The People Of Psalm 83

By Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

[This is the third article in the four-part series “Using the Context of the Psalms to Interpret Their Message,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2-5, 2016.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

Psalm 83 is the last of the twelve psalms by Asaph (Pss. 50, 73-83) that are part of the collection of seventeen psalms in Book III of the Psalter, a collection focused on foreign invaders of Israel and Judah. Psalm 83 does not indicate when it will be fulfilled; it contains no formula about “the latter days,” “in that day,” or “that day.” The motivation for this attack on Israel is clear, however, with words of bravado that still can be heard in hostility and disdain for the nation of Israel: “ ‘Come,’ they say, ‘Let us destroy them [the Israelites] as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more’ ” (v. 4).

Here the “enemy” is no longer a single nation that is bent on attacking Israel, as was commonly the case in Books I and II and for most of the history of conflict in the Middle East. It is now a coalition of ten nations, all of which closely surround the territory occupied by Israel, that band together with the unified purpose of eradicating the nation of Israel so that her name is remembered no more and so that these nations can occupy what Israel once held as her own territory.

Something else is unusual about Psalm 83. The seven psalms that fall toward the midpoint of Book III (Pss. 77-83) feature the unusual teaming up of nations in hostile alliance against the people of God, but this psalm addresses the redemptive work that God would accomplish, not just for the northern ten tribes or for the southern two tribes of Israel; rather, this deliverance was for the two patriarchal figures mentioned as long ago as the book of Genesis—Joseph and Jacob. By the time of the psalmist of Psalm 83, their descendants had already for several centuries (since 931 BC) been separated into two nations. But in Psalm 83, they were challenged to recall the magnificent deliverance these two kingdoms had experienced from bondage under Egypt, one of the greatest and most powerful nations in the world up to that time. This would become the basis of their hope for a second similarly magnificent deliverance in the future as the impending invasion of ten foreign nations threatened them, this time with literal extinction.

Could this, then, be the final Arab-Israeli war that is also mentioned in Isaiah 17, in which Damascus and Syria are finally destroyed? This does not appear to be part of the Russian-Iranian war of Gog-Magog in Ezekiel 38-39, nor does it seem to fit the invasion of Israel in the campaign of Armageddon in Revelation 19, for none of the nations mentioned in Psalm 83 appear in the Gog-Magog list or the list of nations in Armageddon.

A second suggestion, going back to the days of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus, assigns this psalm to the time of 1 Maccabees 5. But once again, while it is true that the neighboring nations were hostile, there is no evidence of a league or an alliance formed at that time, and neither Edom nor the sons of Lot were the major opponents in that contest either.

A third view argues that the historical context for this psalm was in the days of Nehemiah, for Sanballat, the Horonite of Moab, and Tobiah the Ammonite, were two of the chief opponents, together with Geshem the Arabian, along with the Ashdodites. But Asshur (Ps. 83:8) had long since ceased to be a problem in Nehemiah’s time.

The Enemy Conspiracy: Psalm 83:1-5

Psalm 83 is one of the imprecatory psalms (or a psalm of cursing). It prays to God for his intervention against an alliance of nations banded together for the sole purpose of eliminating Israel as a nation from the face of the earth. As such, it is a national lament. The psalmist prays that the enemies of the Lord may be shamed for their ambitions and that they instead may seek the “name” of Yahweh. This psalm could be classified as a war oracle with elements of prayer, lament, and imprecations on the enemies that threaten the very existence of God’s people.

Psalm 83 begins with these words:

O God [Elohim], do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God [El]. See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads. With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish. “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Ps. 83:1-4, NIV).

Surely this is a prayer addressed to our Lord, but it also has the marks of a prophecy. So the poet prays that Elohim would not remain a detached onlooker while major destruction threatens the people of Israel. Moreover, Israel’s foes are also God’s foes (83:2; cf. Ps. 2:1-3), for they are directly said to be “your enemies” (83:2). These nations have made a secret agreement (סוֹד, v. 3) to wipe out the nation of Israel so that it will no longer be a people or a nation that they need to contend with. These hostile nations hate God as much as they hate the people of God; therein lies their intransigence and determination.

