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68. Psalm 68

¹ May God arise, may his enemies be scattered;
   may his foes flee before him.
² May you blow them away like smoke—
   as wax melts before the fire,
   may the wicked perish before God.
³ But may the righteous be glad
   and rejoice before God;
   may they be happy and joyful.

    ⁴ Sing to God, sing in praise of his name,
   extol him who rides on the clouds Or name, / prepare the way for him who rides through the deserts;
   rejoice before him—his name is the LORD.
⁵ A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
   is God in his holy dwelling.
⁶ God sets the lonely in families, Or the desolate in a homeland
   he leads out the prisoners with singing;
   but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

    ⁷ When you, God, went out before your people,
   when you marched through the wilderness, The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and at the end of verses 19 and 32.
⁸ the earth shook, the heavens poured down rain,
   before God, the One of Sinai,
   before God, the God of Israel.
⁹ You gave abundant showers, O God;
   you refreshed your weary inheritance.
¹⁰ Your people settled in it,
   and from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.

    ¹¹ The Lord announces the word,
   and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng:
¹² “Kings and armies flee in haste;
   the women at home divide the plunder.
¹³ Even while you sleep among the sheep pens, Or the campfires; or the saddlebags
   the wings of my dove are sheathed with silver,
   its feathers with shining gold.”
¹⁴ When the Almighty Hebrew Shaddai scattered the kings in the land,
   it was like snow fallen on Mount Zalmon.

    ¹⁵ Mount Bashan, majestic mountain,
   Mount Bashan, rugged mountain,
¹⁶ why gaze in envy, you rugged mountain,
   at the mountain where God chooses to reign,
   where the LORD himself will dwell forever?
¹⁷ The chariots of God are tens of thousands
   and thousands of thousands;
   the Lord has come from Sinai into his sanctuary. Probable reading of the original Hebrew text; Masoretic Text Lord is among them at Sinai in holiness
¹⁸ When you ascended on high,
   you took many captives;
   you received gifts from people,
even from Or gifts for people, / even the rebellious—
   that you, Or they LORD God, might dwell there.

    ¹⁹ Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
   who daily bears our burdens.
²⁰ Our God is a God who saves;
   from the Sovereign LORD comes escape from death.
²¹ Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies,
   the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins.
²² The Lord says, “I will bring them from Bashan;
   I will bring them from the depths of the sea,
²³ that your feet may wade in the blood of your foes,
   while the tongues of your dogs have their share.”

    ²⁴ Your procession, God, has come into view,
   the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
²⁵ In front are the singers, after them the musicians;
   with them are the young women playing the timbrels.
²⁶ Praise God in the great congregation;
   praise the LORD in the assembly of Israel.
²⁷ There is the little tribe of Benjamin, leading them,
   there the great throng of Judah’s princes,
   and there the princes of Zebulun and of Naphtali.

    ²⁸ Summon your power, God Many Hebrew manuscripts, Septuagint and Syriac; most Hebrew manuscripts Your God has summoned power for you;
   show us your strength, our God, as you have done before.
²⁹ Because of your temple at Jerusalem
   kings will bring you gifts.
³⁰ Rebuke the beast among the reeds,
   the herd of bulls among the calves of the nations.
Humbled, may the beast bring bars of silver.
   Scatter the nations who delight in war.
³¹ Envoys will come from Egypt;
   Cush That is, the upper Nile region will submit herself to God.

    ³² Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth,
   sing praise to the Lord,
³³ to him who rides across the highest heavens, the ancient heavens,
   who thunders with mighty voice.
³⁴ Proclaim the power of God,
   whose majesty is over Israel,
   whose power is in the heavens.
³⁵ You, God, are awesome in your sanctuary;
   the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.

Praise be to God!

14. When the Almighty scattered kings in it We might read extended, or divided kings, etc., and then the allusion would be to his leading them in triumph. But the other reading is preferable, and corresponds better with what was said above of their being put to flight. There is more difficulty in the second part of the verse, some reading, it was white in Salmon; that is, the Church of God presented a fair and beautiful appearance. Or the verb may be viewed as in the second person — Thou, O God! Didst make it fair and white as mount Salmon ²⁶²⁶     Salmon is the name of a mountain in Samaria, in the tribe of Ephraim, (Judges 9:48,) white with perpetual snow. with snows The reader may adopt either construction, for the meaning is the same. It is evident that David insists still upon the figure of the whiteness of silver, which he had previously introduced. The country had, as it were, been blackened or sullied by the hostile confusions into which it was thrown, and he says that it had now recovered its fair appearance, and resembled Salmon, which is well known to have been ordinarily covered with snows. ²⁷²⁷     Carrieres, in his paraphrase, has, “You became white as snow on mount Salmon.” “We certainly think,” says the author of the Illustrated Commentary upon the Bible, “that Carrieres has seized the right idea. The intention evidently is, to describe by a figure the honor and prosperity the Hebrews acquired by the defeat of their enemies, and to express this by whiteness, and superlatively by the whiteness of snow. Nothing can be more usual in Persia, for instance, than for a person to say, under an influx of prosperity or honor, or on receiving happy intelligence, ‘My face is made white;’ or gratefully, in return for a favor or compliment, ‘You have made my face white;’ so also, ‘His face is whitened,’ expresses the sense which is entertained of the happiness or favor which has before been received. Such a figurative use of the idea of whiteness does, we imagine, furnish the best explanation of the present and some other texts of Scripture.” Others think that Salmon is not the name of a place, but an appellative, meaning a dark shade. ²⁸²⁸     Instead of “in Salmon,” the Targum has, “in the shade of death;” and Boothroyd has,
   “The Almighty having scattered these kings,
hath by this turned death-shade to splendor.”
   Walford gives a similar version, and explains the meaning to be, “Though you have been in bondage and the darkness of a dejected condition, you are now illuminated with the splendor of victory and prosperity.” I would retain the commonly received reading. At the same time, I think that there may have been an allusion to the etymology. It comes from the word צלם, tselem, signifying a shade, and mount Salmon had been so called on account of its blackness. ²⁹²⁹     That is, it was so called from the dark shade produced by its trees. This makes the comparison more striking; for it intimates, that as the snows whitened this black mountain, so the country had resumed its former beauty, and put on an aspect of joy, when God dispelled the darkness which had lain upon it during the oppression of enemies. ³⁰³⁰     “Que comme les neiges font blanchir ceste montagne, laquelle de soy est obscure et noire, ainsi quand il a pleu a Dieu d’oster l’obscurite qu’apportoit l’affliction des ennemis, lors on a veu la terre reluire d’un lustre naif, et par maniere de dire, porter une face joyeuse.” — Fr.