Bible Commentaries

The Consolation of Prayer under the Oppression of Tyrants

This Psalm, akin to Psalm 92:1-15 and Psalm 93:1-5 by the community of the anadiplosis,bears the inscription ØáëìïùôùÄáõéôåôñáóáââáin thelxx. It is also a Talmudic tradition

(Note: According to B. Erachin 11a, at the time of the Chaldaean destruction of Jerusalem the Levites on their pulpits were singing this 94th Psalm, and as they came to the words “and He turneth back upon them their iniquity” (Psalm 94:23), the enemies pressed into the Temple, so that they were not able to sing the closing words, “Jahve, our God, will destroy them.” To the scruple that Ps 94 is a Wednesday, not a Sunday, Psalm (that fatal day, however, was a Sunday, מוצאי שׁבת), it is replied, it may have been a lamentation song that had just been put into their mouths by the circumstances of that time (אלייא בעלמא דעלמא דנפל להו בפומייהו).)

that it was the Wednesday song in the Temple liturgy ( τετράδι σαββάτου = ברביעי בשׁבת). Athanasius explains it by a reference to the fourth month (Jeremiah 39:2). The τῳ Δαυίδ , however, is worthless. It is a post-Davidic Psalm; for, although it comes out of one mould, we still meet throughout with reminiscences of older Davidic and Asaphic models. The enemies against whom it supplicates the appearing of the God of righteous retribution are, as follows from a comparison of Psalm 94:5, Psalm 94:8, Psalm 94:10, Psalm 94:12, non-Israelites, who despise the God of Israel and fear not His vengeance, Psalm 94:7; whose barbarous doings, however, call forth, even among the oppressed people themselves, foolish doubts concerning Jahve's omniscient beholding and judicial interposition. Accordingly the Psalm is one of the latest, but not necessarily a Maccabaean Psalm. The later Persian age, in which the Book of Ecclesiastes was written, could also exhibit circumstances and moods such as these.

The first strophe prays that God would at length put a judicialrestraint upon the arrogance of ungodliness. Instead of חופיע (aless frequent form of the imperative for הופע, Ges. §53, rem. 3) it wasperhaps originally written הופיעה (Psalm 80:2), the He of which has beenlost owing to the He that follows. The plural נקמות signifiesnot merely single instances of taking vengeance (Ezekiel 25:17, cf. supra Psalm 18:48), but also intensively complete revenge or recompense (Judges 11:36; 2 Samuel 4:8). The designation of God is similar to אל גּמלות in Jeremiah 51:56, and the anadiplosis is like Psalm 94:3, Psalm 94:23, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 93:3. הנּשׂא, lift Thyself up, arise, viz., in judicial majesty, calls to mind Psalm 7:7. השׁיב גּמוּל is construed with על (cf. ל, Psalm 28:4; 59:18) as in Joel 3:4. With גּאים accidentally accord ἀγαυός and κύδεΐ γαίων in the epic poets.

The second strophe describes those over whom the first prays that thejudgment of God may come. הבּיע (cf. הטּיף) is a tropicalphrase used of that kind of speech that results from strong inward impulseand flows forth in rich abundance. The poet himself explains how it is here(cf. Psalm 59:8) intended: they speak עתק, that which isunrestrained, unbridled, insolent (vid., Psalm 31:19). The Hithpa. התאמּר Schultens interprets ut Emiri (Arab. ('mı̂r), a commander) se geruntbutאמיר signifies in Hebrew the top of a tree (vid., on Isaiah 17:9); andfrom the primary signification to tower aloft, whence too אמר, tospeak, prop. (effere) = (effari), התאמּר, like התימּר in Isaiah 61:6, directlysignifies to exalt one's self, to carry one's self high, to strut. On ודכּאוּ cf. Proverbs 22:22; Isaiah 3:15; and on their atheistical principle whichויּאמרוּ places in closest connection with their mode of action,cf. Psalm 10:11; Psalm 59:8 extrem. The Dagesh in יּהּ, distinct from theDag. in the same word in Psalm 94:12, Psalm 118:5, Psalm 118:18, is the Dag. forte conjunct. according to the rule of the so-called דחיק.

The third strophe now turns from those bloodthirsty, blasphemousoppressors of the people of God whose conduct calls forth the vengeanceof Jahve, to those among the people themselves, who have been puzzledabout the omniscience and indirectly about the righteousness of God bythe fact that this vengeance is delayed. They are called בערים and כסילים in the sense of Psalm 73:21. Those hitherto describedagainst whom God's vengeance is supplicated are this also; but thisappellation would be too one-sided for them, and בּעם refers the address expressly to a class of men among the people whom those oppress and slay. It is absurd that God, the planter of the ear (הנּטע, like שׁסע in Leviticus 11:7, with an accented ultima, because the praet. Kal does not follow the rule for the drawing back of the accent called נסוג אחור) and the former of the eye (cf. Psalm 40:7; Exodus 4:11), should not be able to hear and to see; everything that is excellent in the creature, God must indeed possess in original, absolute perfection.

