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PSALM 83

A Song or Psalm of Asaph.

1. Keep not you silence, O god; hold not your peace, and be not still, O god!
2. For lo, your enemies make a tumult; and they that hate you lift up the head.
3. They take crafty counsel against your people, and consult against your hidden ones.
4. They say, come, let us cut them off, that they be no more a nation; and that the name of Israel be no more remembered.
5. For they consult together with one heart; they make a covenant against you;
6. Even the tents of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;
7. Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines, with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8. Ashur also is joined with them; they have become an arm to the sons of Lot. Selah.
9. Do you to them as to the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kishon:
10. Who perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.
11. Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and Zalmunna:
12. Who said, let us take to ourselves the dwellings of god in possession.
13. O my god, make them like a whirl; like the stubble before the wind.
14. As the fire burns the wood, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire,
15. So persecute them with your tempest, and terrify them with your storm.
16. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O jehovah.
17. Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish.
18. That they may know that you, whose name alone is jehovah, are the Most High over all the earth.

Verse 1. Keep not you silence, O god; hold not your peace, and be not still, O god. So long as temptation continues, man supposes that the lord is absent, because he is disturbed by evil genii, and that to such a degree, as sometimes to be reduced to a state of despair, in which he can scarcely believe that any god exists; nevertheless the lord is more present at such times than is to him credible or conceivable, but when temptation ceases then he receives comfort, and then he first believes that the lord is present. AC 840.

Verses 3, 4. They take crafty counsel against your people; and consult against your hidden ones: they say, come, let us cut them off, that they be no more a nation; and that the name of Israel be no more remembered. The things of memory are as dead things, unless man live according to the dictates thereof from a principle of conscience; when this is the case, then the things of memory become at the same time the things of life, and then only they are of use and salvation to the possessor after the life of the body. This is evident from what is here said concerning taking crafty counsel against your people. AC 1197.

To consult over the hidden ones, to cut them off from a nation, that the name of Israel be no more remembered, is altogether to reject and spit out things interior. AC 2468.

Verse 9. As to Sisera. That by Sisera is signified the false of evil, may be seen from the book of Judges, where he is mentioned: "From Machir shall the legislators descend, and from Zebulon they that draw the sceptre of the scribe: Zebulon was a people that devoted the soul to die, and Naphtali was upon the heights of the field: the kings came, they fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach near the waters of Megiddo; they took not any gain of silver; the stars fought from heaven, from their courses they fought with Sisera," Judges 5:14, 18, 19, 20. The subject treated of in this prophecy is concerning the combat of truth from good against the false from evil; by the king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, and by Sisera the prince of his army, who fought against Barak and Deborah, is signified the false of evil, and by Barak and Deborah, the truth of good; and inasmuch as the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulon signified combat from the truth which is from good, the tribe of Naphtali, combat, and the tribe of Zebulon, the conjunction of good and truth, therefore these two tribes only were taken to fight, and not the rest, see Judges 4:6. That this combat was significative of such things, may appear from the prophecy pronounced by Deborah and Barak, which in the spiritual sense treats of the victory of truth from good over the false from evil, and of the purification and reformation of the church; here therefore from Machir shall descend the legislators, signifies that the truths of good shall flow from the good of life, for Machir signifies the same as Manasseh, inasmuch as he was the son of Manasseh, Gen. 1. 23; Josh 13:31; and legislators signify those who are in the truths of good, and abstractedly, the truth of good; and from Zebulon them that draw the sceptre of the scribe, signifies intelligence from the conjunction of truth and good, Zebulon signifying here, as above, the conjunction of truth and good, and the sceptre of the scribe, intelligence. Zebulon was a people that devoted the soul to die, and Naphtali was upon the heights of the field, signifies combat by truths in the natural man, which are from the spiritual man, and its influx and conjunction, the heights of the field signifying the interior things belonging to the spiritual man, from which the natural man combats; the kings came, they fought, then fought the kings of Canaan, signifies the falses of evil, against which is combat; in Taanach near the waters of Megiddo, signifies those falses and their quality; they took not any gain of silver, signifies that they took and carried away nothing of truth from good, silver denoting truth from good; they fought from heaven, the stars from their courses fought with Sisera, signifies combat by the knowledges of truth and good, which are through heaven from the lord, stars denoting such knowledges, and ways or courses denoting truths. AE 447.

Verse 15, So persecute them with your tempest, and terrify them with your storm. By tempest and storm, in this passage, is signified the dispersion of falses and evils, because they who are in the falses of evil are cast down into hell by a stormy wind. AE 419.

Verse 18. Whose name alone is jehovah. For the signification of the name of jehovah. See Psalm 79:9. Exposition.