Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Psalms 68:17 - 68:17
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The chariots of God, i.e. the hosts or armies (whereof chariots were a great and eminent part in those times and places) which attend upon God to do his pleasure, and to fight for him and for his people.
Twenty thousand, i.e. an innumerable company; a certain number being put for an uncertain, as Psa_3:6 91:7, and in many other places.
The Lord is among them; here is not only the presence of the angels, but of the great and blessed God himself. And here the psalmist seems to be transported by the prophetical spirit, from the narration of those external successes and victories of which he had been speaking in the former part of the Psalm, unto the prediction of higher and more glorious things, even of the coming of the Messiah, and of the happy and transcendent privileges and blessings accruing to mankind by it, described in the next verse. And the connexion of this new matter with the former is sufficiently evident. For having preferred Zion before other hills, Psa_68:15,16, he now proves its excellency by an invincible argument, because this is the place to which the Lord of hosts himself, the Messiah, God manifested in the flesh, was to come, as is manifest from Psa_2:6 90:2 Isa_2:3 28:16, compared with 1Pe_2:6 Isa_59:20, compared with Rom_11:26, and many other places of Scripture. And when he did come into the world, he was attended with a multitude of holy angels, which celebrated his birth, Luk_2:13,14.
As in Sinai, in the holy place; God is no less gloriously, though less terribly, present here than he was in Sinai, when the great God, attended with thousands of his angels, solemnly appeared there to deliver the law. Heb. Sinai is in the sanctuary, or holy place; which is a poetical and a very emphatical expression, and very pertinent to this place. For having advanced Zion above all other hills, he now equals it to that venerable hill of Sinai, which the Divine Majesty honoured with his glorious presence. Here, saith he, you have in some sort Mount Sinai itself, to wit, all the glories and privileges of it, the presence of Jehovah attended with his angels, and the same law and covenant, yea, and a greater privilege than Sinai had, to wit, the Lord Jehovah descending from heaven into a human body, as appears by his ascending thither again, which the next verse describes, and visibly coming into his own temple, as it was prophesied concerning him, Mal_3:1.