(Note: The questions are not: ought He to have no ear, etc.; as Jerome pertinently observes in opposition to the anthropomorphites, membra tulit, efficientias deditf0.)

The poet then points to the extra-Israelitish world and calls God יסר גּוים, which cannot be made to refer to a warning by means of the voice of conscience; יסר used thus without any closer definition does not signify “warning,” but “chastening” (Proverbs 9:7). Taking his stand upon facts like those in Job 12:23, the poet assumes the punitive judicial rule of God among the heathen to be an undeniable fact, and presents for consideration the question, whether He who chasteneth nations cannot and will not also punish the oppressors of His church (cf. Genesis 18:25), He who teacheth men knowledge, i.e., He who nevertheless must be the omnipotent One, since all knowledge comes originally from Him? Jahve - thus does the course of argument close in Psalm 94:11 - sees through (ידע of penetrative perceiving or knowing that goes to the very root of a matter) the thoughts of men that they are vanity. Thus it is to be interpreted, and not: for they (men) are vanity; for this ought to have been כּי הבל המּה, whereas in the dependent clause, when the predicate is not intended to be rendered especially prominent, as in Ps 9:21, the pronominal subject may precede, Isaiah 61:9; Jeremiah 46:5 (Hitzig). The rendering of the lxx (1 Corinthians 3:20), ὅτι εἰσὶ μάταιοι (Jerome, quoniam vanae sunt), is therefore correct; המּה, with the customary want of exactness, stands for הנּה. It is true men themselves are הבל; it is not, however, on this account that He who sees through all things sees through their thoughts, but He sees through them in their sinful vanity.

The fourth strophe praises the pious sufferer, whose good cause God willat length aid in obtaining its right. The “blessed” reminds one of Psalm 34:9; Psalm 40:5, and more especially of Job 5:17, cf. Proverbs 3:11. Here what are meantare sufferings like those bewailed in Psalm 94:5., which are however, after all,the well-meant dispensations of God. Concerning the aim and fruit ofpurifying and testing afflictions God teaches the sufferer out of His Law(cf. e.g., Deuteronomy 8:5.), in order to procure him rest, viz., inward rest (cf. Jeremiah 49:23 with Isaiah 30:15), i.e., not to suffer him to be disheartened andtempted by days of wickedness, i.e., wicked, calamitous days (Ew. §287,b), until (and it will inevitably come to pass) the pit is finished being duginto which the ungodly falls headlong (cf. Psalm 112:7.). יּהּ has theemphatic Dagesh, which properly does not double, and still less unite, butrequires an emphatic pronunciation of the letter, which might easilybecome inaudible. The initial Jod of the divine name might easily lose itconsonantal value here in connection with the preceding toneless (û),

(Note: If it is correct that, as Aben-Ezra and Parchon testify, the וּ, as being compounded of (o((u) + (iwas pronounced ü like the u in the French word pur by the inhabitants of Palestine, then this Dagesh, in accordance with its orthophonic function, is the more intelligible in cases like תיסרנו יּה and קראתי יּה, cf. Pinsker, Einleitung, S. 153, and Geiger, Urschrift, S. 277. In קומו צּאו, Genesis 19:14; Exodus 12:31, קומו סּעו, Deuteronomy 2:24, Tsade and Samech have this Dagesh for the same reason as the Sin in תשׁביתו שּׁאור, Exodus 12:15 (vid., Heidenheim on that passage), viz., because there is a danger in all these cases of slurring over the sharp sibilant. Even Chajug' (vid., Ewald and Dukes' Beiträge, iii. 23) confuses this Dag. orthophonicum with the Dag. forte conjunctivum.)

and the Dag. guards against this: cf. Psalm 118:5, Psalm 118:18. The certainty of the issuethat is set in prospect by עד is then confirmed with כּי. Itis impossible that God can desert His church - He cannot do this, because ingeneral right must finally come to His right, or, as it is here expressed,משׁפּט must turn to צדק, i.e., the right that is nowsubdued must at length be again strictly maintained and justlyadministered, and “after it then all who are upright in heart,” i.e., all suchwill side with it, joyously greeting that which has been long missed and yearned after. משׁפּט is fundamental right, which is at all times consistent with itself and raised above the casual circumstances of the time, and צדק, like אמת in Isaiah 42:3, is righteousness (justice), which converts this right into a practical truth and reality.

