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7.By the east wind (194) thou breakest in pieces the ships of Tarshish Commentators are divided in their view of this passage. (195) But let us rest contented with the natural sense, which is simply this, that the enemies of the Church were overthrown and plunged into destruction, just as God by suddenly raising storms sinks the ships of Cilicia to the bottom of the sea. The Psalmist celebrates the power which God is accustomed to display in great and violent storms; and his language implies that it is not to be wondered at if God, who breaks by the violence of the winds the strongest ships, had also overthrown his enemies, who were inflated with the presumptuous confidence which they reposed in their own strength. By the sea of Tarshish the Hebrews mean the Mediterranean Sea, because of the country of Cilicia, which in ancient times was called Tarshish, as Josephus informs us, although in process of time this name came to be restricted to one city of the country. But as the chief part of the naval traffic of the Jews was with Cilicia, there is here attributed to that country by synecdoche what was common to other countries which were at a greater distance and less known.
(194) The east wind in Judea and in the Mediterranean is very tempestuous and destructive. It is also very dry and parching, as well as sudden and terrible in its action. Gen_41:6; Exo_14:21; Eze_19:12; Job_27:21; Isa_27:8; Jer_18:17; Jon_4:8. Hence the LXX. translate the original words, “ Εν πνευματι βιαίω,” “ a violent wind;” and the Chaldee reads, “ strong east wind as a fire from before the Lord.” “ a wind,” says Bishop Mant, “ well known to the modern mariner by the name of Levanter, and is of the same kind as that spoken of in the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, under the name of Euroclydon.”
(195) It is supposed by some that there is in it an implied similitude; the particle of similitude used in the preceding verse being understood. Thus French and Skinner translate the 6th and 7th verses — “ did trembling seize upon them — Pangs as of a woman in travail — As when with a stormy wind, Thou breakest in pieces the ships of Tarshish.” According to this translation, “ ships of Tarshish” do not refer to an invading army, nor “ breaking in pieces of them” to an actual storm which had this effect; but the sacred writer employs another figure, the more vividly to describe the terror which seized upon these confederate powers. He had in the preceding verse compared it with the pangs of a woman in travail; and here he compares it to the trembling which seized upon mariners when the fury of the east wind, which shattered in pieces the largest and strongest vessels, as the ships of Tarshish probably then were, was let loose upon them.