《Keil & Delitzsch Commentary – Psalms (Vol. 2)》(Karl F. Keil, etc.) 51 Psalm 51

82 Psalm 82
Introduction

God's Judgment upon the Gods of the Earth

As in Ps 81, so also in this Psalm (according to the Talmud the TuesdayPsalm of the Temple liturgy) God is introduced as speaking after themanner of the prophets. Psalm 58:1-11 and 94 are similar, but more especially Isaiah 3:13-15. Asaph the seer beholds how God, reproving, correcting, andthreatening, appears against the chiefs of the congregation of His people,who have perverted the splendour of majesty which He has put uponthem into tyranny. It is perfectly characteristic of Asaph (Ps 50; Psalm 75:1-10; Ps 81) to plunge himself into the contemplation of the divine judgment, and tointroduce God as speaking. There is nothing to militate against the Psalmbeing written by Asaph, David's contemporary, except the determinationnot to allow to the לאסף of the inscription its most natural sense. Hupfeld,understanding “angels” by the (elohim), as Bleek has done before him,inscribes the Psalm: “God's judgment upon unjust judges in heaven andupon earth.” But the angels as such are nowhere called (elohim) in the OldTestament, although they might be so called; and their being judged here on account of unjust judging, Hupfeld himself says, is “an obscure point that is still to be cleared up.” An interpretation which, like this, abandons the usage of the language in order to bring into existence a riddle that it cannot solve, condemns itself. At the same time the assertion of Hupfeld (of Knobel, Graf, and others), that in Exodus 21:5; Exodus 22:7., Ex 27,

(Note: In the English authorized version, Exodus 21:6; Exodus 22:8. (“judges”), Ex 28 (“gods,” margin “judges”). - Tr.)

אלהים denotes God Himself, and not directly the authorities of the nation as being His earthly representatives, finds its most forcible refutation in the so-called and mortal elohim of this Psalm (cf. also Psalm 45:7; Psalm 58:2).

By reference to this Psalm Jesus proves to the Jews (John 10:34-36) that when He calls Himself the Son of God, He does not blaspheme God, by an argumentatio a minori ad majus. If the Law, so He argues, calls even those gods who are officially invested with this name by a declaration of the divine will promulgated in time (and the Scripture cannot surely, as in general, so also in this instance, be made invalid), then it cannot surely be blasphemy if He calls Himself the Son of God, whom not merely a divine utterance in this present time has called to this or to that worldly office after the image of God, but who with His whole life is ministering to the accomplishment of a work to which the Father had already sanctified Him when He came into the world. In connection with ἡγίασε one is reminded of the fact that those who are called (elohim) in the Psalm are censured on account of the unholiness of their conduct. The name does not originally belong to them, nor do they show themselves to be morally worthy of it. With ἡγίασε καὶ ἀπέστειλεν Jesus contrasts His divine sonship, prior to time, with theirs, which began only in this present time.

Verses 1-4

God comes forward and makes Himself heard first of all ascensuring and admonishing. The “congregation of God” is, as in Numbers 27:17; Numbers 31:16; Joshua 22:16., “the congregation of (the sons of) Israel,”which God has purchased from among the nations (Psalm 74:2), and uponwhich as its Lawgiver He has set His divine impress. The psalmist and seer sees Elohim standing in this congregation of God. The part. Niph. (as in Isaiah 3:13) denotes not so much the suddenness and unpreparedness, as, rather, the statue-like immobility and terrifying designfulness of His appearance. Within the range of the congregation of God this holds good of the (elohim). The right over life and death, with which the administration of justice cannot dispense, is a prerogative of God. From the time of Genesis 9:6, however, He has transferred the execution of this prerogative to mankind, and instituted in mankind an office wielding the sword of justice, which also exists in His theocratic congregation, but here has His positive law as the basis of its continuance and as the rule of its action. Everywhere among men, but here pre-eminently, those in authority are God's delegates and the bearers of His image, and therefore as His representatives are also themselves called (elohim), “gods” (which the lxx in Exodus 21:6 renders τὸ κριτήριον τοῦ Θεοῦ , and the Targums here, as in Exodus 22:7-8, Exodus 22:27 uniformly, דּיּניּא). The God who has conferred this exercise of power upon these subordinate elohim, without their resigning it of themselves, now sits in judgment in their midst. ישׁפּט of that which takes place before the mind's eye of the psalmist. How long, He asks, will ye judge unjustly? שׁפט עול is equivalent to עשׂה עול בּמּשׁפּט, Leviticus 19:15, Leviticus 19:35 (the opposite is שׁפט מישׁרים, Psalm 58:2). How long will ye accept the countenance of the wicked, i.e., incline to accept, regard, favour the person of the wicked? The music, which here becomes forte, gives intensity to the terrible sternness (das Niederdonnernde) of the divine question, which seeks to bring the “gods” of the earth to their right mind. Then follow admonitions to do that which they have hitherto left undone. They are to cause the benefit of the administration of justice to tend to the advantage of the defenceless, of the destitute, and of the helpless, upon whom God the Lawgiver especially keeps His eye. The word רשׁ (ראשׁ), of which there is no evidence until within the time of David and Solomon, is synonymous with אביון. דל with ויתום is pointed דל, and with ואביון, on account of the closer notional union, דל (as in Psalm 72:13). They are words which are frequently repeated in the prophets, foremost in Isaiah (Isaiah 1:17), with which is enjoined upon those invested with the dignity of the law, and with jurisdiction, justice towards those who cannot and will not themselves obtain their rights by violence.

