The Victorious King Makes Room for the Vulnerable

Moses spoke these words to God when the ark set out, “Rise up, LORD... let them that hate thee flee before thee” (Numbers 10:35); the psalm puts them in the third person and uses Elohim, the name that dominates Psalms 42 to 83. The heading calls this “A Psalm or Song of David”.

The first line uses one verb twice, nadaph, to blow away: “as smoke is driven away, so drive them away”. Wax at the presence of fire recurs in 97:5 and Micah 1:4, both times of mountains melting when God comes near; here it is people who soften and run.

Three different Hebrew verbs of gladness are packed into one verse, samach, alats and sus, the last with its own noun added, “rejoice with joy”, which the King James renders “exceedingly rejoice”. The approach that melts the wicked leaves the righteous short of words for their delight.

“Heavens” renders aravot, which elsewhere means desert plains, so some translate “him that rideth through the deserts”, fitting the wilderness march of verse 7. At Ugarit the storm god Baal was called “rider of the clouds”, and this psalm hands the title to Israel’s God (compare verse 33). “JAH” is the short form Yah, printed so only here in the King James.

“Judge” is dayyan, one who pleads a case: a widow had no husband to speak for her at the gate, so God takes the advocate’s place. “Holy habitation” is the phrase of Deuteronomy 26:15, “Look down from thy holy habitation”, prayed just after the tithe is given to the fatherless and the widow.

Literally “God makes the solitary to dwell in a house”, household and family being one word, bayit. “With chains” renders kosharot, found only here and read by many modern versions as “into prosperity”. The rebellious are left on tsechichah, sun-scorched ground, the opposite of the rain that falls in verse 9.

Verses 7 and 8 quote the Song of Deborah almost word for word: “LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom” (Judges 5:4). The psalm sets the march in the wilderness instead. “Wentest forth before thy people” is the language of a king at the head of his army.

“Even Sinai itself” renders zeh Sinai, literally “this Sinai”, which many read as a title, “the One of Sinai”, God named by the mountain where he met Israel; Judges 5:5 has the same phrase. “Dropped” means dripped water, as Judges 5:4 says outright: the sky poured at his coming.

“Plentiful rain” is literally “a rain of freewill gifts”, geshem nedavot, nedavah being the law’s word for a freewill offering: God gives the land, unasked, what worshippers give him. “Confirm” is kun, to make firm, and the weary inheritance is the land, or the people, worn out like a traveller.

“Thy congregation” is chayyatekha, literally “thy living creatures”, perhaps “thy flock”, the people pictured as animals grazing land newly green. The same word returns in verse 30 as the “company” of spearmen, and there it is a wild beast.

“Published” is basar, to carry good news, the verb the Greek translators rendered with euangelizo, the root of evangel. Isaiah 40:9 gives the herald of good tidings the same feminine form, and 1 Samuel 18:6–7 shows the custom behind it: women came out of every city singing when the army came home.

“Did flee apace” is a doubled verb, “they flee, they flee”, the rout heard in the repetition. Women dividing spoil answers Judges 5:30, where Sisera’s mother waits at her window imagining her son’s men sharing out the plunder; here the spoil lands in Israelite homes instead.

“Lien” is the old past participle of lie. The rare word for “pots” is close to mishpetayim, the “sheepfolds” among which Reuben sat idle in Judges 5:16, which is why many take it of those who stayed by the flocks while others fought. The silver and gold may be a dove’s iridescent sheen, or the spoil itself.

“Almighty” is Shaddai, the ancient name God gave himself to Abraham in Genesis 17:1. Salmon is Zalmon, the wooded hill by Shechem where Abimelech cut brushwood (Judges 9:48). Its name seems to mean shady or dark, so snow on it would be sudden whiteness on a dark hill.

The Hebrew reads “a mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan, a mountain of many peaks”: Bashan’s range, crowned by Hermon at over 9,000 feet, is praised as a divine giant. “High hill” renders gavnunnim, humped or many-summited, from the root of the word for a crookbacked man in Leviticus 21:20.

“Leap” renders ratsad, found only here, which most now take as “look with envy”: the tall peaks eye small Zion sideways. “Desireth” is chamad, the verb of the tenth commandment, “thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17), so the mountains envy what God has set his heart on.

“Twenty thousand” is ribbotayim, two myriads, a way of saying numberless. “Angels” is the King James reading of shin’an, a word found only here and more likely meaning “repeated”, thousands upon thousands. Deuteronomy 33:2 likewise has the LORD come from Sinai “with ten thousands of saints”.

