3 There were the arrows of the bow broken, there he put an end to body-cover, sword, and fight. (Selah.)
He puts an end to wars over all the earth; by him the bow is broken, and the spear cut in two, and the carriage burned in the fire.
And with a blow I will send your bow out of your left hand and your arrows falling from your right hand. On the mountains of Israel you will come down, you and all your forces and the peoples who are with you: I will give you to cruel birds of every sort and to the beasts of the field to be their food.
And those who are living in the towns of Israel will go out and make fires of the instruments of war, burning the body-covers and the breastplates, the bows and the arrows and the sticks and the spears, and for seven years they will make fires of them: And they will take no wood out of the field or have any cut down in the woods; for they will make their fires of the instruments of war: and they will take by force the property of those who took their property, and go off with the goods of those who took their goods, says the Lord.
So the Lord sent fear on the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah; and the Ethiopians went in flight. And Asa and the people who were with him went after them as far as Gerar; and so great was the destruction among the Ethiopians that they were not able to get their army together again, for they were broken before the Lord and before his army; and they took away a great amount of their goods.
And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their goods from them, they saw beasts in great numbers, and wealth and clothing and things of value, more than they were able to take away; all this they took for themselves, and they were three days getting it away, there was so much.
And the Lord sent an angel who put to death all the men of war and the chiefs and the captains in the army of the king of Assyria. So he went back to his country in shame. And when he came into the house of his god, his sons, the offspring of his body, put him to death there with the sword.
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.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 76
Commentary on Psalms 76 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 76
This psalm seems to have been penned upon occasion of some great victory obtained by the church over some threatening enemy or other, and designed to grace the triumph. The Septuagint calls it, "A song upon the Assyrians,' whence many good interpreters conjecture that it was penned when Sennacherib's army, then besieging Jerusalem, was entirely cut off by a destroying angel in Hezekiah's time; and several passages in the psalm are very applicable to that work of wonder: but there was a religious triumph upon occasion of another victory, in Jehoshaphat's time, which might as well be the subject of this psalm (2 Chr. 20:28), and it might be called "a song of Asaph' because always sung by the sons of Asaph. Or it might be penned by Asaph who lived in David's time, upon occasion of the many triumphs with which God delighted to honour that reign. Upon occasion of this glorious victory, whatever it was,
It is a psalm proper for a thanksgiving day, upon the account of public successes, and not improper at other times, because it is never out of season to glorify God for the great things he has done for his church formerly, especially for the victories of the Redeemer over the powers of darkness, which all those Old-Testament victories were types of, at least those that are celebrated in the psalms.
To the chief musician on Neginoth. A psalm or song of Asaph.
Psa 76:1-6
The church is here triumphant even in the midst of its militant state. The psalmist, in the church's name, triumphs here in God, the centre of all our triumphs.
Psa 76:7-12
This glorious victory with which God had graced and blessed his church is here made to speak three things:-