Psalm 68:13

Psalm 68 is a song of triumph, sung as God’s people went up in procession to worship him. It may have been written for the day the ark was brought up to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6) or for the celebration of a great victory. It opens with “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered”, an echo of the words Moses spoke whenever the ark set out in the wilderness (Numbers 10:35), and its first verses praise God as a father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows (Psalm 68:1–6). Later the psalm goes up with a joyful procession into God’s sanctuary on Zion (Psalm 68:24–27), and it ends with the nations bringing him tribute.

Verses 7 to 14 are the road between. They pass from the Exodus and the wilderness, through Sinai, into the settled land and on to victories over kings, and much of their language recalls the old victory song of Deborah (Judges 5). At every stage God goes first, and what his people receive comes from him.

“O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people” speaks to God directly and takes the psalm back to the beginning of Israel’s life as a nation. The name used, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form, a plural of majesty, and when it names the true God its verbs are usually singular. The verb yâtsâʼ, “wentest forth”, means to go or come out, the word for a leader going out at the head of his people. Israel saw this with their own eyes in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, which went before them all the way (Exodus 13:21–22).

“When thou didst march” uses tsâʻad, a word for stepping out or marching, used of a stately procession or an army on the move. God is pictured as a king leading his host, and the song Israel sang at the sea had already called him by that kind of name: “The LORD is a man of war” (Exodus 15:1–21). He was strong enough to take a whole nation through the desert and willing to walk ahead of it.

The wilderness, yᵉshîymôwn, is a desolate, empty waste. It was hard and dangerous country, and there Israel learned to depend on God for everything. He fed them with manna, gave them water from the rock and gave them his law at Sinai. Moses later told them that God had led them those forty years to humble them and prove them, and fed them with manna so that they would know that “man doth not live by bread only” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). God’s leading was plainest where their own resources ran out. Isaiah takes up the same memory when the LORD who once made a way through the sea promises to make a new way in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:16–19).

Verse 8 describes God’s coming down on Mount Sinai, the event told in Exodus 19. There was thunder and lightning, fire and smoke, and Moses wrote that “the whole mount quaked greatly” (Exodus 19:18). There God made his covenant with Israel and gave the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), and so this was the moment Israel became his people.

“The earth shook” uses râʻash, to tremble, quake or shake violently, and the trembling of the earth at God’s work appears elsewhere in Scripture too (1 Samuel 14:15). “The heavens also dropped” uses nâṭaph, to drip, distil or fall in drops, a word used of rain and dew, and in poetry also of speaking by inspiration. Here it most likely means the heavy rain that came with the thunder at Sinai. Deborah’s song says nearly the same thing, in words verse 7 also echoes: “LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water” (Judges 5:4).

Twice the verse says this happened “at the presence of God”. The word is pânîym, which is plural in form, always used as a singular, and means “face”. From the face come its other senses, “front” and “presence”, and when it is used of God it means God himself appearing. The earth and the sky shook because God himself had come.

Sinai is named because it was the mountain of the covenant, where God revealed his law and bound himself to Israel. The KJV supplies “even” and “was moved” in italics, and the sense is that the very mountain where God met his people trembled before him. The verse ends with “the God of Israel”, which gives this power a name. The God who can shake earth and heaven is the same God who chose Israel as his own and kept faith with them.

“Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain” names God as the giver. The word for rain is geshem, a shower or downpour, and “plentiful” translates nedavah, which carries the sense of something voluntary and freely given. It is a generous rain that God gives because he chooses to, out of his own goodness. In Canaan and the dry lands around it, life depended on the seasonal rains, and drought was a constant fear. Rain was one of the clearest signs of God’s blessing, as when Joel tells the children of Zion to rejoice because God gives them the former and the latter rain (Joel 2:23).

“Whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance” gives the purpose of the rain. “Confirm” is kûwn, which means to set up, establish, make firm or make ready. The rain refreshed God’s people and also made them stand firm again as his own. They are the inheritance, nachălâh, a possession, an allotted portion or an heirloom. Israel was God’s own portion, the people he had taken for himself through the Exodus, and Moses calls Jacob the lot of the LORD’s inheritance (Deuteronomy 32:9).

“When it was weary” tells us when God sent it. His people were worn out from the journey and from their trials, and that is the moment he chose to restore them. The verse may recall the manna and water of the wilderness years, or later times of drought in the land when God sent rain again. Either way it shows a God who knows when his people are exhausted and keeps his covenant with them, as Moses said of “the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:9). Isaiah says the same of him: “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength” (Isaiah 40:29).

“Thy congregation hath dwelt therein” speaks of God’s people settled in the place he gave them, which here is most naturally the land of Canaan. The word behind “congregation” is chay, which most often means “living” or “alive” and can also name a company of people, and the KJV takes it as God’s own congregation. “Hath dwelt”, yâshab, means to sit down, settle or dwell, so the wandering people of verse 7 now have a home. The promise made to their fathers has been kept.

“Thou, O God, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor” says where their provision came from. “Prepared” is kûwn, the same verb as “confirm” in verse 9, so the God who made his weary people firm is the God who made ready what they needed. He did it “of thy goodness”, and ṭôwb is a broad word for what is pleasant, beneficial, bountiful and good. God provides for his people out of who he is.

