Biblion Bible Commentary
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Let God Arise
Psalms 68:1-18
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. A song. Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered! Let them who hate him also flee before him. · WEB
A procession psalm that starts with the words spoken when the ark moved, and pauses to say who God is at home.
Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered! Psalms 68:1.
The opening is quoted from the wilderness. These are the exact words Moses said whenever the ark set out ahead of the marching camp Numbers 10:35, and the psalm uses them to begin a procession — probably the ark being carried up to the sanctuary.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melts before the fire Psalms 68:2. Two images of something that cannot hold its shape in the presence of what is coming.
A father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, is God in his holy habitation Psalms 68:5.
The most important verse in the first half, and its placement is the argument. Two lines after scattering enemies and riding on the clouds, the psalm says what God is like in his own house — and what he is like at home is a father to children who have none and a lawyer for women with no standing.
God sets the lonely in families. He brings out the prisoners with singing Psalms 68:6.
The two things named as characteristic acts are ending isolation and opening prisons. Neither is a military achievement, and both are placed inside a psalm otherwise full of armies.
But the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land Psalms 68:6. The contrast is not punishment inflicted but a place lived in — dryness as the natural habitat of refusal.
God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness... The earth trembled. The sky also poured down rain at the presence of the God of Sinai Psalms 68:7–8.
The history is compressed into a march, and the rain is the point: this God's arrival is announced by the thing a dry country most needs. You, God, sent a plentiful rain. You confirmed your inheritance when it was weary Psalms 68:9.
The Lord announced the word. The ones who proclaim it are a great company Psalms 68:11.
The Hebrew is feminine — the great company of proclaimers are women, which fits the scene that follows of she who waits at home dividing the plunder Psalms 68:12, and matches Miriam and the women singing after the sea Exodus 15:20.
Why do you look in envy, you rugged mountains, at the mountain where God chooses to reign? Psalms 68:16.
The mountains of Bashan in the north are genuinely higher and more impressive than Zion, and the psalm has them looking on jealously at a modest hill God picked instead. Choice rather than qualification, which is the collection's consistent account of election.
You have ascended on high. You have led away captives. You have received gifts among people Psalms 68:18.
Paul quotes this verse of Christ's ascension and changes one word — he gave gifts to men Ephesians 4:8 — reading the tribute a victor receives as something immediately distributed. What a conqueror takes, this one hands out.
held with reason What this mark means