A Prayer for Help against the Enemies of the Church
A song or psalm of Asaph, the last of his twelve hymns in the psalter, picturing the craft and rage of the enemies and invoking God’s speedy destruction upon them.
V. 1. Keep not Thou silence, content with resting, with being an idle spectator, O God; hold not Thy peace and be not still, O God, that is, inactive while such great dangers were threatening.
V. 2. For, lo, Thine enemies (the enemies of the Church are God’s enemies) make a tumult; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head, in haughty pride and arrogance.
V. 3. They have taken crafty counsel, laying their plans in secret and with guile, against Thy people, primarily Israel, but as typical of the spiritual Israel, and consulted against Thy hidden ones, the number of true believers always being so small, by comparison, that they disappear in the great mass of humanity, while, nevertheless. God protects them.
V. 4. They have said, Come and let us cut them off from being a nation, exterminating them from among the nations, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance, the annihilation, as planned by them, being so complete that the very name of God’s people would be forgotten in history.
V. 5. For they have consulted together with one consent, their hearts and minds all being of the same opinion and purpose; they are confederate against Thee, their covenant against Israel being in reality a covenant against the God of Israel; v. 6. the tabernacles of Edom, that is, all the nomadic tribes belonging to this nation, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab and the Hagarenes, who roamed from the Persian Gulf to the desert country east of Gilead; v. 7. Gebal, the northern part of the mountains of Seir and therefore pertaining to Edom, and Ammon, Israel’s ancient enemy east of Gilead, and Amalek, the last remnants of the desert tribe living within the territory of Edom or in remote parts of the Desert of Paran; the Philistines, on the Mediterranean, toward the southwest, with the inhabitants of Tyre, the Phenician nation; v. 8. Assur also is joined with them, the great kingdom of Assyria, which at that time had not yet reached the summit of its power; they have holpen the children of Lot, entered into an alliance with the Moabites and the Ammonites. Selah.
Practically all the heathen nations surrounding Canaan were directly or indirectly interested in this plan of annihilating Israel, even as enemies of every description nowadays unite when the object of the confederacy is to fight the true Church.