This bitter enmity against Israel has its roots in matters that are of more concern than the policies and issues that arose from time to time between Israel and some of their relatives. Rather, here was an issue that went all the way back to the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 and 7. This conflict was not a disagreement that could be settled by some sort of compromise on the human level, for it involved an everlasting promise made by God himself with regard to Abraham and his offspring. The kingdom of darkness has from time to time come in opposition against Israel through such mortal rulers as Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander the Great, but up to the point of this psalm, there had been no concerted effort to eradicate Israel from the face of the earth. The fact that God had chosen Israel to be his means of spreading the good news to all mankind and that he had set aside a highly contested land mass, right where three continents come together, as well as where east meets west, as the home of this chosen people—this was the thorn in the side of the rest of the nations and peoples of the globe. The fact that in the case of Psalm 83 most of the enemy peoples were close relatives of the descendants of Abraham made the hostility all the more intense.

Two Hebrew words for “God,” אֱלֹהִים and אֵל, occur right at the beginning of the prayer. These names for God form bookends with “Yahweh/Lord” and “Elyon/Most High” that come at the end of Psalm 83 in verse 18. There can be no doubt here: the psalmist’s prayer is to the one and only true God, for there is no one else to turn to in view of the seriousness of the threats.

These enemy nations are all “astir” (v. 2), like the waves of the sea—roaring and foaming with a huge sense of over-confidence as [they] “rear their heads” in success and keep on plotting the sudden demise of Israel. They gather together craftily in secret in order to conspire as one solid force in carrying out a holocaust against God’s people (v. 3, here called “your people” and “those you cherish”).

The spirit of agitation exhibited here is the same as was seen at the Tower of Babel, where people rallied together, saying, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly. . . . Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:3-4). Just as those tower builders strove to achieve autonomy in their day with “name recognition,” so the ten nations who banded together in the cause of wiping Israel off the face of the earth wanted to achieve the same objective, gaining what they thought was a freedom and a sovereignty that made them look like gods.

The Ten-Nation Enemy Coalition: Psalm 83:5-8

Suddenly, nations that had rarely gotten along together or seldom found they were of one mind on major issues joined in an “alliance” (בְּרִית, usually translated “covenant,” but here a “treaty of confederacy in war”). They made this alliance against the Lord; that is also how they achieved such solidarity—“with one mind” (v. 5).

The psalmist listed ten nations that hated the Lord and therefore hated Israel. At the head of the list came Edom, here called by a poetic phrase “the tents of Edom” (v. 6). Some might assume that the Edomites dwelt in tents, but instead it was an expression that was used for the nation as a whole. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, who settled in the hill country of Seir, an area south of Israel’s Negev in the mountains on the west side of the Arabah south of the Dead Sea (Gen. 36).

Associated with the Edomites were the Ishmaelites, who were descendants of Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham (Gen. 16:15-16; 25:12-18). The term “Ishmaelite” may serve as a general term for the Bedouin tribes who lived in tents and often invaded Israel from the south. These semi-nomads made their living off such caravan routes as that of the Midianites (Gen. 37:25, 28; Judg. 8:24).

Moab, another conspirator in this alliance, often manifested hostility to Judah. Along with Moab were the Ammonites, who were descendants of Lot (Ps. 83:6-7; Gen. 19:36-38). The book of Judges presents the Ammonites as real trouble-makers in the Transjordan during the judgeship of Jephthah (Judg. 11:6-33). Later King Saul led Israel in rescuing the people of Jabesh from the threats of Nahash the Ammonite (1 Sam. 11:1-11). Earlier, Balak the king of Moab had tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel (Num. 22-24), and judge Ehud had freed Israel from subjugation to Eglon, king of Moab (Judg. 3:12-30). Even this short resume indicates the enmity that existed against Israel.

