Psalms 93

1. THE LORD reigneth; he is apparelled with majesty;

The LORD is apparelled, he hath girded himself with strength:

The world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

2. Thy throne is established of old:

Thou art from everlasting.

3. The floods have lifted up, O LORD,

The floods have lifted up their voice; The floods lift up their waves.

4. Above the voices of many waters, The mighty breakers of the sea, The LORD on high is mighty.

5. Thy testimonies are very sure: Holiness becometh thine house, O LORD, for evermore.

THIS short Psalm is left by the compilers without a word as to its author or occasion. Its leading thought, the majesty and glory of Jehovah’s reign over His creatures, is remarkably in harmony with the strain of the Psalm preceding. The thought of the Psalm is at once simple and sublime. “The Lord reigneth,” all glorious, with all power; has reigned through all the ages of the past, rising infinitely above all opposing forces, and finally crowning all His glorious natural attributes with the highest moral perfections, truth and purity. C.

This Psalm, like the two that precede it, goes back to the beginning of history. The subject is Jehovah, the God of revelation, ruling in majesty over all hostile powers, in executing the purposes of His grace. The Theocratic Psalms, beginning “Jehovah is King,” are no less Messianic than those commonly so designated, and in the same general direction. In fact they steadily converge toward the event in which they both find their fulfilment, the ascension of our blessed Lord to the right hand of the Father. D.

The substance of this Psalm is contained in the eighth verse of the preceding Psalm. It celebrates the majesty of Jehovah as ruler of the universe. He is Creator of the world. He has been its King from everlasting; it rests upon Him, and is stayed by His might. All the powers of nature obey Him, however lawless they may seem, as all the swelling and rage of men, of which those are but a figure, must obey Him. But His majesty and His glory are seen, not only in controlling the powers of nature, and whatsoever exalteth and opposeth itself against Him, but in the faithfulness of His Word, and in the holiness of His house. As the Psalm speaks of a particular manifestation of Jehovah’s kingly rule, of a time when He has taken to Himself His great power and reigned, it may in this sense be termed Messianic. For, as Delitzsch has pointed out, the Old Testament prophecy concerning the kingdom of God consists of two series of predictions, the one of which speaks of the reign of the anointed of Jehovah out of Zion, the other of the reign of Jehovah Himself as the great King over all the earth. These two lines of prophecy converge in the Old Testament, but never meet. Only here and there do we discern an intimation (as in 45 : 7) that the two are one. P.

The Scriptures do not propose to prove the attributes of God. These shine forth in His wonderful actions, which were to His ancient people familiar throughout their history. But, ever and anon, referring to these great facts, the inspired penman utters the most beautiful and enrapturing views of the Divine character and government. M. Simpson.

The subject of this magnificent Psalm is the stability of God in His natural and moral kingdom. He is represented as a king upon his throne, robed in majesty and girded with strength; to Him the world is indebted for its stability, since He is from everlasting and His throne was established of old. Against Him, thus sitting on His throne, the wild, turbulent floods rise in their fury, as if they would drive Him from His established power, but the Lord, seated on high, is mightier than all the disturbing forces, whether of nature or of nations, which lift themselves against His authority. And of this stability His law and moral government partake; His testimonies or precepts are very sure; they may be relied upon, for they have the permanency of God in them. Holiness becometh His house forever; there are fixed proprieties in the worship of Him and in the relations of the worshipper, which will not pass away.

The stability of God presented to us in the Scriptures consists in His fixed character and purposes, backed by unlimited power. It is not law—regular and uniform sequence, dependent on the necessity of things—to which the Bible refers the order of nature. There is a will above law, and a character of infinite wisdom and goodness behind will, which is the support of the universe. If ever the Scriptures seem to represent God as arbitrary, as willing and decreeing without a reason, the representation, which is made in order to set forth in a strong way the unalterableness and irresistibleness of the decree of God, is corrected by other passages where the decrees of God appear as His counsels, the results of His perfect wisdom and moral excellence. T. D. Woolsey.

1. The Lord reigneth.** It is a kind of proclamation in which God’s people are invited to declare before men and angels that the Lord is King, He and He only. It is the response of the Church to the preaching of the Gospel, so rapturously hailed in Isaiah; the preaching of the messenger “that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” W. Binnie.

The Lord reigneth! And all history, sacred and profane, shows that He is bringing out of early ignorance, rudeness, wars, and widespread vice a continually increasing amount of knowledge, wisdom, civilization, justice, and righteousness. T. Hill.—We have here the history of the Church of God deduced from the text, “Jehovah reigneth.” These words are to us as “a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts.” So long as they are left us, all that threatens us from without is only like the noise of the breaking wave. The unspeakable comfort conveyed in this assurance is ever tested in the experience of God’s people. There is no truth more precious to the heart of the Christian than that “the LORD reigneth.” The conviction of this must carry us far above all cares and fears. A personal God, a living God, a reigning God, alike in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and this God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—such are the steps by which we reach a height, where, far removed from the turmoil of men, we gain a comprehensive and clear view of earth and its concerns. I would not exchange the assurance which these two words, “Jehovah reigneth,” convey, for all the wisdom, combined with all the power of this world. Received into my heart, they are the solution of every difficulty, the end of all perplexity. A. E.

The world is established that it cannot be moved. This stability is an emanation of the wisdom and power of God, of wisdom which has contrived it as the theatre where He is carrying forward His great plan, and which must be kept in its place as long as the plan demands, and of power which deals with unyielding matter, as easily as the potter with the clay. The agitated sea and air, the flood and the lightning do their work, and that on the whole a beneficent work according to God’s laws, without endangering the safety of the system. Since man has been placed on the earth its face and frame-work have remained nearly the same. Nay, earth outlasts all attacks upon it, whether occasional and violent, or silent and continual, and will endure until it shall be remodelled again to become a dwelling-place of the saints. Woolsey.

