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Psalms 149:4 Darby English Bible (DARBY)

4 For Jehovah taketh pleasure in his people; he beautifieth the meek with salvation.

Cross Reference

Psalms 35:27 DARBY

Let them exult and rejoice that delight in my righteousness; and let them say continually, Jehovah be magnified, who delighteth in the prosperity of his servant.

Psalms 132:16 DARBY

And I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.

Psalms 147:11 DARBY

Jehovah taketh pleasure in those that fear him, in those that hope in his loving-kindness.

Psalms 22:8 DARBY

Commit it to Jehovah -- let him rescue him; let him deliver him, because he delighteth in him!

Psalms 90:17 DARBY

And let the beauty of Jehovah our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, the work of our hands, establish thou it.

Psalms 117:2 DARBY

For his loving-kindness is great toward us, and the truth of Jehovah [endureth] for ever. Hallelujah!

Proverbs 11:20 DARBY

The perverse in heart are abomination to Jehovah; but they that are perfect in [their] way are his delight.

Isaiah 61:1-3 DARBY

The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, because Jehovah hath anointed me to announce glad tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, that beauty should be given unto them instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness: that they might be called terebinths of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that he may be glorified.

Isaiah 61:10 DARBY

I will greatly rejoice in Jehovah, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with the priestly turban, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.

Isaiah 62:4-5 DARBY

Thou shalt no more be termed, Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed, Desolate: but thou shalt be called, My delight is in her, and thy land, Married; for Jehovah delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For [as] a young man marrieth a virgin, shall thy sons marry thee; and with the joy of the bridegroom over the bride, shall thy God rejoice over thee.

Jeremiah 32:41 DARBY

And I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land with my whole heart and with my whole soul.

Zephaniah 3:17 DARBY

Jehovah thy God is in thy midst, a mighty one that will save: he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will exult over thee with singing.

Hebrews 12:10 DARBY

For they indeed chastened for a few days, as seemed good to them; but he for profit, in order to the partaking of his holiness.

1 Peter 3:4 DARBY

but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible [ornament] of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price.

1 Peter 5:5 DARBY

Likewise [ye] younger, be subject to [the] elder, and all of you bind on humility towards one another; for God sets himself against [the] proud, but to [the] humble gives grace.

Revelation 7:14 DARBY

And I said to him, My lord, *thou* knowest. And he said to me, These are they who come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 149

Commentary on Psalms 149 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary


Introduction

Hallelujah to the God of Victory of His People

This Psalm is also explained, as we have already seen on Psalms 147, from the time of the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah. The new song to which it summons has the supreme power which Israel has attained over the world of nations for its substance. As in Psalms 148:14 the fact that Jahve has raised up a horn for His people is called תּהלּה לכל־חסדיו , so here in Psalms 149:9 the fact that Israel takes vengeance upon the nations and their rulers is called הדר לכל־חסדיו . The writer of the two Psalms is one and the same. The fathers are of opinion that it is the wars and victories of the Maccabees that are here prophetically spoken of. But the Psalm is sufficiently explicable from the newly strengthened national self-consciousness of the period after Cyrus. The stand-point is somewhere about the stand-point of the Book of Esther. The New Testament spiritual church cannot pray as the Old Testament national church here prays. Under the illusion that it might be used as a prayer without any spiritual transmutation, Psalms 149:1-9 has become the watchword of the most horrible errors. It was by means of this Psalm that Caspar Scloppius in his Classicum Belli Sacri , which, as Bakius says, is written not with ink, but with blood, inflamed the Roman Catholic princes to the Thirty Years' religious War. And in the Protestant Church Thomas Münzer stirred up the War of the Peasants by means of this Psalm. We see that the Christian cannot make such a Psalm directly his own without disavowing the apostolic warning, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10:4). The praying Christian must there transpose the letter of this Psalm into the spirit of the New Covenant; the Christian expositor, however, has to ascertain the literal meaning of this portion of the Scriptures of the Old Testament in its relation to contemporary history.