Verses 5-7

What now follows in Psalm 82:5 is not a parenthetical assertion of theinefficiency with which the divine correction rebounds from the judges andrulers. In connection with this way of taking Psalm 82:5, the manner in which thedivine language is continued in Psalm 82:6 is harsh and unadjusted. God Himselfspeaks in Psalm 82:5 of the judges, but reluctantly alienated from them; andconfident of the futility of all attempts to make them better, He tells themtheir sentence in Psalm 82:6. The verbs in Psalm 82:5 are designedly without anyobject: complaint of the widest compass is made over their want of reasonand understanding; and ידעו takes the perfect form in like manner to ἐγνώκασι , noveruntcf. Psalm 14:1; Isaiah 44:18. Thus, then, no result isto be expected from the divine admonition: they still go their ways in thisstate of mental darkness, and that, as the Hithpa. implies, stalking on incarnal security and self-complacency. The commands, however, which they transgress are the foundations (cf. Psalm 11:3), as it were the shafts and pillars (Psalm 75:4, cf. Proverbs 29:4), upon whichrests the permanence of all earthly relationships with are appointed bycreation and regulated by the Tôra. Their transgression makes the land, theearth, to totter physically and morally, and is the prelude of its overthrow. When the celestial Lord of the domain thinks upon this destruction whichinjustice and tyranny are bringing upon the earth, His wrath kindles, andHe reminds the judges and rulers that it is His own free declaratory actwhich has clothed them with the god-like dignity which they bear. Theyare actually elohim, but not possessed of the right of self-government;there is a Most High (עליון) to whom they as sons areresponsible. The idea that the appellation (elohim), which they have givento themselves, is only sarcastically given back to them in Psalm 82:1 (Ewald,Olshausen), is refuted by Psalm 82:6, according to which they are really (elohim) by the grace of God. But if their practice is not an Amen to this name,then they shall be divested of the majesty which they have forfeited; they shall be divested of the prerogative of Israel, whose vocation and destiny they have belied. They shall die off כּאדם, like common men not rising in any degree above the mass (cf. בּני אדם, opp. בּני אישׁ, Psalm 4:3; Psalm 49:3); they shall fall like any one (Judges 16:7, Obadiah 1:11) of the princes who in the course of history have been cast down by the judgment of God (Hosea 7:7). Their divine office will not protect them. For although justitia civilis is far from being the righteousness that avails before God, yet injustitia civilis is in His sight the vilest abomination.

Verse 8

The poet closes with the prayer for the realization of that which he hasbeheld in spirit. He implored God Himself to sit in judgment (שׁפטה as in Lamentations 3:59), since judgment is so badly exercised upon theearth. All peoples are indeed His נחלה, He has an hereditaryand proprietary right among (lxx and Vulgate according to Numbers 18:20,and frequently), or rather in (בּ as in משׁל בּ, instead of theaccusative of the object, Zechariah 2:11), all nations (å) - may Hethen be pleased to maintain it judicially. The inference drawn from thispoint backwards, that the Psalm is directed against the possessors ofpower among the Gentiles, is erroneous. Israel itself, in so far as it actsinconsistently with its theocratic character, belies its sanctified nationality,is a גוי like the גוים, and is put into the same categorywith these. The judgment over the world is also a judgment over the Israelthat is become conformed to the world, and its God-estranged chiefs.
83 Psalm 83
Introduction

