5 They were in great fear, where there was no cause for fear: for the bones of those who make war on you have been broken by God; you have put them to shame, because God has no desire for them.
And my face will be turned from you, and you will be broken before those who are against you, and your haters will become your rulers, and you will go in flight when no man comes after you.
The evil man goes running away when no man is after him, but the upright are without fear, like the lion.
And I will put the dead bodies of the children of Israel in front of their images, sending your bones in all directions about your altars.
Our bones are broken up at the mouth of the underworld, as the earth is broken by the plough.
And there was great fear in the tents and in the field and among all the men of the armed force, and the attackers were shaking with fear; even the earth was moved with a great shaking and there was a fear as from God.
And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul: Your very life will be hanging in doubt before you, and day and night will be dark with fears, and nothing in life will be certain: In the morning you will say, If only it was evening! And at evening you will say, If only morning would come! Because of the fear in your hearts and the things which your eyes will see.
At that time, says the Lord, they will take the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his rulers, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem out of their resting-places: And they will put them out before the sun and the moon and all the stars of heaven, whose lovers and servants they have been, after whom they have gone, to whom they have made prayers, and to whom they have given worship: they will not be put together or placed in the earth; they will be waste on the face of the earth.
The hand of the Lord had been on me, and he took me out in the spirit of the Lord and put me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones; And he made me go past them round about: and I saw that there was a very great number of them on the face of the wide valley, and they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, is it possible for these bones to come to life? And I made answer, and said, It is for you to say, O Lord. And again he said to me, Be a prophet to these bones, and say to them, O you dry bones, give ear to the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord has said to these bones: See, I will make breath come into you so that you may come to life; And I will put muscles on you and make flesh come on you, and put skin over you, and breath into you, so that you may have life; and you will be certain that I am the Lord. So I gave the word as I was ordered: and at my words there was a shaking of the earth, and the bones came together, bone to bone. And looking I saw that there were muscles on them and flesh came up, and they were covered with skin: but there was no breath in them. And he said to me, Be a prophet to the wind, be a prophet, son of man, and say to the wind, The Lord has said: Come from the four winds, O wind, breathing on these dead so that they may come to life. And I gave the word at his orders, and breath came into them, and they came to life and got up on their feet, a very great army. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are all the children of Israel: and see, they are saying, Our bones have become dry our hope is gone, we are cut off completely.
And he has violently taken away his tent, as from a garden; he has made waste his meeting-place: the Lord has taken away the memory of feast and Sabbath in Zion, and in the passion of his wrath he is against king and priest.
For the Lord had made the sound of carriages and horses, and the noise of a great army, come to the ears of the Aramaeans, so that they said to one another, Truly, the king of Israel has got the kings of the Hittites and of the Egyptians for a price to make an attack on us. So they got up and went in flight, in the half light, without their tents or their horses or their asses or any of their goods; they went in flight, fearing for their lives.
This is the word which the Lord has said about him: In the eyes of the virgin daughter of Zion you are shamed and laughed at; the daughter of Jerusalem has made sport of you. Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? and against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel. You have sent your servants with evil words against the Lord, and have said, With all my war-carriages I have come up to the top of the mountains, to the inmost parts of Lebanon; and its tall cedars will be cut down, and the best trees of its woods: I will come up into his highest places, into his thick woods. I have made water-holes and taken their waters, and with my foot I have made all the rivers of Egypt dry. Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls. This is why their townsmen had no power, they were broken and put to shame; they were like the grass of the field, or a green plant; like the grass on the house-tops, which a cold wind makes waste. But I have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in. Because your wrath against me and your pride have come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came. And this will be the sign to you: you will get your food this year from what comes up of itself, and in the second year from the produce of the same; and in the third year you will put in your seed, and get in the grain, and make vine-gardens, and take of their fruit. And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth, and give fruit. For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done. For this cause the Lord says about the king of Assyria, He will not come into this town, or send an arrow against it; he will not come before it with arms, or put up an earthwork against it. By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town. For I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David. And the angel of the Lord went out and put to death in the army of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand men: and when the people got up early in the morning, there was nothing to be seen but dead bodies. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went back to his place at Nineveh. And it came about, when he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to death with the sword, and they went in flight into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon, his son, became king in his place.
Let their faces be full of shame; so that they may give honour to your name, O Lord. Let them be overcome and troubled for ever; let them be put to shame and come to destruction;
Let those who go after my soul for its destruction have shame and trouble together; let them be turned back and made foolish who take pleasure in my trouble.
Let all those who take pleasure in my troubles be shamed and come to nothing: let those who are lifted up against me be covered with shame and have no honour.
Then were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the upright.
Then he whose seat is in the heavens will be laughing: the Lord will make sport of them.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 53
Commentary on Psalms 53 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 53
God speaks once, yea, twice, and it were well if man would even then perceive it; God, in this psalm, speaks twice, for this is the same almost verbatim with the fourteenth psalm. The scope of it is to convince us of our sins, to set us a blushing and trembling because of them; and this is what we are with so much difficulty brought to that there is need of line upon line to this purport. The word, as a convincing word, is compared to a hammer, the strokes whereof must be frequently repeated. God, by the psalmist here,
Some little variation there is between Ps. 14 and this, but none considerable, only between v. 5, 6, there, and v. 5 here; some expressions there used are here left out, concerning the shame which the wicked put upon God's people, and instead of that, is here foretold the shame which God would put upon the wicked, which alteration, with some others, he made by divine direction when he delivered it the second time to the chief musician. In singing it we ought to lament the corruption of the human nature, and the wretched degeneracy of the world we live in, yet rejoicing in hope of the great salvation.
To the chief musician upon Mahalath, Maschil. A psalm of David.
Psa 53:1-6
This psalm was opened before, and therefore we shall here only observe, in short, some things concerning sin, in order to the increasing of our sorrow for it and hatred of it.