Verses 1-5

A period, in which the church is renewing its youth and drawing nearer to the form it is finally to assume, also of inward necessity puts forth new songs. Such a new era has now dawned for the church of the saints, the Israel that has remained faithful to its God and the faith of its fathers. The Creator of Israel ( עשׂיו , plural, with the plural suffix, like עשׂי in Job 35:10, עשׂיך in Isaiah 54:5, cf. עשׂו in Job 40:19; according to Hupfeld and Hitzig, cf. Ew. §256, b , Ges. §93, 9, singular; but aj , ajich , aw , are always really plural suffixes) has shown that He is also Israel's Preserver and the King of Zion, that He cannot leave the children of Zion for any length of time under foreign dominion, and has heard the sighing of the exiles (Isaiah 63:19; Isaiah 26:13). Therefore the church newly appropriated by its God and King is to celebrate Him, whose Name shines forth anew out of its history, with festive dance, timbrel, and cithern. For (as the occasion, hitherto only hinted at, is now expressly stated) Jahve takes a pleasure in His people; His wrath in comparison with His mercy is only like a swiftly passing moment (Isaiah 54:7.). The futures that follow state that which is going on at the present time. ענוים is, as frequently, a designation of the ecclesia pressa , which has hitherto, amidst patient endurance of suffering, waited for God's own act of redemption. He now adorns them with ישׁוּעה , help against the victory over the hostile world; now the saints, hitherto enslaved and contemned, exult בכבוד , in honour, or on account of the honour which vindicates them before the world and is anew bestowed upon them ( בּ of the reason, or, which is more probable in connection with the boldness of the expression, of the state and mood);

(Note: Such, too (with pomp, not “with an army”), is the meaning of μετὰ δόξης in 1 Macc. 10:60; 14:4, 5, vid., Grimm in loc. ))

they shout for joy upon their beds, upon which they have hitherto poured forth their complaints over the present (cf. Hosea 7:14), and ardently longed for a better future (Isaiah 26:8); for the bed is the place of soliloquy (Psalms 4:5), and the tears shed there (Psalms 6:7) are turned into shouts of joy in the case of Israel.


Verses 6-9

The glance is here directed to the future. The people of the present have again, in their God, attained to a lofty self-consciousness, the consciousness of their destiny, viz., to subjugate the whole world of nations to the God of Israel. In the presence of the re-exaltation which they have experienced their throat is full of words and songs exalting Jahve ( רוממות , plural of רומם , or, according to another reading, רומם , Psalms 56:1-13 :17), and as servants of this God, the rightful Lord of all the heathen (Psalms 82:8), they hold in their hand a many-mouthed, i.e., many edged sword (vid., supra , p. 580), in order to take the field on behalf of the true religion, as the Maccabees actually did, not long after: ταῖς μὲν χερσὶν ἀγωνιζόμενοι ταῖς δὲ καρδίαις πρὸς τὸν Θεόν εὐχόμενοι (2 Macc. 15:27). The meaning of Psalms 149:9 becomes a different one, according as we take this line as co-ordinate or subordinate to what goes before. Subordinated, it would imply the execution of a penal jurisdiction over those whom they carried away, and כּתוּב would refer to prescriptive facts such as are recorded in Numbers 31:8; 1 Samuel 15:32. (Hitzig). But it would become the religious lyric poet least of all to entertain such an unconditional prospect of the execution of the conquered worldly rulers. There is just as little ground for thinking of the judgment of extermination pronounced upon the nations of Canaan, which was pronounced upon them for an especial reason. If Psalms 149:9 is taken as co-ordinate, the “written judgment” ( Recht ) consists in the complete carrying out of the subjugation; and this is commended by the perfectly valid parallel, Isaiah 45:14. The poet, however, in connection with the expression “written,” has neither this nor that passage of Scripture in his mind, but the testimony of the Law and of prophecy in general, that all kingdoms shall become God's and His Christ's. Subjugation (and certainly not without bloodshed) is the scriptural משׁפּט for the execution of which Jahve makes use of His own nation. Because the God who thus vindicates Himself is Israel's God, this subjugation of the world is הדר , splendour and glory, to all who are in love devoted to Him. The glorifying of Jahve is also the glorifying of Israel.