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21. Psalm 21

¹ The king rejoices in your strength, LORD.
How great is his joy in the victories you give!

    ² You have granted him his heart’s desire
   and have not withheld the request of his lips. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here.
³ You came to greet him with rich blessings
   and placed a crown of pure gold on his head.
⁴ He asked you for life, and you gave it to him—
   length of days, for ever and ever.
⁵ Through the victories you gave, his glory is great;
   you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.
⁶ Surely you have granted him unending blessings
   and made him glad with the joy of your presence.
⁷ For the king trusts in the LORD;
   through the unfailing love of the Most High
   he will not be shaken.

    ⁸ Your hand will lay hold on all your enemies;
   your right hand will seize your foes.
⁹ When you appear for battle,
   you will burn them up as in a blazing furnace.
The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath,
   and his fire will consume them.
¹⁰ You will destroy their descendants from the earth,
   their posterity from mankind.
¹¹ Though they plot evil against you
   and devise wicked schemes, they cannot succeed.
¹² You will make them turn their backs
   when you aim at them with drawn bow.

¹³ Be exalted in your strength, LORD;
we will sing and praise your might.

10. Thou shalt destroy their fruit from the earth. David amplifies the greatness of God’s wrath, from the circumstance that it shall extend even to the children of the wicked. It is a doctrine common enough in Scripture, that God not only inflicts punishment upon the first originators of wickedness, but makes it even to overflow into the bosom of their children. ⁴⁸⁸⁴⁸⁸ “Mais qu’il le fait mesme regorger au sein des enfans d’iceux.” — Fr. See Isaiah 65:6, 7. And yet when he thus pursues his vengeance to the third and fourth generation, he cannot be said indiscriminately to involve the innocent with the guilty. As the seed of the ungodly, whom he has deprived of his grace, are accursed, and as all are by nature children of wrath, devoted to everlasting destruction, he is no less just in exercising his severity towards the children than towards the fathers. Who can lay any thing to his charge, if he withhold from those who are unworthy of it the grace which he communicates to his own children? In both ways he shows how dear and precious to him is the kingdom of Christ; first, in extending his mercy to the children of the righteous even to a thousand generations; and, secondly, in causing his wrath to rest upon the reprobate, even to the third and fourth generation.