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26. A Song of Praise

¹ In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

   We have a strong city;
   God makes salvation
   its walls and ramparts.
² Open the gates
   that the righteous nation may enter,
   the nation that keeps faith.
³ You will keep in perfect peace
   those whose minds are steadfast,
   because they trust in you.
⁴ Trust in the LORD forever,
   for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal.
⁵ He humbles those who dwell on high,
   he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
   and casts it down to the dust.
⁶ Feet trample it down—
   the feet of the oppressed,
   the footsteps of the poor.

    ⁷ The path of the righteous is level;
   you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
⁸ Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, Or judgments
   we wait for you;
your name and renown
   are the desire of our hearts.
⁹ My soul yearns for you in the night;
   in the morning my spirit longs for you.
When your judgments come upon the earth,
   the people of the world learn righteousness.
¹⁰ But when grace is shown to the wicked,
   they do not learn righteousness;
even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil
   and do not regard the majesty of the LORD.
¹¹ LORD, your hand is lifted high,
   but they do not see it.
Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame;
   let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.

    ¹² LORD, you establish peace for us;
   all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
¹³ LORD our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us,
   but your name alone do we honor.
¹⁴ They are now dead, they live no more;
   their spirits do not rise.
You punished them and brought them to ruin;
   you wiped out all memory of them.
¹⁵ You have enlarged the nation, LORD;
   you have enlarged the nation.
You have gained glory for yourself;
   you have extended all the borders of the land.

    ¹⁶ LORD, they came to you in their distress;
   when you disciplined them,
   they could barely whisper a prayer. The meaning of the Hebrew for this clause is uncertain.
¹⁷ As a pregnant woman about to give birth
   writhes and cries out in her pain,
   so were we in your presence, LORD.
¹⁸ We were with child, we writhed in labor,
   but we gave birth to wind.
We have not brought salvation to the earth,
   and the people of the world have not come to life.

    ¹⁹ But your dead will live, LORD;
   their bodies will rise—
let those who dwell in the dust
   wake up and shout for joy—
your dew is like the dew of the morning;
   the earth will give birth to her dead.

    ²⁰ Go, my people, enter your rooms
   and shut the doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
   until his wrath has passed by.
²¹ See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling
   to punish the people of the earth for their sins.
The earth will disclose the blood shed on it;
   the earth will conceal its slain no longer.

15. Thou hast added to the nation. This verse is explained in various ways. Some think that the Prophet here declares that the godly are not merely oppressed by one kind of affliction, but are plunged, as it were, into the lowest misery, and that they see no end of their distresses. Others explain it simply to mean, “O Lord, thou hast bestowed on thy nation various blessings,” and think that the Prophet mentions the blessings which God bestowed on his people in various ways, as if he had said, “The people have experienced, not only in one instance, but in innumerable ways, the Lord’s kindness and bounty.”

But when I attend to what follows, Thou hast enlarged, that is, “Thou hast extended thy kingdom, which formerly was confined within narrow limits,” I choose rather to view the two statements as closely connected; for the latter clause is an interpretation of the former. Besides, it agrees well with what follows, that God is glorified; for we know that in nothing does the glory of God shine more conspicuously than in the increase of the Church. It is as if he had said, “Thou hadst formerly a small people, but thou hast multiplied and increased it;” for the Gentiles were admitted and joined to the Jews on condition that they should be united into one people. Thus the Lord added a vast multitude, for the children of Abraham were called out of all nations.

We must therefore supply, not “Thou hast added blessings,” but “Thou hast added a greater number;” and the meaning is, “O Lord, thou wast not satisfied with that small number, and hast gathered for thyself out of all nations an innumerable people.” This relates to the kingdom of Christ, which has been spread through the whole world by the preaching of the gospel; and in this passage the Prophet speaks highly of this wide extension, and expresses it by the phrase, Thou hast enlarged. This mode of expression is not at variance with the ordinary way of speaking, when an enlargement of a kingdom or of territories is expressed. And yet the Prophet does not mean that the land was enlarged, but that, by spreading the worship of God on all sides, mutual intercourse produced larger space and greater freedom of habitation; for contentions had the effect of narrowing it. ¹⁷⁸¹⁷⁸ {Bogus footnote} We have here a promise of the calling of the Gentiles, which must have greatly comforted godly men during that banishment and miserable dispersion of the Church, so that, although they saw it to be amazingly weakened and diminished, still they were convinced that it would be increased in such a manner that not only would they become innumerable, but foreign and distant nations would be added to them.