Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 66:8 - 66:8

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 66:8 - 66:8


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The character of the event by which the truth has been verified that the God who redeemed Israel out of Egypt still ever possesses and exercises to the full His ancient sovereign power, is seen from this reiterated call to the peoples to share in Israel's Gloria. God has averted the peril of death and overthrow from His people: He has put their soul in life (בַּחַיִּים, like בְּיֵשַׁע in Psa 12:6), i.e., in the realm of life; He has not abandoned their foot to tottering unto overthrow (mowT the substantive, as in Psa 121:3; cf. the reversed construction in Psa 55:23). For God has cast His people as it were into a smelting-furnace or fining-pot in order to purify and to prove them by suffering; - this is a favourite figure with Isaiah and Jeremiah, but is also found in Zec 13:9; Mal 3:3. Eze 19:9 is decisive concerning the meaning of מְצוּדָה, where הביא במצודות signifies “to bring into the holds or prisons;” besides, the figure of the fowling-net (although this is also called מְצוּדָה as well as מְצֹודָה) has no footing here in the context. מְצוּדָה (vid., Psa 18:3) signifies specula, and that both a natural and an artificial watch-post on a mountain; here it is the mountain-hold or prison of the enemy, as a figure of the total loss of freedom. The laying on of a heavy burden mentioned by the side of it in Psa 66:11 also accords well with this. מוּעָקָה, a being oppressed, the pressure of a burden, is a Hophal formation, like מֻטָּה, a being spread out, Isa 8:8; cf. the similar masculine forms in Psa 69:3; Isa 8:13; Isa 14:6; Isa 29:3. The loins are mentioned because when carrying heavy loads, which one has to stoop down in order to take up, the lower spinal region is called into exercise. אֱנֹושׁ is frequently (Psa 9:20., Psa 10:18; Psa 56:2, Isa 51:12; 2Ch 14:10) the word used for tyrants as being wretched mortals, perishable creatures, in contrast with their all the more revolting, imperious, and self-deified demeanour. God so ordered it, that “wretched men” rode upon Israel's head. Or is it to be interpreted: He caused them to pass over Israel (cf. Psa 129:3; Isa 51:23)? It can scarcely mean this, since it would then be in dorso nostro, which the Latin versions capriciously substitute. The preposition לְ instead of עַל is used with reference to the phrase יָשַׁב לְ: sitting upon Israel's head, God caused them to ride along, so that Israel was not able to raise its head freely, but was most ignominiously wounded in its self-esteem. Fire and water are, as in Isa 43:2, a figure of vicissitudes and perils of the most extreme character. Israel was nigh to being burnt up and drowned, but God led it forth לָֽרְוָיָה, to an abundant fulness, to abundance and superabundance of prosperity. The lxx, which renders εἰς ἀναψυχήν (Jerome absolutely: in refrigerium), has read לָֽרְוָחָה; Symmachus, εἰς εὐρυχωρίαν, probably reading לָֽרְחָבָה (Psa 119:45; Psa 18:20). Both give a stronger antithesis. But the state of straitness or oppression was indeed also a state of privation.