7 To execute vengeance on the nations, And punishments on the peoples;
Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward you shall be gathered to your people. Moses spoke to the people, saying, Arm you men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian, to execute Yahweh's vengeance on Midian.
Curse you Meroz, said the angel of Yahweh. Curse you bitterly the inhabitants of it, Because they didn't come to the help of Yahweh, To the help of Yahweh against the mighty.
Thus says Yahweh of Hosts, I have marked that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and don't spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.
and Yahweh sent you on a journey, and said, 'Go, and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.' Why then didn't you obey the voice of Yahweh, but flew on the spoil, and did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh?" Saul said to Samuel, Yes, I have obeyed the voice of Yahweh, and have gone the way which Yahweh sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the devoted things, to sacrifice to Yahweh your God in Gilgal. Samuel said, Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yahweh? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because you have rejected the word of Yahweh, he has also rejected you from being king.
Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, He will be happy who rewards you, As you have served us. Happy shall he be, Who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock.
For indeed I bend Judah as a bow for me. I have filled the bow with Ephraim; And I will stir up your sons, Zion, Against your sons, Greece, And will make you like the sword of a mighty man. Yahweh will be seen over them; And his arrow will go flash like lightning; And the Lord Yahweh will blow the trumpet, And will go with whirlwinds of the south. Yahweh of Hosts will defend them; And they will destroy and overcome with sling-stones; And they will drink, and roar as through wine; And they will be filled like bowls, Like the corners of the altar. Yahweh their God will save them in that day as the flock of his people; For they are like the jewels of a crown, Lifted on high over his land.
It will be, that whoever of all the families of the earth doesn't go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Yahweh of Hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt doesn't go up, and doesn't come, neither will it rain on them. This will be the plague with which Yahweh will strike the nations that don't go up to keep the feast of tents. This will be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all the nations that don't go up to keep the feast of tents.
I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it is called Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has names written and a name written which no one knows but he himself. He is clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood. His name is called "The Word of God." The armies which are in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in white, pure, fine linen. Out of his mouth proceeds a sharp, double-edged sword, that with it he should strike the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He treads the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty. He has on his garment and on his thigh a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, "Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God,{TR reads "supper of the great God" instead of "great supper of God"} that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, and small and great." I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse, and against his army. The beast was taken, and with him the false prophet who worked the signs in his sight, with which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword of him who sat on the horse, the sword which came forth out of his mouth. All the birds were filled with their flesh.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 149
Commentary on Psalms 149 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
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.
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.
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.