Battle-Cry to God against Allied Peoples

The close of this Psalm is in accord with the close of the preceding Psalm. It is the last of the twelve Psalms of Asaph of the Psalter. The poetsupplicates help against the many nations which have allied themselveswith the descendants of Lot, i.e., Moab and Ammon, to entirely root outIsrael as a nation. Those who are fond of Maccabaean Psalms (Hitzig and Olshausen), after the precedent of van Til and von Bengel, find the circumstances of the time of the Psalm in 1 Macc. 5, and Grimm is also inclined to regard this as correct; and in point of fact the deadly hostility of the ἔθνη κυκλόθεν which we there see breaking forth on all sides,

(Note: Concerning the υίοὶ Βαΐάν ((Benı̂) (Baijân)), 1 Macc. 5:4, the difficulty respecting which is to the present time unsolved, vid., Wetzstein's Excursus II, pp. 559f..)

as it were at a given signal, against the Jewish people, who have become again independent, and after the dedication of the Temple doubly self-conscious, is far better suited to explain the Psalm than the hostile efforts of Sanballat, Tobiah, and others to hinder the rebuilding of Jerusalem, in the time of Nehemiah (Vaihinger, Ewald, and Dillmann). There is, however, still another incident beside that recorded in 1 Macc. 5 to which the Psalm may be referred, viz., the confederation of the nations for the extinction of Judah in the time of Jehoshaphat (2 Chr. 20), and, as it seems to us, with comparatively speaking less constraint. For the Psalm speaks of a real league, whilst in 1 Macc. 5 the several nations made the attack without being allied and not jointly; then, as the Psalm assumes in Psalm 83:9, the sons of Lot, i.e., the Moabites and Ammonites, actually were at the head at that time, whilst in 1 Macc. 5 the sons of Esau occupy the most prominent place; and thirdly, at that time, in the time of Jehoshaphat, as is recorded, an Asaphite, viz., Jahaziël, did actually interpose in the course of events, a circumstance which coincides remarkably with the לאסף. The league of that period consisted, according to 2 Chronicles 20:1, of Moabites, Ammonites, and a part of the מעוּנים (as it is to be read after the lxx). But 2 Chronicles 20:2 (where without any doubt מאדם is to be read instead of מארם) adds the Edomites to their number, for it is expressly stated further on (2 Chronicles 20:10, 2 Chronicles 20:22, 2 Chronicles 20:23) that the inhabitants of Mount Seïr were with them. Also, supposing of course that the “Ishmaelites” and “Hagarenes” of the Psalm may be regarded as an unfolding of the מעונים, which is confirmed by Josephus, Antiq. ix. 1. 2; and that Gebäl is to be understood by the Mount Seïr of the chronicler, which is confirmed by the Arab. (jibâl) still in use at the present day, there always remains a difficulty in the fact that the Psalm also names (Amalek), (Philistia), (Tyre), and (Asshur), of which we find no mention there in the reign of Jehoshaphat. But these difficulties are counter-balanced by others that beset the reference to 1 Macc. 5, viz., that in the time of the Seleucidae the Amalekites no longer existed, and consequently, as might be expected, are not mentioned at all in 1 Macc. 5; further, that there the Moabites, too, are no longer spoken of, although some formerly Moabitish cities of Gileaditis are mentioned; and thirdly, that אשׁור = Syria (a certainly possible usage of the word) appears in a subordinate position, whereas it was, however, the dominant power. On the other hand, the mention of Amalek is intelligible in connection with the reference to 2 Chr. 20, and the absence of its express mention in the chronicler does not make itself particularly felt in consideration of Genesis 36:12. Philistia, Tyre, and Asshur, however, stand at the end in the Psalm, and might also even be mentioned with the others if they rendered aid to the confederates of the south-east without taking part with them in the campaign, as being a succour to the actual leaders of the enterprise, the sons of Lot. We therefore agree with the reference of Psalms 83 (as also of Psalm 48:1-14) to the alliance of the neighbouring nations against Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat, which has been already recognised by Kimchi and allowed by Keil, Hengstenberg, and Movers.

