4 They have said, `Come, And we cut them off from `being' a nation, And the name of Israel is not remembered any more.'
And I `am' as a trained lamb brought to slaughter, And I have not known That against me they have devised devices: We destroy the tree with its food, and cut him off From the land of the living, And his name is not remembered again.
give help! let us act wisely concerning it, lest it multiply, and it hath come to pass, when war happeneth, that it hath been joined, even it, unto those hating us, and hath fought against us, and hath gone out up of the land.'
and it is contemptible in his eyes to put forth a hand on Mordecai by himself, for they have declared to him the people of Mordecai, and Haman seeketh to destroy all the Jews who `are' in all the kingdom of Ahasuerus -- the people of Mordecai. In the first month -- it `is' the month of Nisan -- in the twelfth year of the king Ahasuerus, hath one caused to fall Pur (that `is' the lot) before Haman, from day to day, and from month to month, `to' the twelfth, it `is' the month of Adar. And Haman saith to the king Ahasuerus, `There is one people scattered and separated among the peoples, in all provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws `are' diverse from all people, and the laws of the king they are not doing, and for the king it is not profitable to suffer them; if to the king `it be' good, let it be written to destroy them, and ten thousand talents of silver I weigh into the hands of those doing the work, to bring `it' in unto the treasuries of the king.'
They said in their hearts, `Let us oppress them together,' They did burn all the meeting-places of God in the land.
We swallow them as Sheol -- alive, And whole -- as those going down `to' the pit,
There is no more praise of Moab, In Heshbon they devised against it evil: Come, and we cut it off from `being' a nation, Also, O Madmen, thou art cut off, After thee goeth a sword.
and words as an adversary of the Most High it doth speak, and the saints of the Most High it doth wear out, and it hopeth to change seasons and law; and they are given into its hand, till a time, and times, and a division of a time.
And on the morrow that is after the preparation, were gathered together the chief priests, and the Pharisees, unto Pilate, saying, `Sir, we have remembered that that deceiver said while yet living, After three days I do rise; command, then, the sepulchre to be made secure till the third day, lest his disciples, having come by night, may steal him away, and may say to the people, He rose from the dead, and the last deceit shall be worse than the first.' And Pilate said to them, `Ye have a watch, go away, make secure -- as ye have known;' and they, having gone, did make the sepulchre secure, having sealed the stone, together with the watch.
but that it may spread no further toward the people, let us strictly threaten them no more to speak in this name to any man.'
And Saul, yet breathing of threatening and slaughter to the disciples of the Lord, having gone to the chief priest, did ask from him letters to Damascus, unto the synagogues, that if he may find any being of the way, both men and women, he may bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 83
Commentary on Psalms 83 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 83
This psalm is the last of those that go under the name of Asaph. It is penned, as most of those, upon a public account, with reference to the insults of the church's enemies, who sought its ruin. Some think it was penned upon occasion of the threatening descent which was made upon the land of Judah in Jehoshaphat's time by the Moabites and Ammonites, those children of Lot here spoken of (v. 8), who were at the head of the alliance and to whom all the other states here mentioned were auxiliaries. We have the story 2 Chr. 20:1, where it is said, The children of Moab and Ammon, and others besides them, invaded the land. Others think it was penned with reference to all the confederacies of the neighbouring nations against Israel, from first to last. The psalmist here makes an appeal and application,
This, in the singing of it, we may apply to the enemies of the gospel-church, all anti-christian powers and factions, representing to God their confederacies against Christ and his kingdom, and rejoicing in the hope that all their projects will be baffled and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church.
A song or psalm of Asaph.
Psa 83:1-8
The Israel of God were now in danger, and fear, and great distress, and yet their prayer is called, A song or psalm; for singing psalms is not unseasonable, no, not when the harps are hung upon the willow-trees.
Psa 83:9-18
The psalmist here, in the name of the church, prays for the destruction of those confederate forces, and, in God's name, foretels it; for this prayer that it might be so amounts to a prophecy that it shall be so, and this prophecy reaches to all the enemies of the gospel-church; whoever they be that oppose the kingdom of Christ, here they may read their doom. The prayer is, in short, that these enemies, who were confederate against Israel, might be defeated in all their attempts, and that they might prove their own ruin, and so God's Israel might be preserved and perpetuated. Now this is here illustrated,