The Hagrites (Ps. 83:6) are known only from Assyrian epigraphic materials as nomadic tribes that lived east of the Jordan.

Likewise the identity of גְּבָל (v. 7) is somewhat uncertain, but Mitchell Dahood was probably correct in linking it with the city of Byblos, since the city of Tyre, a close Phoenician neighbor, occurs in the same context. Another nomadic tribe named Amalek, descended from Esau (Gen. 36:12, 16), fought against Israel during their wilderness wanderings (Exod. 17:8-13) and joined the Midianites in their attack on Israel (Judg. 6:3). King Saul tried to destroy them (1 Sam. 15:3), but many survived. The Philistines are also mentioned, for they were a constant thorn in the side of Israel. Finally, “Assyria” is listed, but their end had already come in 611 BC with the fall of Nineveh. Thus this name may have been used symbolically.

Surely God will not sit idly by and allow this confederacy of nations to destroy Israel.[1] Moreover, the Lord promised his prophet Amos that he would do nothing unless he revealed his secret to his servants the prophets (Amos 3:7). Surely an onslaught like that described here in Psalm 83 would not take place in the future without our Lord alerting not only his prophets, but also all who love him and love his word. God will not keep silent (Ps. 83:1), for he will give us some clues as to how Israel will survive this Arab confederacy. What is described here in Psalm 83 is also contained in Jeremiah 49 and in Obadiah 1:1-21, since Edom is the lead member of this hostile group of nations.

The Imprecation Against God’s Enemies: Psalm 83:9-17

One could expect that what God would do in the future could be judged by what he had done in the past. Thus Psalm 83:9-12 set up a reminder of great acts of God in history that, in comparison to what is going to happen in the future, were micro-episodes of how the majesty of God can and will overcome all challengers.

The first evidence of how God worked previously comes from Gideon’s victory over the Midianites (v. 9). Gideon’s three hundred men were armed merely with trumpets, jars, and torches (Judg. 7:19-20). Jabin, who was king in Canaan (Judg. 4:2) and ruled from the mighty city of Hazor, was served by the commander of his army, Sisera. They were armed with 900 chariots of iron and thus were able to cruelly oppress Israel for twenty years (4:2-3). But God used a woman, Deborah, and a reluctant judge named Barak to gain a total upset over this technologically advanced enemy. God caused the Kishon River to flood so that the iron chariots became a liability and Jabin and Sisera were overwhelmingly defeated.

The other victory mentioned here was won by Gideon as he overcame four chiefs of the Midianites: Oreb, Zeeb, Zebah, and Zalmunna (Ps. 83:11; Judg. 8:1-21). “Endor” (Ps. 83:10) was located at the base of Mount Tabor and thus is in the general area where the battle took place, though the name “Endor” does not occur in the narrative of the book of Judges.

The psalmist selected these two victories of Israel over the Canaanites from the period of the judges to serve as models for the prayer of Israel for God to deliver them in the coming contest with the Arab confederacy. Whereas in the past, the Midianites had chosen to attack Israel precisely at the time that her crops became ripe for harvest so that they could claim these crops for themselves, saying: “Let us take possession of the pasturelands of God” (Ps. 83:12), Israel’s new prayer was that God would make this confederacy end up just like Oreb, who was killed at the rock, and Zeebah, who was killed at a winepress (Judg. 7:25), and like the two other chiefs of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, whom Gideon killed (8:21). It is worth noting as well that the “pasturelands” that the Midianites invaded belonged to Elohim!