Verses 1-4

The poet prays, may God not remain an inactive looker-on in connectionwith the danger of destruction that threatens His people. דּמי (with which יהי is to be supplied) is the opposite of alertness;חרשׁ the opposite of speaking (in connection with which it isassumed that God's word is at the same time deed); שׁקט theopposite of being agitated and activity. The energetic future (jehemajûn) gives outward emphasis to the confirmation of the petition, and the factthat Israel's foes are the foes of God gives inward emphasis to it. On נשׂא ראשׁ, cf. Psalm 110:7. סוד is here a secret agreement;and יערימוּ, elsewhere to deal craftily, here signifies to craftily plot, devise, bring a thing about. צפוּניך is to be understood according to Psalm 27:5; Psalm 31:21. The Hithpa. התיעץ alternates here with the more ancient Niph. (Psalm 83:6). The design of the enemies in this instance has reference to the total extirpation of Israel, of the separatist-people who exclude themselves from the life of the world and condemn it. מגּוי, from being a people = so that it may no longer be a people or nation, as in Isaiah 7:8; Isaiah 17:1; Isaiah 25:2; Jeremiah 48:42. In the borrowed passage, Jeremiah 48:2, by an interchange of a letter it is נכריתנּה. This Asaph Psalm is to be discerned in not a few passages of the prophets; cf. Isaiah 62:6. with Psalm 83:2, Isaiah 17:12 with Psalm 83:3.

Verses 5-8

Instead of לב אחד, 1 Chronicles 12:38, it is (deliberant) (corde) (unâ), inasmuch as יחדּו on the one hand gives intensity to the reciprocal signification of the verb, and on the other lends the adjectival notion to לב. Of the confederate peoples the chronicler (2 Chr. 20) mentions the Moabites, the Ammonites, the inhabitants of Mount Seïr, and the (Me(uniminstead of which Josephus, Antiq. ix. 1. 2, says: a great body of Arabians. This crowd of peoples comes from the other side of the Dead Sea, מאדם (as it is to be read in Psalm 83:2 in the chronicler instead of מארם, cf. on Psalm 60:2); the territory of Edom, which is mentioned first by the poet, was therefore the rendezvous. The tents of Edom and of the Ishmaelites are (cf. Arab. (ahl), people) the people themselves who live in tents. Moreover, too, the poet ranges the hostile nations according to their geographical position. The seven first named from Edom to Amalek, which still existed at the time of the psalmist (for the final destruction of the Amalekites by the Simeonites, 1 Chronicles 4:42., falls at an indeterminate period prior to the Exile), are those out of the regions east and south-east of the Dead Sea. According to Genesis 25:18, the Ishmaelites had spread from Higâz through the peninsula of Sinai beyond the eastern and southern deserts as far up as the countries under the dominion of Assyria. The Hagarenes dwelt in tents from the Persian Gulf as far as the east of Gilead (1 Chronicles 5:10) towards the Euphrates. גּבל, Arab. (jbâl), is the name of the people inhabiting the mountains situated in the south of the Dead Sea, that is to say, the northern Seïritish mountains. Both Gebâl and also, as it appears, the Amalek intended here according to Genesis 36:12 (cf. Josephus, Antiq. ii. 1. 2: Ἀμαληκῖτις , a part of Idumaea), belong to the wide circuit of Edom. Then follow the Philistines and Phoenicians, the two nations of the coast of the Mediterranean, which also appear in Amos 1:1-15 (cf. Joel 3) as making common cause with the Edomites against Israel. Finally Asshur, the nation of the distant north-east, here not as yet appearing as a principal power, but strengthening (vid., concerning זרוע, an arm = assistance, succour, Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 433b) the sons of Lot, i.e., the Moabites and Ammonites, with whom the enterprise started, and forming a powerful reserve for them. The music bursts forth angrily at the close of this enumeration, and imprecations discharge themselves in the following strophe.

Verses 9-12

With כּמדין reference is made to Gideon's victory over the Midianites, which belongs to the most glorious recollections of Israel, and to which in other instances, too, national hopes are attached, Isaiah 9:3 [4], Isaiah 10:26, cf. Habakkuk 3:7; and with the asyndeton כּסיסרא כיבין (כּסיסרא, as Norzi states, who does not rightly understand the placing of the Metheg) to the victory of Barak and Deborah over Sisera and the Canaanitish king Jabin, whose general he was. The Beth of בּנחל is like the Beth of בּדּרך in Psalm 110:7: according to Judges 5:21 the Kishon carried away the corpses of the slain army. (‛Endôr), near Tabor, and therefore situated not far distant from Taanach and Megiddo (Judges 5:19), belonged to the battle-field. אדמה, starting from the radical notion of that which flatly covers anything, which lies in דם, signifying the covering of earth lying flat over the globe, therefore humus (like ארץ, terra, and תבל, tellus), is here (cf. 2 Kings 9:37) in accord with דּמן (from דמן), which is in substance akin to it. In Psalm 83:12 we have a retrospective glance at Gideon's victory. (‛Oreb) and (Zeēb) were שׂרים of the Midianites, Judges 7:25; (Zebach) and (Tsalmunna‛), their kings, Judges 8:5.

