5 Wo to me, for I have inhabited Mesech, I have dwelt with tents of Kedar.
`Sons of Japheth `are' Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
and these `are' the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their births: first-born of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam,
Dark `am' I, and comely, daughters of Jerusalem, As tents of Kedar, as curtains of Solomon.
And Samuel dieth, and all Israel are gathered, and mourn for him, and bury him in his house, in Ramah; and David riseth and goeth down unto the wilderness of Paran.
A company of camels covereth thee, Dromedaries of Midian and Ephah, All of them from Sheba do come, Gold and frankincense they bear, And of the praises of Jehovah they proclaim the tidings. All the flock of Kedar are gathered to thee, The rams of Nebaioth do serve thee, They ascend for acceptance Mine altar, And the house of My beauty I beautify.
Who doth give me in a wilderness A lodging-place of travellers? And I leave my people, and go from them, For all of them `are' adulterers, An assembly of treacherous ones. And they bend their tongue, their bow `is' a lie, And not for stedfastness have they been mighty in the land, For from evil unto evil they have gone forth, And Me they have not known, An affirmation of Jehovah!
thy dwelling `is' in the midst of deceit, Through deceit they refused to know Me, An affirmation of Jehovah.
Concerning Kedar, and concerning the kingdoms of Hazor, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath smitten: `Thus said Jehovah: Arise ye, go ye up unto Kedar, And spoil the sons of the east. Their tents and their flock they do take, Their curtains, and all their vessels, And their camels, they bear away for themselves, And they called concerning them, Fear `is' round about.
Arabia, and all princes of Kedar, They `are' the traders of thy hand, For lambs, and rams, and he-goats, In these thy merchants.
And thou, son of man, prophesy concerning Gog, and thou hast said: Thus said the Lord Jehovah: Lo, I `am' against thee, O Gog, Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal,
My wo `is' to me, for I have been As gatherings of summer-fruit, As gleanings of harvest, There is no cluster to eat, The first-ripe fruit desired hath my soul. Perished hath the kind out of the land, And upright among men -- there are none, All of them for blood lie in wait, Each his brother they hunt `with' a net.
I have known thy works, and where thou dost dwell -- where the throne of the Adversary `is' -- and thou dost hold fast my name, and thou didst not deny my faith, even in the days in which Antipas `was' my faithful witness, who was put to death beside you, where the Adversary doth dwell.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 120
Commentary on Psalms 120 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Cry of Distress When Surrounded by Contentious Men
This first song of degrees attaches itself to Psalms 119:176. The writer of Ps 119, surrounded on all sides by apostasy and persecution, compares himself to a sheep that is easily lost, which the shepherd has to seek and bring home if it is not to perish; and the writer of Psalms 120:1-7 is also “as a sheep in the midst of wolves.” The period at which he lived is uncertain, and it is consequently also uncertain whether he had to endure such endless malignant attacks from foreign barbarians or from his own worldly-minded fellow-countrymen. E. Tilling has sought to establish a third possible occasion in his Disquisitio de ratione inscript. XV Pss. grad. (1765). He derives this and the following songs of degrees from the time immediately succeeding the Return from the Exile, when the secret and open hostility of the Samaritans and other neighbouring peoples ( Nehemiah 2:10, Nehemiah 2:19; Nehemiah 4:17, Nehemiah 6:1) sought to keep down the rise of the young colony.
