Psalms 76

1. IN Judah is God known : His name is great in Israel. 2 In Salem also is his tabernacle, And his dwelling place in Zion. 3 There he brake the arrows of the bow ; The shield, and the sword, and the battle. [Selah 4 Glorious art thou and excellent, from the mountains of prey. 5 The stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept 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 cast into a dead sleep.

THIS Psalm follows Psalm 75 most appropriately. It is the consummation of the judgment there forecast, and throughout bears the impress of the same historic connection. Without this the preceding Psalm disappoints us by its incompleteness. For the self-manifestation of God in the illustration of His glorious Name at important crises in history, when all is lost without the aid of Almighty power, embraces both the announcement and the execution of His righteous judgment. This Psalm follows, as its companion precedes, the destruction of the Assyrian power. De Witt.

This is one of several Psalms which were composed in celebration of the miraculous overthrow of Sennacherib’s army. From the days of Israel’s first occupation of the land, when God went forth with their hosts, giving the victory by signs and wonders from heaven, no deliverance so signal had been witnessed. Hence it roused in an extraordinary degree the religious fervor of the nation, and called forth loud songs of thanksgiving. Like Psalms 46, 47, 48, this is an ode of victory over the Assyrians. It tells of Zion’s glory and Zion’s safety (to which there may be an allusion in the name Salem), because God has chosen it for His dwelling-place. It tells of the discomfiture of that proud army, whose might was weakness itself when arrayed against the might of Jehovah. It tells how the warriors sank into their last sleep before the walls of the city, not beaten

7. Thou, even thou, art to be feared . And who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry ? 8 Thou didst cause sentence to be heard from heaven ; The earth feared, and was still, 9 When God arose to judgment, To save all the meek of the earth. [Selah 10 Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee : The residue of wrath shalt thou gird upon thee. 11 Vow, and pay unto the LORD your God : Let all that be round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared. 12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes : He is terrible to the kings of the earth.

down before a human enemy, not slain by an earthly arm, but at the rebuke of the God of Jacob. And then the poet looks beyond the immediate scene. He beholds in this great deliverance not the power only, but the righteousness of God. It is God’s solemn act of judgment. It is His voice speaking from heaven and filling the earth. And the lesson which this act of judgment teaches is the folly of man, who would measure his impotent wrath against the majesty of God ; and the wisdom of submission to Him who is the only worthy object of fear.

The Psalm consists of four strophes, each of which is comprised in three verses. The first celebrates Jerusalem and Zion as the abode of God, and the place where He has manifested His power (vs. 1-3). The second describes in a forcible and animated manner the sudden destruction of the beleaguering army (vs. 4-6). The third dwells on that event as a solemn, far-reaching act of judgment, conveying its lesson to the world (vs. 7-9). The last tells what that lesson is, counselling submission to Him whose power and whose righteousness have so wonderfully made themselves known (vs. 10-12). P.

1,2. These opening sentences seem to go back to the first revelations of God’s power and grace, by which He became established upon His throne in Zion. From Zion as the centre must go forth every new manifestation of His glorious majesty in behalf of Israel, the latest of which is now celebrated in thankful song. De Witt.

His name is great in Israel, inasmuch as He has proved Himself to be a great One and is praised as a great One. In Judah more especially; for there in Jerusalem and indeed upon Zion, the citadel with the gates of old, He has His dwelling-place upon earth within Israel. Salem is the ancient name of Jerusalem; for the Salem of Melchizedek is one and the same city with Jerusalem of Adonizedek in Josh. 10:1. D.

1. Well might it be said then, “In Judah is God known;” known as the hearer of prayer; known as the enduring, unfailing Friend of His covenant people; known as One mighty to save. “His name is great in Israel;” how could it be otherwise after such displays of matchless power and terrible retribution upon the proud Assyrian! C.—In Judah, in His Church, where His Word and ordinances are, where Christ is preached, and the mystery of man’s salvation is opened, there God is known truly without error, perspicuously without obscurities, and savingly without uncertainties. And His name is great in Israel; His power, wisdom, truth, love, and goodness is much magnified and very glorious in their apprehensions who know Him in Christ Jesus. A. Grosse.

2. Salem is but another name for Jerusalem—the city of the Great King, the place of God’s special abode, where first His tent and afterward His temple was located. Assyria’s king had proudly hurled defiance at the God of Israel; in the words of Isaiah (19:33), had “shaken his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem;” but the God who dwelt there sent forth His angel through that Assyrian camp one awful night—it was enough! The dwelling-place of Israel’s God was safe! C.

2,3. The care of Salem, or Zion, lies at the bottom of all God’s powerful actings and workings among the sons of men. Every mighty work of God throughout the world may be prefaced with these two verses. The whole course of affairs in the world is steered by Providence in reference to the good of Salem. Owen.

3. There, at that point, just as that marshaled host thought themselves within striking distance and ready to smite the city—there Jehovah shivered the lightnings of the bow, the shield, the sword—all his implements of battle. Pause and think of that crash underneath the stroke of the Almighty! C.—Every weapon, offensive and defensive, the Lord dashed in pieces. In the spiritual conflicts of this and every age, the like will be seen; no weapon that is formed against the Church shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against her in judgment, she shall condemn. “Selah.” It is meet that we should dwell on so soul-stirring a theme, and give the Lord our grateful adoration, hence a pause is inserted. S.

