Salmi 94:8 Commento

This psalm was penned when the church of God was under hatches, oppressed and persecuted; and it is an appeal to God, as the judge of heaven and earth, and an address to him, to appear for his people against his and their enemies. Two things this psalm speaks: - I. Conviction and terror to the persecutors (Psa 94:1-11), showing them their danger and folly, and arguing with them. II. Comfort and peace to the persecuted (Psa 94:12-23), assuring them, both from God's promise and from the psalmist's own experience, that their troubles would end well, and God would, in due time, appear to their joy and the confusion of those who set themselves against them. In singing this psalm we must look abroad upon the pride of oppressors with a holy indignation, and the tears of the oppressed with a holy compassion; but, at the same time, look upwards to the righteous Judge with an entire satisfaction, and look forward, to the end of all these things, with a pleasing hope.

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 94 Some, as Jarchi and others, think this psalm was written by Moses; others, with greater probability, assign it to David; as do the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and all the Oriental versions; and which all but the Syriac version say it was composed to be sung on the fourth day of the week, on which day the Talmudists say it was sung; see the argument of the preceding psalm. This psalm and others, that go before and follow, are without any title in the Hebrew Bible: the title of it in the Syriac version is, "a Psalm of David, concerning the company of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; but spiritually, concerning the persecution against the church;'' not of the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, as some; nor of the Jews in their present exile, as Kimchi; but rather of the people of God under the tyranny of antichrist; who are represented as complaining of his insults and cruelty, and as comforting themselves in the hopes of deliverance, and in the view of his destruction.

Understand, ye brutish among the people,.... Or the most brutish and stupid of all people; especially that profess themselves to be the people of God, or Christians, as the Papists do; and who seem to be the persons here addressed: "brutish"; to murder the servants of the Lord, and drink their blood, till inebriated with it; stupid to the last degree to think that hereby they did God good service: hence the pope, the head of them, is represented both in his secular and ecclesiastical power by two beasts; the one rising out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns, a monster in nature, most like a leopard, his feet as a bear's, and his mouth as a lion's, having the fierceness and cruelty of them all; and the other coming out of the earth with two horns like a lamb, but spake like a dragon, Rev 13:1, the exhortation to these brutish creatures supposes them to be without understanding, like the beasts by whom they are represented; or, however, that they did not make use of those intellectual powers which God had given them; had they, they would have learned more humanity to their fellow creatures, and more religion towards God; they would have known more of him than to have said and done what is before declared; wherefore they are called upon to "consider" (so the word (b) is sometimes rendered, Psa 50:22) the reasonings about it to be laid before them: and ye fools, when will ye be wise? "fools" they are to worship stocks and stones, the images of the Virgin Mary, and other saints; to give into the gross atheism they do; to disbelieve the omniscience of God and his providence, at least to behave as though they did; and think to do the vilest actions with impunity; wherefore it would be their wisdom to relinquish such stupid notions, and do no more such foolish and wicked actions. (b) "animadvertite", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

What is the topmost pinnacle of the building we are striving to construct? How far does the top of our edifice reach? I'll tell you straightaway: as far as the sight of God. You can see how high that is, what a great thing it is, to see God. Any of you who long for this will understand what I am saying and you are hearing. We have been promised the sight of God, of the true God, of the supreme God. This really is a wonderful thing, to see the one who sees.I mean, those who worship false gods can easily see them, but they see gods who have eyes and do not see. But we have been promised the vision of the God who lives and sees, and so the God we should be yearning to see is the one of whom Scripture says, "Will he who planted the ear not hear? Does he who fashioned the eye not observe?" So does the one who made you something to hear with not hear himself? And does he not see, the one who created the means for you to see with? In this psalm [the psalmist] very neatly prefaces those words with these: "Understand, therefore, you who are unwise among the people; and you fools, come sooner or later to your senses." You see, this is why many people do wrong, imagining that they are not noticed by God. It is difficult, of course, for them to believe he cannot see, but they assume he does not want to. You won't find many people so totally irreligious that they fulfill the text, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God." Few hold this crazy idea. Just as there aren't many people who are deeply religious, so there aren't many who are totally irreligious. But what I am going to say now is what the crowd says: "Look, do you really think God takes trouble to know what I do in my house, that God cares two cents what I choose to do in my bed?" Well, who is it that says, "Understand, you who are unwise among the people; and you fools, come sooner or later to your senses"? Being a mere human, it takes you quite a lot of trouble to know everything that goes on in your house and to insure that what your slaves say and do gets back to you; but do you imagine it is any trouble like that for God to pay attention to you, seeing that it was no trouble at all for him to create you? Having made your eyes, will he not turn his own on to you? You did not exist, and he created you, to bring you into being. Now that you do exist, will he not care for you, he that summons the things that are not, as though they were?

