Psalms of David

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered. His enemies, not mine.

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Anne Lamott, though she attributes this to ‘my priest friend Tom.’

I am writing this at a difficult time. It is 19th October 2023 and Israel is at war following an attack by Hamas breaking out of Gaza and striking at both military and civilian targets, including a music festival. At least 1,400 Israelis are reported killed. Israel has retaliated at targets inside Gaza.

I will not comment as this is now a war, and circumstances can change rapidly. All I can say is when I see a dead Israeli child at the hands of Hamas and a dead Palestinian child at the hands of the Israeli air strikes I feel the same sorrow.

---

Psalms in Book 2 are like Book 1 in that they are mostly lament and distress although they now include a communal voice in addition to the singular voice of the first book.

The books of Psalms are roughly themed like this:

Book 1: Psalms 1 – 41: God is beside us.
Book 2: Psalms 42 – 72: God goes before us
Book 3: Psalms 73 – 89: God is all around us.
Book 4: Psalms 90 – 106: God is above us.
Book 5: Psalms 107 – 150: God is among us.

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. A Song.

68 God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
    and those who hate him shall flee before him!
² As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away;
    as wax melts before fire,
    so the wicked shall perish before God!
³ But the righteous shall be glad;
    they shall exult before God;
    they shall be jubilant with joy!
⁴ Sing to God, sing praises to his name;
    lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts;
his name is the Lord;
    exult before him!
⁵ Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
    is God in his holy habitation.
⁶ God settles the solitary in a home;
    he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
    but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.
⁷ O God, when you went out before your people,
    when you marched through the wilderness, Selah
⁸ the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain,
    before God, the One of Sinai,
    before God, the God of Israel.
⁹ Rain in abundance, O God, you shed abroad;
    you restored your inheritance as it languished;
¹⁰ your flock found a dwelling in it;
    in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.
¹¹ The Lord gives the word;
    the women who announce the news are a great host:
¹²     “The kings of the armies—they flee, they flee!”
The women at home divide the spoil—
¹³     though you men lie among the sheepfolds—
the wings of a dove covered with silver,
    its pinions with shimmering gold.
¹⁴ When the Almighty scatters kings there,
    let snow fall on Zalmon.
¹⁵ O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
    O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
¹⁶ Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
    at the mount that God desired for his abode,
    yes, where the Lord will dwell for ever?
¹⁷ The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
    thousands upon thousands;
    the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
¹⁸ You ascended on high,
    leading a host of captives in your train
    and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.
¹⁹ Blessed be the Lord,
    who daily bears us up;
    God is our salvation. Selah
²⁰ Our God is a God of salvation,
    and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.
²¹ But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
    the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
²² The Lord said,
    “I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea,
²³ that you may strike your feet in their blood,
    that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe.”
²⁴ Your procession is seen, O God,
    the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—
²⁵ the singers in front, the musicians last,
    between them virgins playing tambourines:
²⁶ “Bless God in the great congregation,
    the Lord, O you who are of Israel’s fountain!”
²⁷ There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead,
    the princes of Judah in their throng,
    the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali.
²⁸ Summon your power, O God,
    the power, O God, by which you have worked for us.
²⁹ Because of your temple at Jerusalem
    kings shall bear gifts to you.
³⁰ Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds,
    the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples.
Trample underfoot those who lust after tribute;
    scatter the peoples who delight in war.
³¹ Nobles shall come from Egypt;
    Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God.
³² O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God;
    sing praises to the Lord, Selah
³³ to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens;
    behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice.
³⁴ Ascribe power to God,
    whose majesty is over Israel,
    and whose power is in the skies.
³⁵ Awesome is God from his sanctuary;
    the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people.
Blessed be God!

Psalm 68 ESVUK

How can I comment on a Jewish song of victory at a time such as this? Let God arise and scatter his enemies is a battle cry, but it is not an excuse to attack those we do not like. The question is not who does God arise against, but who does God arise for. Compare this to another song by David, Psalm 12.