According to the pointing ויּענני , the poet appears to base his present petition, which from Psalms 120:2 onwards is the substance of the whole Psalm, upon the fact of a previous answering of his prayers. For the petition in Psalms 120:2 manifestly arises out of his deplorable situation, which is described in Psalms 120:5. Nevertheless there are also other instances in which ויענני might have been expected, where the pointing is ויּענני ( Psalms 3:5; Jonah 2:3), so that consequently ויּענני may, without any prejudice to the pointing, be taken as a believing expression of the result (cf. the future of the consequence in Job 9:16) of the present cry for help. צרתה , according to the original signification, is a form of the definition of a state or condition, as in Psalms 3:3; 44:27; Psalms 63:8, Jonah 2:10, Hosea 8:7, and בּצּרתה לּי = בּצּר־לּי , Psalms 18:7, is based upon the customary expression צר לּי . In Psalms 120:2 follows the petition which the poet sends up to Jahve in the certainty of being answered. רמיּה beside לשׁון , although there is no masc . רמי (cf. however the Aramaic רמּי , רמּאי ), is taken as an adjective after the form טריּה , עניּה , which it is also perhaps in Micah 6:12. The parallelism would make לשׁון natural, like לשׁון מרמה in Psalms 52:6; the pointing, which nevertheless disregarded this, will therefore rest upon tradition. The apostrophe in Psalms 120:3 is addressed to the crafty tongue. לשׁון is certainly feminine as a rule; but whilst the tongue as such is feminine, the לשׁון רמיה of the address, as in Psalms 52:6, refers to him who has such a kind of tongue (cf. Hitzig on Proverbs 12:27), and thereby the לך is justified; whereas the rendering, “what does it bring to thee, and what does it profit thee?” or, “of what use to thee and what advancement to thee is the crafty tongue?” is indeed possible so far as concerns the syntax (Ges. §147, e ), but is unlikely as being ambiguous and confusing in expression. It is also to be inferred from the correspondence between מה־יּתּן לך וּמה־יּסיף לך and the formula of an oath כּה יעשׂה־לּך אלהים לכה יוסיף , 1 Samuel 3:17; 1 Samuel 20:13; 1 Samuel 25:22; 2 Samuel 3:35; Ruth 1:17, that God is to be thought of as the subject of יתן and יסיף : “what will,” or rather, in accordance with the otherwise precative use of the formula and with the petition that here precedes: “what shall He (is He to) give to thee ( נתן as in Hosea 9:14), and what shall He add to thee, thou crafty tongue?” The reciprocal relation of Psalms 120:4 to מה־יתן , and of. Psalms 120:4 with the superadding עם to מה־יסיף , shows that Psalms 120:4 is not now a characterizing of the tongue that continues the apostrophe to it, as Ewald supposes. Consequently Psalms 120:4 gives the answer to Psalms 120:3 with the twofold punishment which Jahve will cause the false tongue to feel. The question which the poet, sure of the answering of his cry for help, puts to the false tongue is designed to let the person addressed hear by a flight of sarcasm what he has to expect. The evil tongue is a sharp sword (Psalms 57:5), a pointed arrow (Jeremiah 9:7), and it is like a fire kindled of hell (James 3:6). The punishment, too, corresponds to this its nature and conduct (Psalms 64:4). The “mighty one” (lxx δυνατός ) is God Himself, as it is observed in B. Erachin 15 b with a reference to Isaiah 42:13 : “There is none mighty by the Holy One, blessed is He.” He requites the evil tongue like with like. Arrows and coals (Psalms 140:11) appear also in other instances among His means of punishment. It, which shot piercing arrows, is pierced by the sharpened arrows of an irresistibly mighty One; it, which set its neighbour in a fever of anguish, must endure the lasting, sure, and torturingly consuming heat of broom-coals. The lxx renders it in a general sense, σὺν τοῖς ἄνθραξι τοῖς ἐρημικοῖς ; Aquila, following Jewish tradition, ἀρκευθίναις ; but רתם , Arabic ratam , ratem , is the broom-shrub (e.g., uncommonly frequent in the Belkâ ).
Since arrows and broom-fire, with which the evil tongue is requited, even now proceed from the tongue itself, the poet goes on with the deep heaving אויה (only found here). גּוּר with the accusative of that beside which one sojourns, as in Psalms 5:5; Isaiah 33:14; Judges 5:17. The Moschi ( משׁך , the name of which the lxx takes as an appellative in the signification of long continuance; cf. the reverse instance in Isaiah 66:19 lxx) dwelt between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and it is impossible to dwell among them and the inhabitants of Kedar (vid., Psalms 83:7) at one and the same time. Accordingly both these names of peoples are to be understood emblematically, with Saadia, Calvin, Amyraldus, and others, of homines similes ejusmodi barbaris et truculentis nationibus .