4. God goes forth victoriously from Zion to crush His foes. “The promise,” Tholuck says, “is fulfilled: ‘I will break the Assyrian in My land, and upon My mountains tread him under foot’ (Isa. 14:25). Yea, upon the mountains of Jerusalem they themselves must become a prey who had hoped there to gather the prey.” P.

5. Slept their sleep. The sleep of death, a figure which is peculiarly appropriate to the destruction of the Assyrian army in the dead of night. None have found their hands. This phrase is remarkable; it seems to represent a death which comes suddenly, yet with a momentary interval of consciousness; the sleeper, awakened by a sudden pang, endeavors in vain to put out his hands and grasp his weapons, but falls back overwhelmed by the deep sleep, which in the next verse is said to fall on chariot and horse, i.e., the whole army of the invaders. Cook.—In v. 6 we see them lying in the last throes of death and making the last attempt to raise themselves up. But they do not find the hands, which they lifted up threateningly against Jerusalem; these are paralyzed, motionless, rigid and dead. This field of corpses is the effect of the omnipotent energy of the Word of the God of Jacob. Before His threatening both chariot and horse, equipage and chargers, have sunk into motionlessness and unconsciousness. D.

6. The sleep meant is of course the sleep of death. The application of this figure to the chariot as well as to the horse is less paradoxical in Hebrew, where the noun used is sometimes a collective meaning cavalry. At the same time there is beauty in the figure, as suggesting that the noisy rattle of the wheels is hushed in death like silence. A.

7-9. The description of the effect of God’s judgments upon the people is very striking; the tones are grave, solemn, speaking rather of awe than exultation; the only grace which the Psalmist claims for his people is meekness, a consciousness of weakness, and dependence on God’s power. Cook.

7. Thou, even Thou, art to be feared. The emphasis in the word “thou,” redoubled, implies as much as if he had said,

Not principalities, not powers, not hell, not death, nor anything for themselves, but Thou, O Lord, alone art to be feared. Arguments and reasons to confirm it are two, here laid down in the text: the first is drawn from God’s anger, who hath decreed and accordingly executes vengeance upon all the proud. The second is drawn from His power; not princes, not armies, not men, not angels are able to endure the breath of His fury; for, “Who may stand in Thy sight when once Thou art angry?” Cragge.

8. As in the last Psalm, God is spoken of as the Judge (this is a peculiar feature in the Psalms ascribed to Asaph); and, as in that, he speaks from heaven, terrifying His enemies with the thunder of His Word. P.

8,9. From out of His high heavens God made the mandate for His judgments to be heard—judgments in the sense of visitations of destruction upon His defiant foes. Earth feared and hushed itself to silence before God’s awful voice. It was to save the meek ones—meek in the twofold sense of pious and frail—the poor, dependent ones who cast themselves on their God for help. Pause and contemplate this wonderful interposition! C.

10. The meaning of the first clause appears to be that all the wrath and violence of man do but serve to bring out the attributes of God, and so display His glory; the second clause is more doubtful; our version gives a fair sense, God will put an end to all other outbursts of fury on the part of His enemies. This interpretation is defended by Calvin, Venema, Doederlein, and Dathe (who follow Kimchi), and it is supported by an analogous use of the original word in Arabic, Syriac, and in the Mishna. Cook.

For the wrath of man shall praise Thee (or acknowledge Thee); the remainder of wraths Thou shalt gird (about Thee). The very passions which excite men to rebel against God shall be used as instruments and means of coercion. And so complete shall be this process, that even the remnant of such passionate excitement, which might be expected to escape attention, will be nevertheless an instrument or weapon in the hands of God. A.—Man’s wrath doth but praise God. With the remainder of man’s wrath, his last impotent efforts to assert his own power, God girds Himself, puts it on, so to speak, as an ornament—clothes himself therewith to his own glory. Thus the parallelism of the two clauses is strictly preserved. The word wrath is in the plural, denoting either wrath of every kind, or wrath in its intensity. P.

The wrath of wicked men against the people of God puts them upon many devices, in frustrating of which the wisdom of God and His care of His Church is illustrated. The wrath of wicked men impels them to many violent attempts to destroy the people of God, and so gives Him occasion to manifest His power in their defence. It makes them sometimes fit to be His instruments in correcting His people, and so He makes them that hate holiness promote it in His people, and them that intend the greatest hurt to do them the greatest good. So it serves much to adorn God’s signal undertakings for His people in the world, and to manifest the glory of God’s justice upon His people’s enemies. J. Warren.

