7 To do vengeance among nations, Punishments among the peoples.
`Execute the vengeance of the sons of Israel against the Midianites -- afterwards thou art gathered unto thy people.' And Moses speaketh unto the people, saying, `Be ye armed some of you for the host, and they are against Midian, to put the vengeance of Jehovah on Midian;
`Thus said Jehovah of Hosts, I have looked after that which Amalek did to Israel, that which he laid for him in the way in his going up out of Egypt. Now, go, and thou hast smitten Amalek, and devoted all that it hath, and thou hast no pity on it, and hast put to death from man unto woman, from infant unto suckling, from ox unto sheep, from camel unto ass.'
and Jehovah sendeth thee in the way, and saith, Go, and thou hast devoted the sinners, the Amalekite, and fought against them till they are consumed; and why hast thou not hearkened to the voice of Jehovah -- and dost fly unto the spoil, and dost do the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah?' And Saul saith unto Samuel, `Because -- I have hearkened to the voice of Jehovah, and I go in the way which Jehovah hath sent me, and bring in Agag king of Amalek, and Amalek I have devoted; and the people taketh of the spoil of the flock and herd, the first part of the devoted thing, for sacrifice to Jehovah thy God in Gilgal.' And Samuel saith, `Hath Jehovah had delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as `in' hearkening to the voice of Jehovah? lo, hearkening than sacrifice is better; to give attention than fat of rams; for a sin of divination `is' rebellion, and iniquity and teraphim `is' stubbornness; because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He also doth reject thee from `being' king.'
O daughter of Babylon, O destroyed one, O the happiness of him who repayeth to thee thy deed, That thou hast done to us. O the happiness of him who doth seize, And hath dashed thy sucklings on the rock!
For I have trodden for Me Judah, A bow I have filled `with' Ephraim, And I have stirred up thy sons, O Zion, Against thy sons, O Javan, And I have set thee as the sword of a hero. And Jehovah doth appear for them, And gone forth as lightning hath His arrow, And the Lord Jehovah with a trumpet bloweth, And He hath gone with whirlwinds of the south. Jehovah of Hosts doth cover them over, And they consumed, and subdued sling-stones, Yea, they have drunk, They have made a noise as wine, And they have been full as a bowl, As corners of an altar. And saved them hath Jehovah their God In that day, as a flock of His people, For stones of a crown are displaying themselves over His ground.
And it hath come to pass, That he who doth not go up of the families of the land unto Jerusalem, To bow himself to the King, Jehovah of Hosts, Even on them there is no shower. And if the family of Egypt go not up, nor come in, Then not on them is the plague With which Jehovah doth plague the nations That go not up to celebrate the feast of booths. This is the punishment of the sin of Egypt, And the punishment of the sin of all the nations, That go not up to celebrate the feast of booths.
And I saw the heaven having been opened, and lo, a white horse, and he who is sitting upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness doth he judge and war, and his eyes `are' as a flame of fire, and upon his head `are' many diadems -- having a name written that no one hath known, except himself, and he is arrayed with a garment covered with blood, and his name is called, The Word of God. And the armies in the heaven were following him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen -- white and pure; and out of his mouth doth proceed a sharp sword, that with it he may smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he doth tread the press of the wine of the wrath and the anger of God the Almighty, and he hath upon the garment and upon his thigh the name written, `King of kings, and Lord of lords.' And I saw one messenger standing in the sun, and he cried, a great voice, saying to all the birds that are flying in mid-heaven, `Come and be gathered together to the supper of the great God, that ye may eat flesh of kings, and flesh of chiefs of thousands, and flesh of strong men, and flesh of horses, and of those sitting on them, and the flesh of all -- freemen and servants -- both small and great.' And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, having been gathered together to make war with him who is sitting upon the horse, and with his army; and the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet who did the signs before him, in which he led astray those who did receive the mark of the beast, and those who did bow before his image; living they were cast -- the two -- to the lake of the fire, that is burning with brimstone; and the rest were killed with the sword of him who is sitting on the horse, which `sword' is proceeding out of his mouth, and all the birds were filled out of 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.