Psalm 83

A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.

1 O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!

2 For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads.

Like the previous psalm, this is a prayer for God to act and intervene on Israel’s behalf in the face of injustice. It appears that God is deaf to the prayers of his people. He seems to be silent in response to their pleas. He is simply holding steady and doing nothing while his enemies are roaring. In the first couplet, the psalmist asks that God would listen and act, and in the second, he asks that God would see, “Behold, your enemies make an uproar.” The enemies of Israel are the enemies of God. Anyone who would harm his children makes God their enemy. So there is a sharp contrast between the enemies of God who are shouting and raising their heads to yell at heaven and the all-powerful God who seems to be doing nothing at all up until now. The likely time frame of this prayer is the 8-9th century BC because of the mention of Assyria, the big powerhouse during that time. The other nations were vassal states at that time and would have been seen as co-conspirators against Israel in her stand against the Assyrians. The outcome of Israel’s resistance to Assyrian domination was anything but certain. In fact, their resistance would appear to be self-defeating. Assyria had the power to wipe them off the face of the earth, yet they clung to their faith in God and his deliverance. This is one of the prayers that sustained their faith during this awful period of history. Even as they pray to a God that is silent, the very act of praying is a declaration of their faith that they are not taking on their enemies alone. They believe that God is on their side and that their enemies are his enemies. Prayer begins with pointing out the facts as you see them. Who are the enemies you are facing? They are also enemies of God. They are shouting at heaven, yelling defiantly at him. God is not deaf. He is not silent. He is patient. 

3 They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones.

4 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”

The psalmist continues to describe the precarious predicament of the nation of Israel. Enemies on all sides are crafting plans against them, consulting together to wipe them out and leave them as only names in a history book. This sounds very similar to what has happened to the modern state of Israel. Their immediate neighbors attacked in the Yom Kippur War (the fourth Arab-Israelit war) when the surrounding nations attacked them on the holiest day of the year in 1973. The survival of the Jewish state also seemed to be at stake in a similar way during the days of the psalmist. Every one of the surrounding nations were conspiring against them and plotting to divide up the spoils, expand their territory, and rid the earth of these strange people who only worshiped one god. The psalmist’s job in these verses is merely to point that out. He is simply describing what is happening, narrating the news of the day to God. This would be a good idea for prayer today as well. It’s not that God doesn’t know the news of the world, but it helps us to bring it before him, and who knows but God whether our prayers will be answered the way we’d like. I would like a strong and life-affirming American culture because I love my neighbors and wish for their flourishing. I’m a citizen of a country and it is proper to seek the good of that country. Our enemies surround us on every side, but they are not necessarily nations, they are ideas, self-destructive ideas: the right to choose abortion, the redefinition of marriage, the right to determine your own identity apart from physical reality, the right to do as you please without consequence and justify it any number of ways. Our enemies are surrounding us on every side, conspiring to wipe us out. These are not nations but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Recognize them for what they are and bring them before God in prayer. Rather than be frustrated and immobilized by the overwhelming challenges, do something first in prayer and then in practice. Who knows, God may answer the same way he has Israel in the past. The church may witness a miraculous victory in our lifetime. If so, the victory will likely be unnoticable at first but decisive in the long run.

5 For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant—

6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites,

7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;

8 Asshur also has joined them; they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah

The enemies of Israel are united in their desire to destroy her. Verse 5 says that they are of one heart, and that together they have cut a covenant against Israel. The idiom “cut a covenant” is a reminder that covenants always involved the shedding of blood. For example, animals were cut open and the participants in the covenant swore that they would keep their promise on pains of death, that they would be cut open like the animals before them if they failed to keep their bargain. This is more than just a group of people who are anti-semites. They are literally swearing to wipe them off the map. The phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend'' comes to mind.” Each of these nations is operating out of self interest. They all hate the Jews and they want their land for themselves. Do they really think that once they are successful at removing the Jewish people from the land that all of sudden they’ll share the spoils with one another in peace and harmony? That’s not how it works. The strong will win and in this case that will be Assyria ultimately. This list of Israel’s enemies is extensive and names every surrounding people group, some of them with a long history of conflict with Israel. In verse 8 the psalmist throws a slur at them all by calling them “children of Lot”. Lot’s daughters were intimate with their father and bore two children -- Moab and Ammon. Bringing up this incestuous relationship is a way of slamming them as illegitimate. The psalmist seems to suggest that Moab and Ammon are behind all of this with Assyria and others functioning as their strong arm. Whatever the case, Israel is surrounded by enemies who want to do her in for good. By naming each of them the psalmist affirms the historicity of the psalms. These prayers were not written in a vacuum. The psalmist lays out the threat in detail while also bringing to mind the long history of the nations and Israel. God wants us to be specific in our prayers. Name the enemies that have conspired against you, the sins that so often beset you, the temptations that knock you down every time. Until you get specific in identifying them and calling them what they are, you are less likely to have victory over them. See them for what they are: illegitimate, lies, selfish desires that will devour anything they can, nothing good can come of them. 

9 Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,

10 who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the ground.

11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

12 who said, “Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God.”

