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144. Psalm 144

¹ Praise be to the LORD my Rock,
   who trains my hands for war,
   my fingers for battle.
² He is my loving God and my fortress,
   my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield, in whom I take refuge,
   who subdues peoples Many manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Aquila, Jerome and Syriac; most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text subdues my people under me.

    ³ LORD, what are human beings that you care for them,
   mere mortals that you think of them?
⁴ They are like a breath;
   their days are like a fleeting shadow.

    ⁵ Part your heavens, LORD, and come down;
   touch the mountains, so that they smoke.
⁶ Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy;
   shoot your arrows and rout them.
⁷ Reach down your hand from on high;
   deliver me and rescue me
from the mighty waters,
   from the hands of foreigners
⁸ whose mouths are full of lies,
   whose right hands are deceitful.

    ⁹ I will sing a new song to you, my God;
   on the ten-stringed lyre I will make music to you,
¹⁰ to the One who gives victory to kings,
   who delivers his servant David.

   From the deadly sword ¹¹ deliver me;
   rescue me from the hands of foreigners
whose mouths are full of lies,
   whose right hands are deceitful.

    ¹² Then our sons in their youth
   will be like well-nurtured plants,
and our daughters will be like pillars
   carved to adorn a palace.
¹³ Our barns will be filled
   with every kind of provision.
Our sheep will increase by thousands,
   by tens of thousands in our fields;
    ¹⁴ our oxen will draw heavy loads. Or our chieftains will be firmly established
There will be no breaching of walls,
   no going into captivity,
   no cry of distress in our streets.
¹⁵ Blessed is the people of whom this is true;
   blessed is the people whose God is the LORD.

5. O Jehovah! bow thy heavens. After extolling, as was due, the great goodness of God, he requests him to furnish such help for the preservation of the kingdom as was necessary in the present exigency. As formerly we saw that he had gloried in God with a heroical courage, so here he makes use of the same lofty terms in his prayers, That he would bow the heavens — that he would make the mountains to smoke — disturb the air with thunderings — and shoot forth arrows; forms of speech by which, doubtless, he would put away from him all the obstacles which stand between us and a believing apprehension of the omnipotence of God, and from which we find it so difficult to emerge. He employs almost the same phraseology in the eighteenth Psalm, but it is in praising God for help already extended, and to signify that he had been preserved from above in a wonderful and unusual manner. For although such signs as he mentions might not always occur when God interposed in his behalf, he had good ground to celebrate what had happened to him of an unexpected kind, by reference to extraordinary phenomena. In the passage before us his purpose is different. Threatened by destruction of various kinds, which might overwhelm his mind with despair, he would realize the wonderful power of God, before which all obstacles of a worldly kind must necessarily give way. We may be certain at least that he indulged in this figurative phraseology for a good reason, that he might not confine deliverance to human remedies; for nothing could be more preposterous at such a time than to measure divine power by ordinary rules.