2. One glorious personage, Eternal and Divine, one grand central figure dominates human history from first to last, as He does all history of worlds of being beyond our ken, one who now as always, always as now, before or since His manifestation in the flesh, is the King of men, the real operative and controlling spiritual force in human history throughout, the Alpha and the Omega, the Eternal Son of God, the Lord and the Heir of all things, for us made man. Him we own as King of kings, and Lord of lords, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth, in the unseen worlds and in the seen, in things eternal and in the things of time. Medd.

3-5. All the raging of the world will not be able to hinder the progress of the kingdom of God and its ultimate breaking through to the glory of triumph. The sea, with its vast mass of waters, with the constant restlessness of its waves, with its unceasing pressing upon the firm land, and its foaming against the rocks, is an emblem of the God-estranged, God-opposed Gentile world; while the streams are an emblem of the world-kingdoms, just as the Nile is a symbol of the Egyptian, the Tigris, swift as an arrow, of the Assyrian, and the winding Euphrates of the Babylonian. These streams, as the poet says with a confident look upward to Jehovah, have lifted up, have lifted up their voice; the streams lift up their noise. But Jehovah’s majesty in the heavens soars above all the noisy majesties here below; their waves, though lashed ever so high, can never reach His throne. He is King of His people, Lord of His Church, which retains His revelation, and worships in His temple. In virtue of His unapproachable, all-overcoming kingship, this revelation is inviolable; His testimonies, which minister to the setting up of His kingdom and promise its future presentation in glory, are sure. And holiness becometh His temple. D.

3. 4. In the Old Testament the floods are often compared with the rage of the peoples, and the rebellion of man against the will of God. God lets people work against His kingdom in this world. It is not to be always so. The kingdom of God is in the earth, and the kingdom of God admits of opposition. But the opposition, even here on earth, all comes to nothing. “Thou art mightier than the noise of many waters;” the floods “have lifted up their voice;” but Thou “sittest upon the floods, yea, Thou sittest King forever.” It is an experience repeated over and over again, in the history of individuals and in the history of the world. A. M.—There is a difference between violences in the moral system and those in the kingdom of nature. The wild forces in the latter case obey an established law and do a beneficent work; all, at least, except the earthquake, into the purpose of which men have not yet been able to penetrate. But violence in the moral world, the fury and wild force of nations, as of individuals, is not only against moral order but also against the original conception of the system. The fact of sin, then, the impetuous rage of sin on the great scale, looks as if finite beings were getting the better of God, as if they were disappointing Him, and marring somewhat the majesty of His throne, when they lift up their waves against Him. But it is far otherwise: the Lord on high is in the end shown to be “mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.” For, first, the law of retribution is continually coming into play, when nations commit great crimes. The blind force of finite minds punishes itself, and thus clothes God before the eyes of His creatures with majesty, and establishes His throne. And, secondly, God draws good out of evil. As in storm, and flood, and lightning, so here His final purpose is beneficent, although, through the perversity of man, not always attained. Sometimes He chastises their pride, and a humbled nation, bowing in repentance before Him, will henceforth have in its hand the key of prosperity, will respect the rights of others more, and learn lessons more readily. Sometimes a vast structure of injustice on which they set their hearts, which they upheld by all sophistry in defiance of truth and God, is made the source of their present ruin, but out of the trunk grows up again a vigorous tree, which will flourish for ages. A lesson of justice has been burned into them which they will not forget. Sometimes they cast God away in voluptuous refinement and heartless scepticism. They are punished by dissolution of civil order, by wild passions in society, by strife of class with class, by political revolution. They are shaken until they acknowledge God again and become able to have an orderly and established government.

5. The Psalmist passes on by an easy sequence to teach us that God’s testimonies or precepts are sure; that is, are true, permanent, and to be relied upon. If the swelling waters that lift up their voice are symbols of disorder among nations as well as in nature, the transition is yet more smooth; for from the majesty and power of God, as displayed against rebellious nations, we go directly to His precepts which they have violated, and which He upholds by His judgments. Woolsey.

Thy testimonies are very sure. As in Providence the throne of God is fixed beyond all risk, so in revelation His truth is beyond all question. As the rocks remain unmoved amid the tumult of the sea, so does Divine truth resist all the currents of man’s opinion and the storms of human controversy; they are not only sure, but very sure. Our faith is grounded upon the eternal truth of the Most High. S.

—The promises no less than the precepts are God’s testimonies, or the witnesses or declarations of His mind and will to mankind. And He seems here to speak of those great and precious promises concerning the erection and establishment of His kingdom in the world by the Messias; which, saith He, are infallibly true, and shall certainly be accomplished in thy time, M. Pool.

Holiness becomes Thy house, O Lord, forever. God’s Church is His house; it is a holy house, cleansed from sin, consecrated by God, and employed in His service. The holiness of it is its beauty; nothing better becomes the saints than conformity to God’s image, and an entire devotedness to His honor; and it is its strength and safety. It is the holiness of God’s house that secures it against the many waters and their noise; where there is purity, there shall be peace. H.—“Holiness becometh Thine house,” the Hebrew word [“becometh”] combining, as in Psalms 33: 1, the two ideas of beauty and fitness, expressing therefore the

beauty of fitness. Holiness, moral purity, exemption from all sin, is appropriate and exquisitely beautiful in Thine house, the place of Thine earthly abode, where Thy worshipping

people meet Thee face to face. Let them appear there before this faithful and glorious God with clean hands and pure heart, in the beauty of holiness. C.