Psalms 83:9

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 כּסיסרא כיבין (כּסיסרא, as Norzi states, who does not rightly understand the placing of the Metheg) to the victory of Barak and Deborah over Sisera and the Canaanitish king Jabin, whose general he was. The Beth of בּנחל is like the Beth of בּדּרך in Psa 110:7 : according to Jdg 5:21 the Kishon carried away the corpses of the slain army. ‛Endôr, near Tabor, and therefore situated not far distant from Taanach and Megiddo (Jdg 5:19), belonged to the battle-field. אדמה, starting from the radical notion of that which flatly covers anything, which lies in דם, signifying the covering of earth lying flat over the globe, therefore humus (like ארץ, terra, and תבל, tellus), is here (cf. Kg2 9:37) in accord with דּמן (from דמן), which is in substance akin to it. In Psa 83:12 we have a retrospective glance at Gideon's victory. ‛Oreb and Zeēb were שׂרים of the Midianites, Jdg 7:25; Zebach and Tsalmunna‛, their kings, Jdg 8:5. (Note: The Syriac Hexapla has (Hos 10:14) צלמנע instead of שׁלמן, a substitution which is accepted by Geiger, Deutsch. Morgenlnd. Zeitschr. 1862, S. 729f. Concerning the signification of the above names of Midianitish princes, vid., Nldeke, Ueber die Amalekiter, S. 9.) The pronoun precedes the word itself in שׁיתמו, as in Exo 2:6; the heaped-up suffixes ēmo (êmo) give to the imprecation a rhythm and sound as of rolling thunder. Concerning נסיך, vid., on Psa 2:6. So far as the matter is concerned, Ch2 20:11 harmonizes with Psa 83:13. Canaan, the land which is God's and which He has given to His people, is…

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 of the gospel-church; whoever they be that oppose the kingdom of Christ, here they may read their doom. The prayer is, in short, that these enemies, who were confederate against Israel, might be defeated in all their attempts, and that they might prove their own ruin, and so God's Israel might be preserved and perpetuated. Now this is here illustrated, I. By some precedents. Let that be their punishment which has been the fate of others who have formerly set themselves against God's Israel. The defeat and discomfiture of former combinations may be pleaded in prayer to God and improved for the encouragement of our own faith and hope, because God is the same still that ever he was, the same to his people and the same against his and their enemies; with him is no variableness. 1. He prays that their armies might be destroyed as the armies of former enemies had been (Psa 83:9, Psa 83:10): Do to them as to the Midianites; let them be routed by their own fears, for so the Midianites were, more than by Gideon's 300 men. Do to them as to the army under the command of Sisera (who was general under Jabin king of Canaan) which God discomfited (Jdg 4:15) at the brook Kishon, near to which was Endor. They became as dung on the earth; their dead bodies were thrown like dung laid in heaps, or spread, to fatten the ground; they were trodden to dirt by Barak's small but victorious army; and this was fitly made a precedent here, because Deborah made it so to aftertimes when it was fresh. Jdg 5:31, So let all thy enemies perish, O Lord…

83:9-18 The psalmist prays that God will miraculously destroy the new coalition as he did three other enemies; doing so would bring him glory. 83:9-11 The Midianites, ruled by Zebah and Zalmunna and led by Oreb and Zeeb, were Israel’s enemy in the days of Gideon (Judg 7:1–8:5). Barak’s coalition defeated Sisera and Jabin (Judg 4).