"Take heed now, you that are unwise among the people: O you fools, some time understand!" [Psalm 94:8]. He teaches His people whose feet might slip: any one among them sees the prosperity of the wicked, himself living well among the Saints of God, that is, among the number of the sons of the Church: he sees that the wicked flourish, and work iniquity, he envies, and is led to follow them in their actions; because he sees that apparently it profits him nothing that he lives well in humility, hoping for his reward here. For if he hopes for it in future, he loses it not; because the time is not yet come for him to receive it. You are working in a vineyard: execute your task, and you shall receive your pay. You would not exact it from your employer, before your work was finished, and yet do you exact it from God before thou dost work? This patience is part of your work, and your pay depends upon your work: thou who dost not choose to be patient, choosest to work less upon the vineyard: since this act of patience belongs to your labouring itself, which is to gain your pay. But if you are treacherous, take care, lest you should not only not receive your pay, but also suffer punishment, because you have chosen to be a treacherous labourer. When such a labourer begins to do ill, he watches his employer's eyes, who hired him for his vineyard, that he may loiter when his eye is turned away; but the moment his eyes are turned towards him, he works diligently. But God, who hired you, averts not His eyes: you can not work treacherously: the eyes of your Master are ever upon you: seek an opportunity to deceive Him, and loiter if you can. If then any of you had any such ideas, when you saw the wicked flourishing, and if such thoughts caused your feet to slip in the path of God; to you this Psalm speaks: but if perchance none of you be such, through you it does address others, in these words, "Take heed now;" since they had said, "The Lord shall not see: neither shall the God of Jacob regard it." "Take heed," it says, "now, you that are unwise among the people: and you fools, some time understand!"

Take care, then, to avoid what the great apostle sets forth so fearfully, and when you feel that you do not understand, make an immediate act of faith in what is divinely revealed, that there is both free will in humans and grace from God; and pray that what you religiously believe you may also wisely understand. Indeed, it is for this very reason that we have free will that we may wisely understand, for, unless our understanding and wisdom were regulated by free will, we should not be commanded in the words of Scripture: "Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools be wise at last." The very fact, then, that we are instructed and commanded to understand and be wise is proof of a demand on our obedience, which cannot exist without free will. But, if it were possible for this to be accomplished by free will without the grace of God, namely, that we should understand and be wise, we should not have to say to God, "Give me understanding that I may know your commandments"; nor would it be written in the Gospel, "Then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures"; nor would the apostle James have said, "But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all people abundantly and upbraids not: and it will be given to him."

David (Heb 4:7) exhorts men to praise God for His greatness, and warns them, in God's words, against neglecting His service. (Psa 95:1-11) The terms used to express the highest kind of joy. rock--a firm basis, giving certainty of salvation (Psa 62:7).

ye brutish--(Compare Psa 73:22; Psa 92:6).

The third strophe now turns from those bloodthirsty, blasphemous oppressors of the people of God whose conduct calls forth the vengeance of Jahve, to those among the people themselves, who have been puzzled about the omniscience and indirectly about the righteousness of God by the fact that this vengeance is delayed. They are called בערים and כסילים in the sense of Psa 73:21. Those hitherto described against whom God's vengeance is supplicated are this also; but this appellation would be too one-sided for them, and בּעם refers the address expressly to a class of men among the people whom those oppress and slay. It is absurd that God, the planter of the ear (הנּטע, like שׁסע in Lev 11:7, with an accented ultima, because the praet. Kal does not follow the rule for the drawing back of the accent called נסוג אחור) and the former of the eye (cf. Psa 40:7; Exo 4:11), should not be able to hear and to see; everything that is excellent in the creature, God must indeed possess in original, absolute perfection. (Note: The questions are not: ought He to have no ear, etc.; as Jerome pertinently observes in opposition to the anthropomorphites, membra tulit, efficientias dedit.) The poet then points to the extra-Israelitish world and calls God יסר גּוים, which cannot be made to refer to a warning by means of the voice of conscience; יסר used thus without any closer definition does not signify "warning," but "chastening" (Pro 9:7). Taking his stand upon facts like those in Job 12:23, the poet assumes the punitive judicial rule of God among the heathen to be an undeniable fact, and presents for consideration the question, whether He who chasteneth nations cannot and will not also punish the oppressors of His church (cf. Gen 18:25), He who teacheth men knowledge, i.e., He who nevertheless must be the omnipotent One, since all knowledge comes originally from Him? Jahve - thus does the course of argument close in Psa 94:11 - sees through (ידע of penetrative perceiving or knowing that goes to the very root of a matter) the thoughts of men that they are vanity. Thus it is to be interpreted, and not: for they (men) are vanity; for this ought to have been כּי הבל המּה, whereas in the dependent clause, when the predicate is not intended to be rendered especially prominent, as in Ps 9:21, the pronominal subject may precede, Isa 61:9; Jer 46:5 (Hitzig). The rendering of the lxx (Co1 3:20), ὅτι εἰσὶ μάταιοι (Jerome, quoniam vanae sunt), is therefore correct; המּה, with the customary want of exactness, stands for הנּה. It is true men themselves are הבל; it is not, however, on this account that He who sees through all things sees through their thoughts, but He sees through them in their sinful vanity.