Verse 5 of Psalm 12 says:

“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord;
    “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

This ties in nicely with what this psalm says:

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
    is God in his holy habitation.
⁶ God settles the solitary in a home;
    he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
    but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.

Psalm 68: 5-6

Let God aise, says David, and scatter those who would oppress the fatherless, widows, the lonely and free the imprisoned. This is not a song about the victory of mighty men but a song of God protecting the lowly against the mighty men.

The procession

After God arises and wins the victory there will be a victory procession. In this Psalm the victory procession is in two parts, God bringing his people out of Egypt. Goshen, where the Isrealites lived was a dry place watered by irrigation channels and God brought them to a land naturally watered by rain rather than a dry place via Mount Sinai. The second part is when the ark of the covenant was taken to Mount Zion, Jerusalem. The mountain of Jerusalem is honoured above the taller mountains such as Bashan, now called the Golan Heights.

Subversion

What is not immediately obvious about Psalm 68 is how subversive it is. It is subversive of Baal: Baal was a god of the air who defeated the god of death, Mot. Psalm 68 takes the language of Baal worship and applies it to God of Israel. It is God who saves his people from death, ‘mot’ in Hebrew. It is Yahweh who delivers from the depths of the sea and who rides the clouds in the heavens and whose power is in the skies (vv.33 and 34), things which would have been attributed to Baal. It is the blood of the Canaanite gods, Baal in particular which will be trampled into the ground, not the blood of human warriors. If you were a Baal worshipper in David’s time you would have recognised this song as being subversive.

Psalm 68 is also subversive of society and human authority. David is not the one being crowned king, The intertwines stories of the processions to Sinai and Zion with the women leading in the second of these, is the story of God being the King of Israel. Not David, even though the procession taking the ark of God to Zion happened in David’s reign. The real King of Israel, says David who wrote this, is not himself but God.

Jesus

Psalm 68 is only quoted once in the New Testament, by Paul in Ephesians. Paul not so much quotes as adapts verse 18:

¹⁸ You ascended on high,
    leading a host of captives in your train
    and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.

In Ephesians 4:7-13 he says:

⁷ But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it says,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
    and he gave gifts to men.”

⁹ (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) ¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

This one quote has more significance to Christian theology than the next Psalm, Psalm 69, even though that one is quoted all over the New Testament. But first the problem of Paul misquoting Psalm 68:18. When Paul changed “receiving gifts among men” to “gave gifts to men,” was it an error in translation or did he know what he was doing? I’d say that Paul not only knew what he was doing, but he got it exactly right.

Jesus has turned over the old system not by going against it but rather by fulfilling it. Instead of men offering sacrifices to God, a sacrifice that needed to be done again and again, Jesus has offered himself as the supreme sacrifice, once and for all time. Instead of men offering gifts to God, Jesus is offering the gift of the Holy Spirit to men. The victory has been done, the war is won, evil is defeated and Jesus is reigning in heaven.

There is a final fulfilment to come when Jesus comes back to take his kingdom. For us living in the gap between Jesus’ victory and return we have the job of living in Jesus’ kingdom on earth now. A kingdom whose values are self-sacrifice on behalf of others, the fatherless, widows, the lonely and to free the imprisoned.

Paul’s quoting of of Psalm 68 in this way makes a difference to what we understand about the Good News of Jesus. The Greek word evangelion, translated as ‘Good News’ had a particular meaning back in New Teatament times: “Here is Good News” is what a herald would say when announcing the arrival of Caesar. To apply this to Jesus is not only subversive to the Roman government of the time but to all governments in the world since. It says, “You are not in charge, Jesus is in charge.”

Here is Good News: Jesus is king on Earth. Not only in his coming kingdom, but now.

---

< Psalm 67 | Psalm 68| Psalm 69 >
< Previous | Psalms of David | Next >