Having described their circumstances, the psalmist now asks God to act, and he does so by invoking two of God’s great victories from the past, both of which feature an underdog coming out on top. The first is Midian whose vast armies were defeated by a young man, Gideon, and a mere 300 men. They used their underwhelming size advantage to terrorize an army. God had something to do with it of course because it was so entirely improbable. They routed an army of ten’s of thousands by blowing trumpets, lighting torches and breaking jars, not your typical battle plan. The second is the account of Sisera, the great general, who was sheltered in the tent of Jael. While he was sleeping, she nailed him to the ground by driving a tent stake through his temple -- a mere woman overpowering and killing a mighty general in his sleep. No one saw that coming, least of all Sisera. This is the kind of victory that the psalmist prays for today -- overwhelming, surprising, and God-honoring. The victory will not be one of brute force but one in which God’s glory is on full display. It will be one that people will talk about centuries later (as in the case of Gideon and Jael). It may be a victory that requires heroic acts from faithful individuals who find themselves in the right place at the right time. These dastardly enemies sought to possess the pastures of God. The word for “pastures” can mean a “pleasant place” or “habitation”. They are seeking to take the very dwelling place of God in the midst of his people and appropriate it for themselves. Surely God won’t allow such a thing to happen (that is the implication the psalmist is making here). There are enemies that wish to own you, temptations and addictions that dog you like these super powerful enemies of Israel. They desire to control you and lead you around like an ox with a ring in its nose. Will you, weak and inconsequential as you are, step up and fight back? Like Gideon you may be young, inexperienced, and plagued with doubts. Like Jael you may be in a position that doesn’t give you opportunities to lead as you may like, doing a job that you aren’t particularly passionate about (she was probably doing all the mundane things of a housewife when Jael stumbled into her tent that day). Seize the moment that God has given you, and turn weakness into strength. Act decisively and faithfully to strike a fatal blow to the enemies in your tent who seek to possess that which rightfully belongs to God alone.  

13 O my God, make them like whirling dust, [Or like a tumbleweed] like chaff before the wind.

14 As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,

15 so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!

A dramatic end to the enemies of the nation would be nice. This stunning defeat is described in several memorable metaphors. The first is of a whirlwind, a dust devil, swirling erratically and picking up anything loose in its path. The metaphor of chaff before the wind is identified in the very first psalm as a picture of the wicked, rootless, unstable, and empty shell that is easily manipulated by the forces of this world. That holds true here as the nations who worship other gods lack the stability of God at the core of their worldview and so they are easily tossed by circumstance. If the first prayer is for disruption, the second is for consumption. Like a forest fire ascending a mountain, burning trees and underbrush in a great unstoppable conflagration, may the enemies of God fall suddenly and completely before him, never more to rise again. This imagery is similar to the metaphor of fire at the end of times as noted in 2 Peter 3, when the elements of this world will be consumed with a fervent heat, a trial by fire. All that is false will be burned away because it has no sustenance, no power to sustain life. The third and final metaphor is that of a furious storm, a tempest and a hurricane that sweeps over the burning land and douses the flames, filling the valleys with flood water from torrential rains. The effect on the enemies of God is to terrify them, to remind them once again that they are not in control. We live in the illusion that we are the captains of our own fate, that we determine our destiny, but it’s just not the case. Wind, fire, and water can destroy that fantasy in a moment leaving us stunned and silent before the one to whom we must give an account. Victims of natural disasters can attest to this, and yet the knowledge that this can happen is seldom translated into action to prepare for this to happen. Is your life ready for wind, fire, and flood? The psalmist prays that these plagues might come upon the enemies of God suddenly and completely. Yet they are reminiscent of life itself and the sudden turns of events that can strip away the worthless fantasy and reveal reality. The psalmist wants to watch these calamities come upon his enemy, but the reality is that they come upon all mankind. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. 

16 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O LORD.

17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace,

18 that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.

The purpose of God’s judgment on the enemies of Israel is for their redemption. The psalmist prays that the faces of Israel’s enemies may be filled with shame so that they may seek God’s name, that they may know without a doubt that YHWH is God. Obviously a complete humiliation of Israel’s enemies would be good for Israel, eliminating the threat of extinction, but the prayer of the psalmist hints at a greater good that would be accomplished. It is the missional thread that runs throughout the Bible. God desires for all nations to know him and worship him appropriately. If this requires initial loss and shame, then so be it. If the gods of the nations need to be shown for what they are, then so be it. Permanent disgrace is the goal, not merely as punishment, but as a clarification of reality. YHWH is God alone, uniquely and separately from all others. He is the Most High over all the earth. He is not a mere local deity, the God of Israel alone, but the sovereign ruler of the universe. This is fundamental in Old Testament theology and it stands in contrast to the gods of the nations whose reign and influence is more nationalistic. The psalmist prays for nothing less than the evangelization of the whole earth. “Evangelization” is not yet a word yet, but the idea of “good news telling” is exactly what the psalmist is referring to. Isaiah spoke of the beautiful feet of those who brought the good news that God reigns to the nations. This should be our prayer for the nations, especially as we hear of calamities that are befalling them. We need to pray redemptively that God would use the wind, fire, and flood of national disasters to reveal the false gods of the nations and bring them to the one true God. This will also require good news telling so that those whose faces are filled with shame and dismay will be able to see the God who has come to dwell with them and rescue them completely.