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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 72:9 - 72:9
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This third strophe contains prospects, the ground of which is laid down in the fourth. The position of the futures here becomes a different one. The contemplation passes from the home relations of the new government to its foreign relations, and at the same time the wishes are changed into hopes. The awe-commanding dominion of the king shall stretch even into the most distant corners of the desert. צִיִּים is used both for the animals and the men who inhabit the desert, to be determined in each instance by the context; here they are men beyond all dispute, but in Psa 74:14; Isa 23:13, it is matter of controversy whether men or beasts are meant. Since the lxx, Aquila, Symmachus, and Jerome here, and the lxx and Jerome in Psa 74:14, render Αἰθίοπες, the nomadic tribes right and left of the Arabian Gulf seem traditionally to have been associated in the mind with this word, more particularly the so-called Ichthyophagi. These shall bend the knee reverentially before him, and those who contend against him shall be compelled at last to veil their face before him in the dust. The remotest west and south become subject and tributary to him, viz., the kings of Tartessus in the south of Spain, rich in silver, and of the islands of the Mediterranean and the countries on its coasts, that is to say, the kings of the Polynesian portion of Europe, and the kings of the Cushitish or of the Joktanitish שְׁבָא and of the Cushitish סְבָא, as, according to Josephus, the chief city of Meroë was called (vid., Genesis, S. 206). It was a queen of that Joktanitish, and therefore South Arabian Sheba, - perhaps, however, more correctly (vid., Wetzstein in my Isaiah, ii. 529) of the Cushitish (Nubian) Sheba, - whom the fame of Solomon's wisdom drew towards him, 1 Kings 10. The idea of their wealth in gold and in other precious things is associated with both peoples. In the expression הֵשִׁיב מִנְחָה (to pay tribute, 2Ki 17:3, cf. Psa 3:4) the tribute is not conceived of as rendered in return for protection afforded (Maurer, Hengstenberg, and Olshausen), nor as an act repeated periodically (Rödiger, who refers to 2Ch 27:5), but as a bringing back, i.e., repayment of a debt, referre s. reddere debitum (Hupfeld), after the same idea according to which obligatory incomings are called reditus (revenues). In the synonymous expression הִקְרִיב אֶשְׁכָּר the presentation appears as an act of sacrifice. אֶשְׁכָּר signifies in Eze 27:15 a payment made in merchandise, here a rent or tribute due, from שָׂכַר, which in blending with the Aleph prostheticum has passed over into שָׂכַר by means of a shifting of the sound after the Arabic manner, just as in אֶשְׁכֹּל the verb שָׂכַל, to interweave, passes over into שָׂכַל (Rödiger in Gesenius' Thesaurus). In Psa 72:11 hope breaks through every bound: everything shall submit to his world-subduing sceptre.