Psalm 46:9

Psalm 46 is a song of the sons of Korah, and it is one of the songs of Zion, which celebrate God’s protecting presence in Jerusalem. It opens with “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” and goes straight on to the worst that can happen: “though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled” (Psalm 46:1–3). Then the nations join the uproar: “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted” (Psalm 46:6). The refrain comes first at verse 7 (Psalm 46:7) and again at verse 11, and between the two, verses 8 to 10 turn from the turmoil of the world to what God has done about it. The whole psalm (Psalm 46) moves from chaos to a peace that God himself establishes.

The psalm leaves its occasion unnamed. It fits very well the time when the Assyrian king Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah, and God saved the city from an overwhelming army (2 Kings 19, Isaiah 37). The nations around Israel gave the credit for their victories and defeats to their own gods, and they thought of those gods as belonging to their own lands and peoples. Psalm 46 declares that the LORD rules every nation and the whole earth, in judgment and in salvation. Israel took comfort in God as a warrior who judges rebellious nations and defends his people, and the refrain reminds them of his covenant with them and of all the times he had delivered them.

Verse 8 opens with a summons. The KJV’s “Come, behold” renders two Hebrew verbs, yâlak châzâh. The first, yâlak, is the ordinary verb for walking or going, and here it calls the hearer to come near. The second, châzâh, means to see or gaze, to look at something with attention and take it in. Everyone is called, from every nation, to come close and look carefully until they understand what God has done, and that kind of looking leads to awe.

What we are to see is “the works of the LORD”. The word for works, miphʻâl, comes from the verb pâʻal, to do or make, and it means deeds, things accomplished. These are acts God did on purpose, the works of a God who is at work in the world and in its history, and they set him apart from the idols of the nations, which are powerless.

The works are named at once: “what desolations he hath made in the earth.” The word shammâh means desolation, the ruin of what once stood, and elsewhere it means horror, a separate sense of the same word. In Scripture desolation is very often what God’s judgment leaves behind. The verb behind “made” is sûwm, to put or set, so the LORD has set these ruins in the earth himself. In the flow of the psalm they fall on the raging nations and tottering kingdoms of verse 6, and verse 9 follows straight on with the end of war. What lies in ruins is the power of those who made war.

God has the right to pull down a nation and to build one up. Jeremiah hears him say that he may speak concerning a nation to pluck it up, pull it down and destroy it, or to build and plant it, as that nation turns to him or away from him (Jeremiah 18:7–10).

Verse 9 shows what the desolations achieve. “He maketh wars to cease” uses shâbath, which means to cease, desist or rest, and also to make something cease, which is the sense here, since God is the one who stops the fighting. He brings war to an end. The reach of it is “unto the end of the earth”. The word qâtseh means the end, edge or border of something, and here it is the farthest edge of the land, so his peace reaches every corner of the world.

Then the verse names the weapons. “He breaketh the bow” uses shâbar, to break or shatter. “And cutteth the spear in sunder” uses qâtsats, to chop off or cut in pieces. “He burneth the chariot in the fire”: the chariot is the ʻăgâlâh, and it goes into the ʼêsh, the fire, until only ashes are left.

These were the strongest weapons of the day. The bow struck from a distance, the spear was for fighting hand to hand, and the chariot was the swift striking force of an army and often decided a battle. Together they stand for all of a nation’s military might, and God takes each one in hand and destroys it. The verse moves from the general statement that wars cease to the particular weapons, and it ends in the fire. The kings of the earth looked for peace in strong armies and the balance of power, and this verse shows that true peace comes from God.

The prophets see the same peace. Isaiah and Micah tell of nations that beat their swords into plowshares and learn war no more (Isaiah 2:2–4, Micah 4:3). Isaiah sees a peaceable kingdom where none shall hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 11:6–9), and Zechariah tells of a king who speaks peace to the nations and cuts off the battle bow (Zechariah 9:10).

In verse 10 the speaker changes. Until now the psalmist has spoken about God, and here God speaks in his own voice. After the shaking earth, the raging nations and the wars he has ended, he addresses all humanity, and his own people above all. The command comes with his full authority, and it answers the turmoil of the whole psalm.

Verse 11 repeats verse 7 word for word, and the psalm ends on the truth it has been resting on all along. “The LORD of hosts” joins two words. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s personal name, the name of the covenant, from the verb “to be”. It speaks of his eternal being and of his faithfulness to his promises, and it reminds us that the God who is with his people is the unchanging God who has shown himself in all his saving acts. Tsâbâʼ means an army or host, and it is used for war and service, for armies of men and for the host of heaven. The title Yᵉhôvâh Sabaoth names him the commander of every army, the angels, the stars and the forces of the earth. To people who had just watched the armies of the nations rage, this name says that every one of those armies answers to him.

And this LORD “is with us”. The Hebrew immanu means “with us”, and it is the heart of the name Immanuel, God with us. Isaiah gives that name in his prophecy of the child (Isaiah 7:14) and uses the same words, “for God is with us”, when he tells the nations that their plans will come to nothing (Isaiah 8:10). The God who commands all the hosts stands beside his people as their ally and defender. Moses promised Israel that the LORD would go with them and would not fail them or forsake them (Deuteronomy 31:6), and Jesus promised his disciples, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

The New Testament shows these verses fulfilled in Jesus. He came to save the world (John 3:17), and his presence, his teaching and his works exposed sin and broke Satan’s hold on people. On the cross, “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), the decisive desolation of the forces of evil that held us captive. When he returns, he comes as the warrior King of kings and Lord of lords to judge in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16), bringing a final desolation on all evil and rebellion and clearing the way for his everlasting kingdom.

He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), and he goes to the root of war, which is sin, rebellion against God and the hostility between people that follows from it. He made peace through the blood of his cross, reconciling us to God (Colossians 1:20), and he “hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:14). He told his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44) and called the peacemakers blessed (Matthew 5:9). The peace of verse 9, reaching to the end of the earth, will be complete when he comes again.

When Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39), he spoke with the authority of the God of verse 10. He is the image of the invisible God, by whom all things were created and by whom all things consist (Colossians 1:15–17), so in him we know that God is God. His death and resurrection show God’s rule beyond all doubt. God is exalted among the nations as the gospel goes to all nations (Matthew 28:19), and in the end every knee shall bow and every tongue confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), the Word made flesh who dwelt among us (John 1:14). He is the true heir of the promises to Jacob, for in him all the promises of God are yea and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20). He is the refuge of everyone who believes, the rock of our salvation and our hiding place from sin and judgment, and he gives a peace the world cannot give (John 14:27).

These verses give us a God who acts. He has set desolations in the earth, ended wars and burned the weapons of the nations, and he has said what he will yet do: he will be exalted among the nations and in all the earth. The psalm holds his power together with his nearness, for the LORD of every army is with his people and the God of Jacob is their high refuge. That truth belongs to every generation that faces upheaval, in the world or in a single life.

The command of verse 10 still stands for everyone who hears it. God’s people can let go of their striving and their fear, because the One who speaks is God, and the last word of the psalm, before its pause, is that he is with us.