The psalmist continued to pray against this league in Psalm 83:13-16. He likened the ten enemies listed in this psalm to “tumbleweed,” a plant in the wild artichoke family that has wheel-shaped stems (hence its name, גַּלְגַּל, “wheel”) along with thistles. Some translate this same metaphor as “whirling dust.” Their lot is also likened to “chaff,” which also was slated for destruction. If there was any uncertainty about these two metaphors, little doubt remained when verse 14 asked God to act as a “fire” that would set the forest and its undergrowth all ablaze. The request was that God would “pursue” them and “terrify” them in his “storm” (v. 15). This prayer of imprecation asked God to shake the overbearing confidence that they exhibited as they boastfully declared that they would rid themselves of the name and presence of Israel forever (v. 4). The psalmist prayed that God would convert their pride and boasting into their shame (v. 17).

The Enemy’s Recognition Of Yahweh: Psalm 83:17-18

The imprecations begun in verse 9 now end and the names for God in verse 1, “Elohim” and “El,” are joined by “Yahweh” and “Most High” in verse 15. The psalmist’s prayer concludes with a desire that Yahweh will confound these conspiring nations whose actions actually oppose the Lord himself and then his chosen people. But the psalmist also prays that these same nations may come to know the one whose name is “Yahweh.” They need to come to a personal relationship with the Lord and not just be aware of God in his common grace to all creatures on earth. Yahweh will then be the source of their forgiveness as he extends his grace and mercy to any who will come to him by faith.

Conclusion

The rallying cry of hostility from hostile nations is being heard more clearly and with more determination each day in this modern era. There is a concerted effort to “destroy Israel as a nation” and to liquidate them so that “Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Ps. 83:4). Even though this is presented as an attack against Israel, it must be remembered that this is an assault against the character and pledge that God himself made to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If enemy nations can exterminate the name and people of Israel, then the covenant-making God can no longer be proclaimed as a covenant-keeping God. If a character flaw can be exposed by these enemies of Israel, then the God of all believers worldwide would be exposed as unable to do what he said he would do in other areas as well. Clearly in this psalm, the enemies of Israel are also presented as the enemies of God. Accordingly, their best offensive against our Lord is not a philosophy of atheism or similar academic probes; the most insidious of all offensives against God is the one directed against his promises seen in the Abrahamic, Davidic, and New Covenants.

The battle described by Psalm 83 may well be one of the next offensives against Israel that is poised to take place at any moment, but Scripture assures us that it will end in a tragic and complete vanquishing of these enemy nations. God will bring honor and glory to his name as he delivers Israel and all her people.

Appendix: Reflections On Imprecations In The Psalms

In the entirety of the psalter, no more than eighteen psalms contain any element of imprecation.[2] These eighteen psalms contain 368 verses; yet only 68 verses of the 368 have any element of cursing. Therefore, it would be more proper to speak of imprecation in the psalms rather than whole imprecatory psalms. Of course, the real problem is not the quantity of imprecation in the psalms, but why there should be any at all.

While it goes without saying that in these expressions we are dealing with poetry and not prose, there is also the matter of Oriental poetry, which is fond of hyperbole. Yet those reminders are just things to keep in mind as we note, first, that these expressions are the longings of the Old Testament saints for the vindication of God’s righteousness. Second, especially from the mouth of David, these are utterances of zeal for God and God’s kingdom. But there is a third principle to note here: these strong-sounding utterances are the expressions of the Old Testament saints’ abhorrence of sin. And finally, these imprecations are teachings that tell us God’s attitude toward sin and toward persistent and impenitent sinners. It is in these contexts that we should regard such psalms as those from David (Pss. 35, 58, 69, 109) and from Asaph (83).

Notes

1. Few have contributed more to my thinking on this chapter than Bill Salus, Psalm 83: The Missing Prophecy Revealed (La Quinta, CA: Prophecy Depot Ministries, 2013).
2. The classic essay on this subject was written by Chalmers Martin, “Imprecations in the Psalms,” Princeton Theological Review 1 (1903): 537-53, reprinted in Walter C. Kaiser Jr., ed., Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972), 113-32.