Psalms

Psalms 83

18 verses · Wisdom · Old Testament

1God, don’t keep silent. Don’t keep silent, and don’t be still, God. 2For, behold, your enemies are stirred up. Those who hate you have lifted up their heads. 3They conspire with cunning against your people. They plot against your cherished ones. 4“Come,” they say, “let’s destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” 5For they have conspired together with one mind. They form an alliance against you. 6The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagrites; 7Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; 8Assyria also is joined with them. They have helped the children of Lot. 9Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the river Kishon; 10who perished at Endor, who became as dung for the earth. 11Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, yes, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, 12who said, “Let’s take possession of God’s pasture lands.” 13My God, make them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind. 14As the fire that burns the forest, as the flame that sets the mountains on fire, 15so pursue them with your tempest, and terrify them with your storm. 16Fill their faces with confusion, that they may seek your name, Yahweh. 17Let them be disappointed and dismayed forever. Yes, let them be confounded and perish; 18that they may know that you alone, whose name is Yahweh, are the Most High over all the earth.

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What others are saying

3 commentators · 25 notes on this chapter

Matthew HenryEnglish Puritan / Nonconformist · 1708–17142

Writes as a pastor rather than a critic. Expect devotional and practical application over historical or linguistic analysis, read through a Reformed covenantal frame — and expect the Old Testament to be read forward toward Christ throughout.

Why this voice is here: The most widely read English commentary for three centuries. Included as a baseline: where Henry and a modern voice diverge, the divergence itself is usually the interesting part.

v. 1–8

The Israel of God were now in danger, and fear, and great distress, and yet their prayer is called, A song or psalm; for singing psalms is not unseasonable, no, not when the harps are hung upon the willow-trees. I. The psalmist here begs of God to appear on…

v. 9–18

The psalmist here, in the name of the church, prays for the destruction of those confederate forces, and, in God's name, foretels it; for this prayer that it might be so amounts to a prophecy that it shall be so, and this prophecy reaches to all the enemies…

John GillParticular Baptist / High Calvinist · 1746–176318

The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.

Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.

v. 1

Keep not thou silence, O God,.... Which he is thought and said to do, when he does not answer the prayers of his people, nor plead their cause, nor rebuke their enemies; when he does not speak a good word to them, or one for them, or one against those that…

v. 2

For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult,.... Or "a noise" (d): wicked men are commonly noisy, roaring out their blasphemies against God, belching out oaths and curses, and breathing threatenings and slaughter against the saints; especially a numerous army of…

v. 3

They have taken crafty counsel against thy people,.... The people of Israel, hereafter named, whom God had chosen and avouched to be his people; these they dealt subtlety with, as the king of Egypt had done with their forefathers; and this, agreeably to their…

Keil & DelitzschGerman Lutheran, conservative-critical · 1861–18755

The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.

Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.

v. 1–4

The poet prays, may God not remain an inactive looker-on in connection with 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…

v. 5–8

Instead of לב אחד, Ch1 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)…

v. 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, Isa 9:3 [4], Isa 10:26, cf. Hab 3:7; and with the asyndeton…

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