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83. Psalm 83

¹ O God, do not remain silent;
   do not turn a deaf ear,
   do not stand aloof, O God.
² See how your enemies growl,
   how your foes rear their heads.
³ With cunning they conspire against your people;
   they plot against those you cherish.
⁴ “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
   so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”

    ⁵ With one mind they plot together;
   they form an alliance against you—
⁶ the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
   of Moab and the Hagrites,
⁷ Byblos, Ammon and Amalek,
   Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
⁸ Even Assyria has joined them
   to reinforce Lot’s descendants. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here.

    ⁹ Do to them as you did to Midian,
   as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
¹⁰ who perished at Endor
   and became like dung on the ground.
¹¹ Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
   all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
¹² who said, “Let us take possession
   of the pasturelands of God.”

    ¹³ Make them like tumbleweed, my God,
   like chaff before the wind.
¹⁴ As fire consumes the forest
   or a flame sets the mountains ablaze,
¹⁵ so pursue them with your tempest
   and terrify them with your storm.
¹⁶ Cover their faces with shame, LORD,
   so that they will seek your name.

    ¹⁷ May they ever be ashamed and dismayed;
   may they perish in disgrace.
¹⁸ Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD—
   that you alone are the Most High over all the earth.

4 They have said, Come and let us cut them off from being a nation. The wickedness of these hostile powers is aggravated from the circumstance, that it was their determined purpose utterly to exterminate the Church. This may be restricted to the Ammonites and Moabites, who were as bellows to blow up the flame in the rest. But the Hagarenes, the Syrians, and the other nations, being by their instigation affected with no less hatred and fury against the people of God, for whose destruction they had taken up arms, we may justly consider this vaunting language as uttered by the whole of the combined host; for having entered into a mutual compact they rushed forward with rival eagerness, and encouraged one another to destroy the kingdom of Judah. The prime agent in exciting such cruel hatred was doubtless Satan, who has all along from the beginning been exerting himself to extinguish the Church of God, and who, for this purpose, has never ceased to stir up his own children to outrage. The phrase, to cut them off from being a nation, signifies to exterminate them root and branch, and thus to put an end to them as a nation or people. That this is the meaning is more clearly evinced from the second clause of the verse, Let the name of Israel be no more remembered The compassion of God would in no small degree be excited by the circumstance that this war was not undertaken, as wars commonly have been, to bring them, when conquered, under the power of their enemies; but the object which the cruelty of their enemies aimed at was their entire destruction. And what did this amount to but to an attempt to overthrow the decree of God on which the perpetual duration of the Church depends.