert, who got for their food the carcases of the Egyptians. But, in opposition to this, it is to be observed, that throughout the whole para-graph it is the dominion of God over nature, and not over man, that is described:-the sea, verses 13 and 14, the fountains and rivers, verse 15, the day and the night, &c.

Besides, in the passage quoted from Job, the piercing of the flying serpent oc-curs in connection with the general manifestation of the power of God over nature. And still further, the Psalmist has appliedthe word לעם, to the inhabitants of the wilderness, as if for the purpose of intimating that it was men and not beasts that he meant.

The use of the word in Proverbs 30:25, as applied to ants, will not prove that it may stand for beasts here. There is a reason in the connection for the reference in that passage; but there is none here: the similarity of the ants to men is what is there spoken of. And, finally, to all this we may add, the remarkable agreement between the passage and what the an- cients have recorded of the Ichthyophagi.a The לויתן, in ver. 14, denotes the species. The plural does not occur. The histori- cal foundation of verse 15 is to be found in the supply of water granted in the wilderness, Exodus 17 :and Numbers 20., and in the, opening of the passage through the Jordan. The Psalmist considers these wonderful works of God, as being always re-peated. “To cleave” is a poetical expression for “to cause to break forth by cleaving”: compare Job 28:10. Constantly- enduring rivers, are large rivers which are not dried up in thea Compare the passages in Bochart, Georgr. S. 1. 4. 100:2. “Agatharchides says: they live upon the whales cast up on the shore; Diodor.: they are supported by the whales cast up on the shore, having at the time abundance of food on account of the great size of the beasts found, &c.“heat of summer. The epithet tends to exalt the wonderful power of God. The Berleb. Bible: “Thou art also he who driest up the rivers of passion when they are like to break forth in such a way as to overflow every thing."-The church turns from the manifestations of the omnipotence of God in his-tory to his mighty deeds at creation, verses 16 and 17, which are continually renewed in providence. Day and night are thine,-they belong to thee, according to the parallelism, as their creator. The light and the sun are related to each other as the special to the general, compare verse 11: the sun being the most glorious of the heavenly luminaries, compare Genesis 1:16. The boundaries of the earth, in ver. 17, are its boundaries next the sea. The Psalmist here refers again to the history of the creation: compare at Psalms 24:2.

Psalms 74:18-23

At the conclusion, ver. 18-23, we have the expanded pray-er.a-Ver. 18. Remember this: the enemy reproacheth the Lord, and a foolish people despiseth thy name. Ver. 19. Give not to the desire of the blood thirsty thy turtle dove, the life of thy poor ones forget not for ever. Ver. 20. Remember thy covenant, for the darknesses of the earth are full of the habitations of violence. Ver. 21. O let not the oppressed turn back ashamed, may the miserable and the poor praise thy name. Ver. 22. Arise, O God, fight thou our battle, remember thy reproach by the foolish man continually. Ver. 23. Forget not the voice of thine adver- saries, the tumult of thine opponents riseth up continually.-That in verse 18 the address is not to the foolish, (compare at Psalms 14 :-think of this, thou foolish man whom the Lord despises-, but, as it is throughout the Psalm, to God, is evident from the second clause, and from verses 2 and 22. In ver. 19, נפש stands, as it not unfrequently does, in the sense of desire: the desire is a poetical expression for the rapacity of the enemies, which is similar to that of wild beasts, to whom the innocent defenceless and timid doves are given over for prey. Many expositors translate: give not up to the ravenous beasts of prey the soul of thy doves. But הית cannot be the stat. absol., and the form of this case, which in general is not well ascertained, in ת–,cannot be adopted with this word, which is one of very common a Amyraldus on ver. 8: “From this verse to the end, the prophet brings forward and blends together with wonderful skill, all those considerations which might move God partly to compassion, and partly to zeal.” occurrence. Be sides היה, is not used of wild beasts, without an epithet, except in reckoning, as in Genesis 7:14.a Others: “give not thy doves to the greedy host, the host of thy poor ones for- get not for ever.” But היה, in the sense of a “host,” appears, to belong exclusively to the age of David, (compare at Psalms 68:10); and it is scarcely suitable here to apply the word “host”, both to the scattered little company of the miserable remnant, and to the great throng of the wicked. Remember the covenant, verse 20: the right method of prayer is to hold up before God his covenant and his promises.b In the second clause the refe-rence is to Genesis 6:11; Genesis 6:13, where it is said of the time before the flood: “for the earth was full of violence through them, and behold I recompense them with the earth.” This undoubted reference shows that by the ארץ we are not to understand the land, but the earth. The ארץ מהשכי stands opposed to the שאול מהשכי, and signifies, “the earth is full, on which there is darkness, as there is on Sheol”: compare Psalms 143:3, “for the enemy hath persecuted my soul, he hath smitten my life down to the ground, he hath made me to dwell in “dark places, where are the dead of eternity,” Lamentations 3:6, where the same ex-pression occurs, and Psalms 88:6. The common interpreta-tion is: the lurking places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. But against this we would urge, with Michaelis, that the plural מהשכים always involves the notion of misery; further, the proud conquerors do not conceal themselves with their wickedness in lurking places; and there seems no reason why the lurking places should be full of the habitations,-the a Venema: The word הית without an epithet added, does not denote a wild beast, but is accustomed to have every where an epithet along with it, either “of the field,” “of the earth,” or “of the reeds.“b Arnd: The prophet here grounds his prayer upon the covenant of grace, which God had made with the people of Israel. God had confirmed this covenant by a strong oath, and by many wonderful works, with the beloved land; and it was the peculiar source of consolation, and place of refuge to the Jews in all their trouble: thus Daniel prays, ch. 9. “0 Lord who keepest covenant and grace to those who fear thee,” thus we read in Psalms 111. “He re-members his covenant for ever,” and thus aged Zecharias, Luke i. says, “He hath remembered his holy covenant, and his oath which he swore to our father Abraham.” We also may therefore rely firmly and surely upon the eternal covenant of grace, which God in the New Testament has made with us in Christ, through his merit and death, whereby he has reconciled us, and ob-tained forgiveness of sin and eternal life.” expression ought rather to have been, “they are the habita-tions."-“ May they praise,” in verse 21, is equivalent to “grant that they may be able to praise."-On “the tumult ascends continually,” in verse 23, compare Genesis 4:10; Genesis 18:21; Genesis 19:13. “Forget not” stands in the back ground, and therefore there is no reason to adopt the somewhat flat rendering of some, “which rises.”