In the fifth strophe the poet celebrates the praise of the Lord as his sole,but also trusty and most consolatory help. The meaning of the question inPsalm 94:16 is, that there is no man who would rise and succour him in theconflict with the evil-doers; ל as in Exodus 14:25; Judges 6:31, and עם (without נלחם or the like) in the sense of contra, as in Psalm 55:19, cf. 2 Chronicles 20:6. God alone is his help. He alone has rescued him from death. היה is to be supplied to לוּלי: if He had not been, or:if He were not; and the apodosis is: then very little would have beenwanting, then it would soon have come to this, that his soul would havetaken up its abode, etc.; cf. on the construction Psalm 119:92; Psalm 124:1-5; Isaiah 1:9, and on כּמעט with the praet. Psalm 73:2; Psalm 119:87; Genesis 26:10 (onthe other hand with the fut. Psalm 81:15). דּוּמה is, as in Psalm 115:17,the silence of the grave and of Hades; here it is the object to שׁכנה, as in Psalm 37:3, Proverbs 8:12, and frequently. When he appears to himselfalready as one that has fallen, God's mercy holds him up. And whenthoughts, viz., sad and fearful thoughts, are multiplied within him, God'scomforts delight him, viz., the encouragement of His word and the inwardutterances of His Spirit. שׁרעפּים, as in Psalm 139:23, is equivalent toשעפּים, from שׂעף, סעף, Arab. (š‛b), to split, branch off(Psychology, S. 181; tr. p. 214). The plural form ישׁעשׁעוּ,like the plural of the imperative in Isaiah 29:9, has two Pathachs, the secondof which is the “independentification” of the Chateph of ישׁעשׁע.

In the sixth strophe the poet confidently expects the inevitable divineretribution for which he has earnestly prayed in the introduction. יחברך is erroneously accounted by many (and by Geseniustoo) as fut. Pual = יחבּרך = יחבּר עמּך, a vocalcontraction together with a giving up of the reduplication in favour ofwhich no example can be advanced. It is fut. Kal = יחברך, fromיחבּר = יחבּר, with the same regression of the modification of thevowel

(Note: By means of a similar transposition of the vowel as is to be assumed in תּאהבוּ, Proverbs 1:22, it also appears that מדוּבּין = מוּסבּין (lying upon the table, ἀνακείμενοι ) of the Pesach-Haggada has to be explained, which Joseph Kimchi finds so inexplicable that he regards it as a clerical error that has become traditional.)

as in יחנך = יחנך in Genesis 43:29; Isaiah 30:19 (Hupfeld),but as in verbs primae gutturalisso also in כּתבם, כּתבם,inflected from כּתב, Ew. §251, d. It might be more readily regardedas Poel than as Pual (like תּאכלנוּ, Job 20:26), but the Kal too alreadysignifies to enter into fellowship (Genesis 14:3; Hosea 4:17), therefore (similarlyto יגרך, Psalm 5:5) it is: num consociabitur tecumכּסּא ishere the judgment-seat, just as the Arabic (cursi) directly denotes thetribunal of God (in distinction from Arab. ('l) -(‛arš), the throne of Hismajesty). With reference to הוּות vid., on Psalm 5:10. Assuming that חק is a divine statute, we obtain this meaning for עלי־חק: whichframeth (i.e., plots and executes) trouble, by making the written divineright into a rightful title for unrighteous conduct, by means of which theinnocent are plunged into misfortune. Hitzig renders: contrary to order,after Proverbs 17:26, where, however, על־ישׁר is intended like åäéêáéïóõMatthew 5:10. Olshausen proposes to readיגוּרוּ (Psalm 56:7; Psalm 59:4) instead of יגודּוּ, just asconversely Aben-Ezra in Psalm 56:7 reads יגודּוּ. But גּדד, גּוּד, has the secured signification of scindere, incidere (cf. Arab. (jdd), but also (chd), supra, p. 255), from which the signification invadere can be easily derived (whence גּדוּד, a breaking in, invasion, an invading host). With reference to דּם נקי vid., Psychology, S. 243 (tr. p. 286): because the blood is the soul, that is said of the blood which applies properly to the person. The subject to יגודו are the seat of corruption (by which a high council consisting of many may be meant, just as much as a princely throne) and its accomplices. Prophetic certainty is expressed in ויהי and ויּשׁב. The figure of God as משׂגּב is Davidic and Korahitic. צוּר מחסּי צוּר is explained from Psalm 18:2. Since השׁיב designates the retribution as a return of guilt incurred in the form of actual punishment, it might be rendered “requite” just as well as “cause to return;” עליהם, however, instead of להם (Psalm 54:7) makes the idea expressed in Psalm 7:17 more natural. On ברעתם Hitzig correctly compares 2 Samuel 14:7; 2 Samuel 3:27. The Psalm closes with an anadiplosis, just as it began with one; and אלהינוּ affirms that the destruction of the persecutor will follow as surely as the church is able to call Jahve its God.