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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 46:4 - 46:4
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(Heb.: 46:5-8) Just as, according to Gen 2:10, a stream issued from Eden, to water the whole garden, so a stream makes Jerusalem as it were into another paradise: a river - whose streams make glad the city of Elohim (Psa 87:3; Psa 48:9, cf. Psa 101:8); פְּלָגָיו (used of the windings and branches of the main-stream) is a second permutative subject (Psa 44:3). What is intended is the river of grace, which is also likened to a river of paradise in Psa 36:9. When the city of God is threatened and encompassed by foes, still she shall not hunger and thirst, nor fear and despair; for the river of grace and of her ordinances and promises flows with its rippling waves through the holy place, where the dwelling-place or tabernacle of the Most High is pitched. קְדֹשׁ, Sanctum (cf. el-Ḳuds as a name of Jerusalem), as in Psa 65:5, Isa 57:15; גְּדֹל, Exo 15:16. מִשְׁכְּנֵי, dwellings, like מִשְׁכְּנֹות, Psa 43:3; Psa 84:2; Psa 132:5, Psa 132:7, equivalent to “a glorious dwelling.” In Psa 46:6 in the place of the river we find Him from whom the river issues forth. Elohim helps her לִפְנֹותבֹּקֶר - there is only a night of trouble, the return of the morning is also the sunrise of speedy help. The preterites in Psa 46:7 are hypothetical: if peoples and kingdoms become enraged with enmity and totter, so that the church is in danger of being involved in this overthrow - all that God need to is to make a rumbling with His almighty voice of thunder (נָתַן בְּקֹולֹו, as in Psa 68:34; Jer 12:8, cf. הֵרִים בַּמַּטֶּה, to make a lifting with the rod, Exo 7:20), and forthwith the earth melts (muwg, as in Amo 9:5, Niph. Isa 14:31, and frequently), i.e., their titanic defiance becomes cowardice, the bonds of their confederation slacken, and the strength they have put forth is destroyed - it is manifest that Jahve Tsebaoth is with His people. This name of God is, so to speak, indigenous to the Korahitic Psalms, for it is the proper name of God belonging to the time of the kings (vid., on Psa 24:10; Psa 59:6), on the very verge of which it occurs first of all in the mouth of Hannah (1Sa 1:11), and the Korahitic Psalms have a royal impress upon them. In the God, at whose summons all created powers are obliged to marshal themselves like the hosts of war, Israel has a steep stronghold, מִשְׂגָּב, which cannot be scaled by any foe - the army of the confederate peoples and kingdoms, ere it has reached Jerusalem, is become a field of the dead.