Psalms 83: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm is a prayer asking God not to stay silent while nations plot to wipe Israel out as a nation. It names ten peoples who have joined together against God and his people. The psalm asks God to defeat them the way he defeated Midian, Sisera, and Jabin long ago, and to scatter them like tumbleweed and burn them like a forest fire. It ends by asking that their shame lead them to seek God's name, so that everyone will know the LORD alone is Most High over all the earth.

Claim by Claim

1. 83:1
   • The speaker addresses God.
   • The speaker asks God not to keep silence.
   • The speaker asks God not to hold his peace.
   • The speaker asks God not to remain still.
2. 83:2
   • God's enemies are in an uproar.
   • Those who hate God have lifted up their head.
3. 83:3
   • They make crafty plans against God's people.
   • They conspire together against those God shelters.
4. 83:4
   • They said, Come, let us wipe them out from being a nation.
   • They said this so that the name of Israel would no longer be remembered.
5. 83:5
   • They have taken counsel together with one heart.
   • They have made a covenant against God.
6. 83:6
   • The tents of Edom are among them.
   • The Ishmaelites are among them.
   • Moab is among them.
   • The Hagrites are among them.
7. 83:7
   • Gebal is among them.
   • Ammon is among them.
   • Amalek is among them.
   • Philistia is among them.
   • The inhabitants of Tyre are among them.
8. 83:8
   • Assyria has also joined with them.
   • They have become an arm of strength to the children of Lot.
   • Selah.
9. 83:9
   • The speaker asks God to do to them as he did to Midian.
   • The speaker asks God to do to them as he did to Sisera and Jabin at the brook Kishon.
10. 83:10
    • They perished at Endor.
    • They became like dung on the ground.
11. 83:11
    • The speaker asks God to make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb.
    • The speaker asks God to make all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna.
12. 83:12
    • Those men said, Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God.
13. 83:13
    • The speaker calls God his God.
    • The speaker asks God to make them like a whirling thing, which is either a wheel or tumbling dry growth driven by wind.
    • The speaker asks God to make them like stubble before the wind.
14. 83:14
    • Fire burns up a forest.
    • A flame sets mountains ablaze.
15. 83:15
    • The speaker asks God to pursue them with his tempest in the same way.
    • The speaker asks God to terrify them with his storm.
16. 83:16
    • The speaker asks God to fill their faces with shame.
    • The purpose is that they may seek the LORD's name.
17. 83:17
    • The speaker asks that they be ashamed and terrified forever.
    • The speaker asks that they be put to shame and perish.
18. 83:18
    • The purpose is that they may know that God alone bears the name the LORD.
    • The purpose is that they may know that he is Most High over all the earth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

83:1

"Hold not thy peace" is old English for "do not stay silent." All three lines of this verse ask God the same thing: speak up and act.

83:2

"Make a tumult" means to roar and make an uproar. To "lift up the head" was a way of saying someone is acting proud and defiant, sure they cannot be stopped.

83:3

"Hidden ones" translates a Hebrew word meaning treasured, stored away, kept safe, the sense is of something valuable a person hides for protection, not of people who are concealed or secretive.

83:4

Israel was the name of God's people and their country. Wiping out the name meant no one would remember them.

83:5

"Confederate" is the old English term for bound together by a treaty. The picture is of separate nations formally agreeing to act as one against Israel.

83:6

"Tabernacles" here just means tents, the KJV word does not refer to the portable sanctuary of Israel, but to the dwellings of nomadic peoples. The nations listed in verses 6-8 ring Israel on every side. Edom lay to the south-east, descended from Esau, Jacob's brother. The Ishmaelites were desert tribes traced back to Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar. Moab lay east of the Dead Sea. The Hagrites (KJV "Hagarenes") were a nomadic people east of the Jordan, their name also linked to Hagar.

83:7

Gebal was probably a district south of the Dead Sea (not the Phoenician port of the same name). Ammon lay east of the Jordan, north of Moab. The Amalekites were a nomadic desert people, Israel's traditional enemies from the time of the exodus. The Philistines occupied the coastal plain to the west; Tyre was a wealthy Phoenician trading city on the coast to the north. The list spans centuries of Israel's enemies and no single historical war is known that involved all of them at once.

83:8

"Assur" is Assyria, the great empire to the north-east. "Holpen" is the old past participle of "help." The "children of Lot" are Moab and Ammon, whose ancestry is traced to Lot, Abraham's nephew (Genesis 19), so the line names two of the allies already listed by a family term. "Selah" is a term of unknown meaning found throughout the Psalms, probably a musical or performance direction, a pause, or a change in the accompaniment.

83:9

Two victories from Israel's past, both recounted in the book of Judges. Gideon routed the Midianites, a raiding desert people, with a tiny force (Judges 7). Sisera was the general of Jabin, a Canaanite king; his chariot army was destroyed at the Kishon, a river running across the Jezreel valley that floods in the rainy season and bogs down wheels (Judges 4-5).

83:10

Endor was a village near the battlefield in the Jezreel valley. To be left unburied on open ground, treated like manure spread over a field, was the most complete disgrace a defeated army could suffer in this culture.

83:11

Four Midianite leaders killed in Gideon's campaign, Oreb and Zeeb were captured chiefs (Judges 7:25), Zebah and Zalmunna the two kings Gideon pursued and executed (Judges 8).

83:12

The Hebrew word can mean either "pastures" or "dwellings," and translators divide over it, hence the KJV's "houses of God" against the modern "pasturelands." Either way the phrase means the land of Israel itself, seen as grazing ground or property belonging to God, which the invaders propose to seize.

83:13

The KJV's "wheel" translates a Hebrew word for something that whirls or rolls; it is generally taken here to mean the dried, rootless plant that the wind bowls across open ground. "Stubble" is the light chaff and broken straw left after threshing, which blows away at the first gust.

83:15

"Persecute" in 1611 English simply meant to pursue or chase after; the modern sense of systematic ill-treatment came later.

83:16

In Hebrew a person's "name" stands for who they are and what they are known to be, so seeking God's name means turning to God himself rather than looking for a word.

83:17

"Confounded" in the KJV means thrown into confusion and publicly disgraced, not merely puzzled.

83:18

The Hebrew text here carries the personal name of Israel's God, written with four consonants (YHWH) whose original pronunciation was lost because Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud instead. Combining those consonants with the vowels of the spoken substitute produced the form "Jehovah," which the KJV prints in a handful of places; elsewhere it renders the same name as "LORD" in small capitals. "Most High" (Elyon) is an ancient title for the highest god, claimed here for the God of Israel.