Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Kelly Major Works Commentary - Psalms 68:1 - 68:35
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
This also is "To the chief musician, of David, a psalm, a song." Here, where things are out of course God is counted on; and this by the intervention in heavenly power of Him whose rejection was the fullest evidence of the state of the Jews as well as of man. But He Who had obeyed to the cross, and thus glorified God to the uttermost, was exalted in the place of indisputable power and glory. He would thence make good the choice of Zion as His earthly dwelling and centre, the deliverance and blessing of Israel, once and alas! still "rebellious," the overthrow of every enemy, even of such as led all captive, to the joy and well-being of all the earth. It is "the regeneration" in prospect.
The psalm fittingly, as regards those we have seen, and splendidly sets forth the glory in which the rejected Christ makes good the purposes of God with His people and Zion as the earthly centre, but from above; and hence appropriately cited by the apostle in Eph. 4. There is also an allusion to Num_10:35, full of interest, but with a notable difference. Moses before Israel in the wilderness said, Rise up, Jehovah, and let Thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee. Here it is Elohim. Each is precisely right, and Elohim as little in keeping for Moses as Jehovah for the psalm, which has Elohim throughout, as the expression of faith for a day of confusion when covenant was not enjoyed, anticipating God's intervention in Christ from on high after He had suffered to the uttermost. Indeed the psalm abounds in divine titles, as Jah, Adonai, El, Shaddai; but the staple unequivocally is Elohim; and Jehovah is only used for His dwelling on Zion when power and grace meet for His people blessed evermore under Messiah and the new covenant. Sheer spiritual ignorance invented the will-o'-the wisp of Elohistic and Jehovistic documents: evidently inapplicable here, really everywhere, in no case giving a key to the mind of God as the truth does.