God can use the wrath of man to any extent for His own praise. No matter how fierce, no matter how extreme or desperate, the more the better for His purposes; He can so easily gird it on and make it the very sword of His righteous retribution upon His proud and maddened foes. And did not Jehovah gird about Him the utmost wrath of Assyria’s king and use it as His sword for the terrific slaughter of that mighty host? Such examples fill every page of history. C.—God makes use of this great evil, “the wrath of man,” to make war on and destroy other great evils in the earth—He lets it go forth with His commission as a gigantic demolisher. One wicked nation has been made His avenger on the greater wickedness of another. Wars of conquest have been directed by Providence to break up a state of ignorance and barbarism, which seemed otherwise to have a principle of perpetuity. Furious invasions, iniquitous in their principle, and intended for no good, have had the effect of destroying monstrous tyrannies and direful superstitions. J. F.

This truth has bearings both wide and rich upon the relations of sin under the moral government of God. It shows plainly that God never can be alarmed by the presence of sin, lest it should get any considerable ascendancy in His universe. No matter though it rage and burn and goad itself into furious wrath, God knows His own resources. He understands how He cannot only arrest and curtail this mischief, but how He can even turn it to great and good account. These views of God’s relations to sin should inspire a calm and patient trust in God amid the darkest scenes. C.

The elements of necessity and free will are reconciled in the higher power of an omnipresent Providence, that predestinates the whole in the moral freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never detached from the ground.

It is God everywhere; and all creatures conform to His decrees; the righteous by performance of the law, the disobedient by the sufferance of the penalty. Coleridge.—The revelation of God in His Word as the God of providence is everywhere grand and solemn. It is grand beyond expression to behold God, as a sovereign God, ordering all things after the councils of His own will, to work the purposes of His own good pleasure, and to this end, even while leaving His creatures to the exercise of their own freedom as voluntary intelligent agents, yet overruling even the free will of His enemies for the accomplishment of His own will, out of evil itself ever bringing forth good, and causing even the sin and wrath in the hearts of the wicked to praise Him. It is the mighty, incomprehensible, and supreme prerogative of Jehovah alone to do this, and in the exercise of this prerogative all beings and things are made to do His bidding; the believing and the loving by obedience and love, the unbelieving and rebellious by the sufferance of the penalty. But, oh! what a difference it makes to the creature, whether the will of the great Creator be performed out of a loving, obedient, trusting, and praising heart, thus fixed by the very beatings and breathings of the heart, in the heart of heaven, in heaven’s essential holiness and blessedness, wherever in all God’s universe be the position in time and space; or whether it be accomplished rather than performed by an unwilling, rebellious, distrustful, unloving, suffering heart, compelled, in the endurance of the penalty of God’s violated law, to perform the last and only thing that remains whereby God can be glorified; and thus, by the very elements of a transgressing soul, by the very breathings and beatings of a heart of sin and hate and suffering, wherever in all God’s universe be the position in time and space occupied. Cheever.

Powerful as is the evil will of man, yet more powerful far is the will of the omnipotent God. Great as has been the misery and ruin which depraved man in every generation has wrought on the earth, far greater would these have been had not the might of Jehovah been continually interposed to stay the natural course of the corrupt heart. Had not His energies been ceaselessly put forth to frustrate the purposes of the sinful human soul and bring to nought its destructive counsels and efforts, earth had been a scene of unqualified wickedness and shameless guilt, of unmingled, unmitigated wretchedness, ruin, and woe. As we trace the events of human history, how signally does this appear! B.

Thus far through the long, sad history, the glory of God has very much arisen from the display of His power in contest with human iniquity. How the human nature could come into such a state, and why the sovereign Lord of all things suffered it to do so, have been the fruitless inquiries of innumerable speculating minds—inquiries totally in vain. How such an awful fact is to answer ultimately a good end is a matter to be surrendered to the wisdom and power of an Infinite Mind. And methinks it is a glorious thing that there should be a Mind to which all this is no difficulty either to comprehend or to accomplish. For ourselves, all we can say is, that the universe is vast, that eternity is long; and that it is perfectly conceivable that under such a government, acting and combining on such an immensity of space and duration, it is perfectly conceivable (though not the manner how) that so much evil may answer a glorious end. And no doubt the redeemed and holy spirits will hereafter have a revelation in part and by degrees of this great mystery. In the mean time, we clearly see God in opposition to man. And also we most clearly see that He is right. For wherein has He, through all ages, maintained this opposition? What has He declared and acted against in man? the things that we see and know to be in themselves pernicious and hateful—idolatry, disregard of true religion, delusion, all the destructive passions, all crime and vice, all injustice among men, oppression, rapacious selfishness, cruelty, fraud. And therefore it is right that He should gain to Himself glory, or “praise,” in this opposition. It is not the praise or glory of a powerful tyrant, but of a most righteous Governor. Should He surrender to itself, let go from His jurisdiction a world that is careless of Him, alienated, irreligious, rebellious? Should He give it up as a province of His dominion from which no tribute of honor can be gained, because it is averse to render Him such tribute? Should He keep it in His great system, under a grand economy of nature and Providence, as a portion entirely waste, as a planet not belonging to His dominion? May He not righteously extort by His power, from the very wickedness of His perverse subjects, a glory which their homage, their love, their obedience, will not yield Him? And the whole spirit and avowal of His declarations is that He will do this. J. F.

II. This is the end. God has wrought His terrible act of judgment, but the first of a long series of judgments to be executed on the nations, unless by timely submission they acknowledge Him as their King. P.