7 To execute vengeance upon the nations, And punishments upon the peoples;
Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm ye men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian, to execute Jehovah's vengeance on Midian.
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, I have marked that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
and Jehovah sent thee on a journey, and said, Go, and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of Jehovah, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah? And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of Jehovah, and have gone the way which Jehovah sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the devoted things, to sacrifice unto Jehovah thy God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Hath Jehovah as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Jehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee As thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock. Psalm 138 A `Psalm' of David.
For I have bent Judah for me, I have filled the bow with Ephraim; and I will stir up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and will make thee as the sword of a mighty man. And Jehovah shall be seen over them; and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning; and the Lord Jehovah will blow the trumpet, and will go with whirlwinds of the south. Jehovah of hosts will defend them; and they shall devour, and shall tread down the sling-stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, like the corners of the altar. And Jehovah their God will save them in that day as the flock of his people; for `they shall be as' the stones of a crown, lifted on high over his land.
And it shall be, that whoso of `all' the families of the earth goeth not up unto Jerusalem to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, upon them there shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, neither `shall it be' upon them; there shall be the plague wherewith Jehovah will smite the nations that go not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all the nations that go not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.
And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteous he doth judge and make war. And his eyes `are' a flame of fire, and upon his head `are' many diadems; and he hath a name written which no one knoweth but he himself. And he `is' arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white `and' pure. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh a name written, KINGS OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid heaven, Come `and' be gathered together unto the great supper of God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of them that sit thereon, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, and small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat upon the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought the signs in his sight, wherewith he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that worshipped his image: they two were cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone: and the rest were killed with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, `even the sword' which came forth out of his mouth: and all the birds were filled with their flesh.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 149
Commentary on Psalms 149 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Hallelujah to the God of Victory of His People
This Psalm is also explained, as we have already seen on Psalms 147, from the time of the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah. The new song to which it summons has the supreme power which Israel has attained over the world of nations for its substance. As in Psalms 148:14 the fact that Jahve has raised up a horn for His people is called תּהלּה לכל־חסדיו , so here in Psalms 149:9 the fact that Israel takes vengeance upon the nations and their rulers is called הדר לכל־חסדיו . The writer of the two Psalms is one and the same. The fathers are of opinion that it is the wars and victories of the Maccabees that are here prophetically spoken of. But the Psalm is sufficiently explicable from the newly strengthened national self-consciousness of the period after Cyrus. The stand-point is somewhere about the stand-point of the Book of Esther. The New Testament spiritual church cannot pray as the Old Testament national church here prays. Under the illusion that it might be used as a prayer without any spiritual transmutation, Psalms 149:1-9 has become the watchword of the most horrible errors. It was by means of this Psalm that Caspar Scloppius in his Classicum Belli Sacri , which, as Bakius says, is written not with ink, but with blood, inflamed the Roman Catholic princes to the Thirty Years' religious War. And in the Protestant Church Thomas Münzer stirred up the War of the Peasants by means of this Psalm. We see that the Christian cannot make such a Psalm directly his own without disavowing the apostolic warning, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10:4). The praying Christian must there transpose the letter of this Psalm into the spirit of the New Covenant; the Christian expositor, however, has to ascertain the literal meaning of this portion of the Scriptures of the Old Testament in its relation to contemporary history.
A period, in which the church is renewing its youth and drawing nearer to the form it is finally to assume, also of inward necessity puts forth new songs. Such a new era has now dawned for the church of the saints, the Israel that has remained faithful to its God and the faith of its fathers. The Creator of Israel ( עשׂיו , plural, with the plural suffix, like עשׂי in Job 35:10, עשׂיך in Isaiah 54:5, cf. עשׂו in Job 40:19; according to Hupfeld and Hitzig, cf. Ew. §256, b , Ges. §93, 9, singular; but aj , ajich , aw , are always really plural suffixes) has shown that He is also Israel's Preserver and the King of Zion, that He cannot leave the children of Zion for any length of time under foreign dominion, and has heard the sighing of the exiles (Isaiah 63:19; Isaiah 26:13). Therefore the church newly appropriated by its God and King is to celebrate Him, whose Name shines forth anew out of its history, with festive dance, timbrel, and cithern. For (as the occasion, hitherto only hinted at, is now expressly stated) Jahve takes a pleasure in His people; His wrath in comparison with His mercy is only like a swiftly passing moment (Isaiah 54:7.). The futures that follow state that which is going on at the present time. ענוים is, as frequently, a designation of the ecclesia pressa , which has hitherto, amidst patient endurance of suffering, waited for God's own act of redemption. He now adorns them with ישׁוּעה , help against the victory over the hostile world; now the saints, hitherto enslaved and contemned, exult בכבוד , in honour, or on account of the honour which vindicates them before the world and is anew bestowed upon them ( בּ of the reason, or, which is more probable in connection with the boldness of the expression, of the state and mood);
(Note: Such, too (with pomp, not “with an army”), is the meaning of μετὰ δόξης in 1 Macc. 10:60; 14:4, 5, vid., Grimm in loc. ))
they shout for joy upon their beds, upon which they have hitherto poured forth their complaints over the present (cf. Hosea 7:14), and ardently longed for a better future (Isaiah 26:8); for the bed is the place of soliloquy (Psalms 4:5), and the tears shed there (Psalms 6:7) are turned into shouts of joy in the case of Israel.
The glance is here directed to the future. The people of the present have again, in their God, attained to a lofty self-consciousness, the consciousness of their destiny, viz., to subjugate the whole world of nations to the God of Israel. In the presence of the re-exaltation which they have experienced their throat is full of words and songs exalting Jahve ( רוממות , plural of רומם , or, according to another reading, רומם , Psalms 56:1-13 :17), and as servants of this God, the rightful Lord of all the heathen (Psalms 82:8), they hold in their hand a many-mouthed, i.e., many edged sword (vid., supra , p. 580), in order to take the field on behalf of the true religion, as the Maccabees actually did, not long after: ταῖς μὲν χερσὶν ἀγωνιζόμενοι ταῖς δὲ καρδίαις πρὸς τὸν Θεόν εὐχόμενοι (2 Macc. 15:27). The meaning of Psalms 149:9 becomes a different one, according as we take this line as co-ordinate or subordinate to what goes before. Subordinated, it would imply the execution of a penal jurisdiction over those whom they carried away, and כּתוּב would refer to prescriptive facts such as are recorded in Numbers 31:8; 1 Samuel 15:32. (Hitzig). But it would become the religious lyric poet least of all to entertain such an unconditional prospect of the execution of the conquered worldly rulers. There is just as little ground for thinking of the judgment of extermination pronounced upon the nations of Canaan, which was pronounced upon them for an especial reason. If Psalms 149:9 is taken as co-ordinate, the “written judgment” ( Recht ) consists in the complete carrying out of the subjugation; and this is commended by the perfectly valid parallel, Isaiah 45:14. The poet, however, in connection with the expression “written,” has neither this nor that passage of Scripture in his mind, but the testimony of the Law and of prophecy in general, that all kingdoms shall become God's and His Christ's. Subjugation (and certainly not without bloodshed) is the scriptural משׁפּט for the execution of which Jahve makes use of His own nation. Because the God who thus vindicates Himself is Israel's God, this subjugation of the world is הדר , splendour and glory, to all who are in love devoted to Him. The glorifying of Jahve is also the glorifying of Israel.