“Led captivity captive” is a cognate pair, “thou hast taken captive a captivity”, a conqueror returning with a column of prisoners behind him. “For men” is literally “among men”, tribute received from them. The Aramaic Targum and the Syriac both read “gave”, the reading Ephesians 4:8 follows.

The King James supplies “with benefits”; the bare Hebrew is “day by day he carries for us”, or “carries us”, amas being the verb for loading a pack animal. Isaiah 46:3–4 uses it of God bearing Israel from the womb to old age. “God” here is El, the short form of the name.

Capital GOD is how the King James prints the covenant name when it stands beside Adonai, Lord, to avoid writing “the LORD the Lord”. “Issues” is totsa’ot, the word used for the end points of tribal boundaries in Joshua 15:4, “the goings out of that coast”: death has an outlet, and the Lord holds it.

“Wound” is machats, to smash, the verb used when Jael “smote off” Sisera’s head and pierced his temples (Judges 5:26). The “hairy scalp” may be the uncut hair of a warrior under a vow, a sign of defiance worn, the verse says, by one who “goeth on still” in his guilt.

Bashan, the high country east of the Jordan where Og was defeated (Numbers 21:33), and the depths of the sea are the far ends of the map, height and depth. Amos 9:2–3 uses a similar range for enemies who cannot hide, whether on the top of Carmel or at the bottom of the sea.

The Hebrew verb is again machats, the smiting of verse 21, so a literal rendering is “that thou mayest crush thy foot in blood”; the King James “dipped” gives the sense rather than the letter. Dogs licking the blood of the fallen is the end foretold and fulfilled for Ahab (1 Kings 21:19; 22:38).

Who “have seen” is left open, so the procession is watched by everyone. “Goings” is halikhot, processional marches. “In the sanctuary” can also be read “in holiness”, since baqqodesh bears both, and the ark carried up to Zion in 2 Samuel 6 is the likeliest picture, the same ark that set out in verse 1.

“Damsels” are alamot, young women, the word that appears as a musical term, “upon Alamoth”, in the heading of Psalm 46 and in 1 Chronicles 15:20, when David brought up the ark. A timbrel was the tof, a hand-held frame drum, the instrument Miriam took up beside the sea (Exodus 15:20).

“Congregations” is plural, assemblies, perhaps the several companies in the procession. “From the fountain of Israel” most likely means “you who spring from Israel’s source”, Jacob’s descendants; Deuteronomy 33:28 speaks of “the fountain of Jacob”, and Isaiah 48:1 of those “come forth out of the waters of Judah”.

Two southern tribes and two northern stand for the whole. Benjamin was the smallest, as Saul himself protested (1 Samuel 9:21), yet it gave Israel its first king. Zebulun and Naphtali are the pair Deborah praised as “a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death” (Judges 5:18), one more thread back to her song.

The Greek and several ancient versions read the first line as a prayer, “Command, O God, thy strength”, which turns the verse into two requests. The Hebrew, followed by the King James, has a statement and then a plea. “Strengthen” is azaz, the root of oz, strength, so the one idea is said twice over.

“Presents” is shai, a tribute gift, a word found only three times: here, in 76:11, and in Isaiah 18:7, where a present is brought to Mount Zion from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, the very country named two verses later. This is the only place the psalm names Jerusalem.

“Company of spearmen” is literally “the beast of the reeds”, most likely the hippopotamus or crocodile of the Nile marshes, a stock figure for Egypt, which the next verse names. The bulls may be mighty rulers, as in 22:12, and their calves the peoples who follow them. The line about pieces of silver is among the least certain in the Psalter.

“Princes” is chashmannim, a word found only here, perhaps envoys. Ethiopia is Cush, the kingdom of the upper Nile beyond Egypt’s southern border, and “shall soon stretch out” is literally “shall make her hands run”, hurrying toward God with gifts held out.

“Sing praises” is zamar, to make music, especially with strings, the root of mizmor, the word printed as “Psalm” in the headings. The call first made to Israel in verse 4 goes out now to every kingdom, with the same two verbs in the same order.

“Heavens of heavens” is the Hebrew superlative, the highest heavens, and qedem, “of old”, can also mean eastward, the heavens of the sunrise. The voice he sends out is thunder, the voice that sounds seven times over in Psalm 29.

“Ascribe ye strength” is literally “give strength”, the idiom of 29:1, acknowledging what already belongs to God. Moses’ blessing ends on the same picture: God “rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky” (Deuteronomy 33:26), with the same Hebrew words for excellency and for the skies, here rendered clouds.

“Holy places” is plural, miqdashim, perhaps the several courts of the sanctuary, perhaps heaven and Zion together. The closing words, barukh Elohim, “Blessed be God”, seal the psalm; it began with God rising against his enemies and ends with his people blessing him.