(Note: The Syriac Hexapla has (Hosea 10:14) צלמנע instead of שׁלמן, a substitution which is accepted by Geiger, Deutsch. Morgenländ. Zeitschr. 1862, S. 729f. Concerning the signification of the above names of Midianitish princes, vid., Nöldeke, Ueber die Amalekiter, S. 9.)

The pronoun precedes the word itself in שׁיתמו, as in Exodus 2:6; the heaped-up suffixes (ēmo) ((êmo))give to the imprecation a rhythm and sound as of rolling thunder. Concerning נסיך, vid., on Psalm 2:6. So far as the matter is concerned, 2 Chronicles 20:11 harmonizes with Psalm 83:13. Canaan, the land which is God's and which He has given to His people, is called נאות אלהים (cf. Psalm 74:20).

Verses 13-16

With the אלהי, which constrains God in faith, the “thundering down” begins afresh. גּלגּל signifies a wheel and a whirling motion, such as usually arises when the wind changes suddenly, then also whatever is driven about in the whirling, Isaiah 17:13.

(Note: Saadia, who renders the גּלגּל in Psalm 77:19 as an astronomical expression with Arab. ('l) -(frk), the sphere of the heavens, here has professedly Arab. (kâlgrâblt), which would be a plural from expanded out of Arab. (grâbı̂l), “sieves” or “tambourines;” it is, however, to be read, as in Isaiah 17:13, Codex Oxon., Arab. (kâlgirbâlt). The verb Arab. (garbala), “to sift,” is transferred to the wind, e.g., in (Mutanabbi) (edited with Wahidi's commentary by Dieterici), p. 29, l. 5 and 6: “it is as though the dust of this region, when the winds chase one another therein, were sifted,” Arab. (mugarbalu) (i.e., caught up and whirled round); and with other notional and constructional applications in (Makkarı̂), i. p. 102, l. 18: “it is as though its soil had been cleansed from dust by sifting,” Arab. (gurbilat) (i.e., the dust thereof swept away by a whirlwind). Accordingly Arab. (girbâlat) signifies first, as a nom. vicisa whirling about (of dust by the wind), then in a concrete sense a whirlwind, as Saadia uses it, inasmuch as he makes use of it twice for גּלגּל. So Fleischer in opposition to Ewald, who renders “like the sweepings or rubbish.”)

קשׁ (from קשׁשׁ, Arab. (qšš), (aridum) (esse)) is the cry corn-talks, whether as left standing or, as in this instance, as straw upon the threshing-floor or upon the field. Like a fire that spreads rapidly, laying hold of everything, which burns up the forest and singes off the wooded mountain so that only a bare cone is left standing, so is God to drive them before Him in the raging tempest of His wrath and take them unawares. The figure in Psalm 83:15 is fully worked up by Isaiah, Isaiah 10:16-19; לחט as in Deuteronomy 32:22. In the apodosis, Psalm 83:16, the figure is changed into a kindred one: wrath is a glowing heat (חרון) and a breath (נשׁמה, Isaiah 30:33) at the same time. In Psalm 83:17 it becomes clear what is the final purpose towards which this language of cursing tends: to the end that all, whether willingly or reluctantly, may give the glory to the God of revelation. Directed towards this end the earnest prayer is repeated once more in the tetrastichic closing strain.

Verse 17-18

The aim of the wish is that they in the midst of their downfall may lay hold upon the mercy of Jahve as their only deliverance: first they must come to nought, and only by giving Jahve the glory will they not be utterly destroyed. Side by side with אתּה, v. 19a, is placed שׁמך as a second subject (cf. Psalm 44:3; Psalm 69:11). In view of Psalm 83:17 וידעוּ (as in Psalm 59:14) has not merely the sense of perceiving so far as the justice of the punishment is concerned; the knowledge which is unto salvation is not excluded. The end of the matter which the poet wishes to see brought about is this, that Jahve, that the God of revelation (שׁמך), may become the All-exalted One in the consciousness of the nations.