Faithfulness Without the Expected Victory

Telling the children what God did was a duty of the law (Deuteronomy 6:20–23). Gideon turns that telling into a complaint in almost the words of this psalm: “where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of?” (Judges 6:13).

“Cast them out” is shalach, which can also mean to send out shoots. Many read the line as continuing the planting picture: thou didst afflict the peoples, but thou didst make our fathers spread, as a vine that “sent out her boughs unto the sea” (Psalm 80:11).

Joshua’s farewell speech makes the same point in God’s own voice: “not with thy sword, nor with thy bow” (Joshua 24:12). “The light of thy countenance” comes from the priestly blessing, “The LORD make his face shine upon thee” (Numbers 6:25).

The voice becomes singular, “my King”, as though one leader speaks for the army. “Command deliverances” is a plural, victories, each one given as an order. The Hebrew is emphatic: thou, thou art he, my King.

“Push down” is naggach, to gore with horns, the verb of the ox that gores in Exodus 21:28. Moses blessed Joseph in the same image: “his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together” (Deuteronomy 33:17).

The singular voice again: my bow, my sword. David said the same before Goliath, “the LORD saveth not with sword and spear” (1 Samuel 17:47). The verse restates verse 3 as a present vow: what was true of the fathers is claimed for today.

“Put them to shame” is the causative of bosh, to be ashamed. Verse 9 turns the very same verb against Israel: “thou hast... put us to shame”. The shame God once sent to the enemy has come home.

“Boast” is from halal, the praise verb inside hallelujah. The Selah closes the remembered victories, and the next word is the hinge of the psalm: “But”.

When the ark went out ahead of Israel’s camp Moses said, “Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered” (Numbers 10:35). The complaint is that God has stopped marching out. The same line is used again in Psalm 60:10 and 108:11.

Turning back from the enemy is the rout the psalms usually ask for against Israel’s foes (35:4). “Spoil for themselves” means they plunder at will, with no one to stop them.

“Sheep appointed for meat” is literally a flock for eating: animals kept for slaughter, not for wool or breeding. Scattering among the nations is the threat of Leviticus 26:33 and Deuteronomy 28:64, the curse for disobedience, here suffered by people who deny they have disobeyed.

Judges 2:14 says the LORD “sold them into the hands of their enemies”. Here the sale is made at no price at all: “dost not increase thy wealth” is literally thou hast made no profit. Isaiah 52:3 answers the same image, “Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.”

Three words for mockery, reproach, scorn and derision. Psalm 79:4 repeats the line word for word after the fall of Jerusalem, so it may have become a set phrase of national lament.

“Byword” is mashal, the word for a proverb or parable. Deuteronomy 28:37 threatened that Israel would become “an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword”. Shaking the head is the gesture of scoffers in Psalm 22:7 and Lamentations 2:15.

The singular voice returns for the shame: the leader who spoke in verses 4 and 6 now carries the disgrace personally. “Confusion” is kelimmah, public humiliation, the loss of face.

“Reproacheth and blasphemeth” are the two verbs Isaiah uses against Sennacherib’s envoys at Jerusalem: “Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed?” (2 Kings 19:22). “The enemy and avenger” is a pair taken straight from Psalm 8:2.

“All this” gathers verses 9 to 16 into one heap. “Dealt falsely” is shiqqer, from sheqer, a lie: they claim they have not been false to the covenant, not broken their word to it.

“Turned back” is the phrase the servant uses in Isaiah 50:5: “I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.” “Declined” is natah, to bend aside off the road, the verb the law uses for turning to the right hand or the left.

The King James renders tannim, jackals, as “dragons” throughout; the jackals’ place is the ruin where they howl, as in Jeremiah 9:11, “Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons.” “The shadow of death” is tsalmaveth, the same word as in Psalm 23:4.

Spreading out the hands was the gesture of prayer, as Moses spread his hands to the LORD in Exodus 9:29. To spread them to “a strange god”, el zar, a foreign god, is the plainest form of apostasy, and the speakers deny it.

The appeal sounds like Jeremiah 17:10, “I the LORD search the heart”. “Secrets” is taalumot, hidden things, used in Job 11:6 of “the secrets of wisdom”. The people invite the examination they could fail.

“Counted” is chashab, the reckoning verb of 32:2, used here of how the world values them. Verse 11 spoke of meat for eating; now it is slaughter, the word used when Jeremiah asks God to pull out the wicked “like sheep for the slaughter” (Jeremiah 12:3).

Psalm 121:4 says that he who keeps Israel “shall neither slumber nor sleep”, and Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal with “peradventure he sleepeth” (1 Kings 18:27). The psalm borrows the language of mockery to express how absent God seems.

Hiding the face is what the LORD threatens in Deuteronomy 31:17 when Israel turns to other gods: “I will hide my face from them.” The speakers, who have just denied any such turning, ask why it has happened to them.

Dust and earth are also the words of the grave, as in Psalm 22:15, “thou hast brought me into the dust of death.” A belly pressed to the ground is full prostration, the posture of a man who cannot rise.

“Arise” is the ark’s cry again, the word of Numbers 10:35 answering the absence complained of in verse 9. “Redeem” is padah, to ransom, the word for buying back a firstborn. In Hebrew “mercies” is singular, chesed, loyal love: a single covenant loyalty appealed to.