83 A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.
83:1 O God, do not keep silence;
do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
2 For behold, your enemies make an uproar;
those who hate you have raised their heads.
3 They lay crafty plans against your people;
they consult together against your treasured ones.
4 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation;
let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”
5 For they conspire with one accord;
against you they make a covenant—
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Asshur also has joined them;
they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah
9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
10 who were destroyed at En-dor,
who became dung for the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, “Let us take possession for ourselves
of the pastures of God.”
13 O my God, make them like whirling dust,1
like chaff before the wind.
14 As fire consumes the forest,
as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
15 so may you pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your hurricane!
16 Fill their faces with shame,
that they may seek your name, O Lord.
17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
let them perish in disgrace,
18 that they may know that you alone,
whose name is the Lord,
are the Most High over all the earth.
Section Overview
This psalm, the last of those attributed to Asaph, is a community lament, geared to a situation in which God’s people are threatened by Gentile enemies (vv. 6–8) who aim to destroy them. The psalm prays that God would make such enemies fail miserably, being put to shame and perishing, so that they might come to know the Lord. It is possible (cf. comment on 83:9–18) that the psalm assumes that Israel must defend itself and that the prayer is thus for military victory.
The psalm divides into two parts; the first (vv. 1–8) lays out the dire threats against the people’s well-being, while the second (vv. 9–18) prays earnestly for God’s deliverance and protection. This second stanza has two substanzas, in which the worshipers ask for a repeat of past deliverances (vv. 9–12) and then the song goes into poetic elaboration of the requested defeat (vv. 13–18).
Section Outline
I. O God, Your Enemies Conspire against Israel (83:1–8)
II. O God, Protect Us from Them (83:9–18)
A. Do to Them as You Have Done to Other Enemies (83:9–12)
B. Defeat Them, so that They Might Know That You Rule (83:13–18)
Response
As a community lament this psalm serves as a form of prayer for Israel when facing the kind of threats described here. In praying this form, with its explicit wish for the Gentiles’ conversion, the members of the worshiping congregation are also enabled to look beyond their own (and understandable) immediate craving for survival to see the larger picture. Thus the community ought to prize the sojourners among them.
Christians ought to use this psalm not against “national enemies” (Christians transcend national boundaries) but in cases in which their persecutors seek to destroy them and all traces of their faith. They use this prayer rightly when they ask God to thwart these plans in such a way that even the persecutors might come to seek God’s name—that is, to share the believers’ faith and thus come to know that the Lord alone is the God who rules all.Psalm 83
Psalm 84