He provided “for the poor”. The word ʿânîy comes from a root meaning to press down or afflict, so the poor here are the afflicted and lowly, those with little and no one to stand up for them. God’s care for them runs all through his law. Israel was to open its hand wide to a poor brother and lend him what he needed (Deuteronomy 15:7–8), and to leave the gleanings of the harvest and the vineyard for the poor and the stranger (Leviticus 19:9–10). Amos condemned Israel for selling the poor for a pair of shoes (Amos 2:6–7). Proverbs says that “he that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD” (Proverbs 19:17), and Isaiah calls God a strength to the poor and a refuge for the needy in distress (Isaiah 25:4). The God who goes to war against kings in this psalm is the same God who stoops to the poorest of his people, and his people are to care for the poor because he does.

“The Lord gave the word” names the source of the message. “The Lord” here is ʼĂdônây, the title Lord, and “the word” is ʼômer, something said, a speech or a promise. In a song of triumph like this, the word is most likely God’s word of victory, his decree that the enemy will fall and his people be delivered. The message comes from God, and his people’s part is to spread it.

“Great was the company of those that published it” tells how they did. “Great” is rab, much or many. “Company” is tsâbâʼ, the word for an army or host, used also for war, for service and for the host of heaven, and here it is a great host of people. “Published” is bâsar, to announce glad news, to bear good tidings or to preach. The good news of God’s triumph went out by a multitude of voices. Isaiah praises the feet of the one “that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace” (Isaiah 52:7), and Paul asks how anyone will hear without a preacher (Romans 10:14–15).

“Kings of armies” joins melek, king, and tsâbâʼ, the same word as “company” in verse 11, and means kings at the head of their hosts, the strongest enemies Israel could face. They “did flee apace”, and the Hebrew repeats the verb nâdad, to flee or wander, for emphasis: they fled, they fled. The picture is of a headlong rout, with the enemy running in panic before God.

“She that tarried at home” joins nâveh, at home or dwelling, and bayith, house, and means the woman who stays in the house. In Israel women stayed home from the fighting, yet here they share out the plunder. That is how complete the victory was. The danger was over, the land was safe, and even those who had stayed at home enjoyed what God had won. Those who did none of the fighting took home the spoil, which shows that the victory was God’s. Israel’s song at the sea had celebrated the same kind of triumph, and Deborah’s song gives the other side of it, with the mother of the enemy captain Sisera waiting at her window and her ladies assuring her that the prey is being divided, while it was Israel who had won (Judges 5:28–31). Isaiah sees a Zion so secure that even the lame take the prey (Isaiah 33:20–24).

God’s victories bless the whole community, the strong and the weak, those who fought and those who waited. Every member of his people shares in what he has won.

“Though ye have lien among the pots” describes a past of deep humiliation. The word shâphâth is uncertain in meaning. It can mean a stall or a pot, and in its dual form it has been taken as a double row of pots or hearthstones, or the ash heaps round the cooking fires. Any of these is a low, dirty place, where servants, slaves and the poorest slept or worked among the soot. Israel’s bondage in Egypt is the plainest example of such a time (Exodus 1).

“Yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver” turns the picture over. The dove, yôwnâh, is the ordinary dove or pigeon, a common bird in Israel, and the Song of Solomon uses it as a name for the beloved (Song of Solomon 2:14). “Covered” is châphâh, to cover, overlay or encase, so the wings are overlaid with silver. “And her feathers with yellow gold” adds gold to the silver. The word for gold is chărûwts, fine or gleaming gold, and “yellow” is yᵉraqraq, yellowish. The plain wings of a common bird, perhaps soiled by the pots, now shine with silver and gold.

This is what God does with a people he has lifted out of shame. He raises them from the lowest place and adorns them with beauty and honour. Hannah sang of a God who “raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes” (1 Samuel 2:8), and Isaiah promised beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3). Paul says that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18), and Peter promises that after we have suffered a while the God of all grace will make us perfect and settle us (1 Peter 5:10).

“When the Almighty scattered kings in it” names God by Shadday, “Almighty”, the title by which he revealed himself to Abram: “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1). Its exact meaning is unsure, and “All-Sufficient One” is one possible sense. The title fits a verse about a victory that belongs wholly to God. “Scattered” is pâras, to break apart, disperse or spread, so the kings’ armies were broken up and sent in every direction. “In it” most likely means the land or battlefield where God gave the victory. The psalmist could say elsewhere that God had girded him with strength for battle and subdued those who rose up against him (Psalm 18:39).

“It was white as snow in Salmon” pictures the scene afterward. The verb is shâlag, formed from the word for snow and meaning to be snow-white, and the KJV supplies “white” in italics. Salmon, or Zalmon, was a mountain near Shechem, where Abimelech and his men cut down boughs from the trees (Judges 9:48). It was a wooded mountain, and snow lying white on its slopes would have been a striking sight.

The road these verses trace, from Egypt to rest and from humiliation to glory, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

These verses give us a God who goes first. He went out at the head of Israel, shook Sinai with his presence, sent rain when his people were worn out and made ready his goodness for the poor before they asked. He gave the word of victory, put kings to flight, let the women at home share the spoil, and lifted a people out of the soot of the cooking fires into silver and gold. The Selah of verse 7 still stands in the middle of the psalm, a pause in which to take that in.

The same God leads his people now, through every wilderness they cross. The weary can hear verse 9 as spoken of them, since Christ calls the weary to himself. The poor in his congregation are the ones he prepared for. All of us who did none of the fighting share in the spoil of Christ’s victory, and that is the best word a great company has ever had to publish.