“And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,

They are broken, they are broken.”—

TENNYSON: Elaine.

On the other hand, the two succeeding verses seem to refer to a political convulsion rather than a military defeat, and it has been conjectured that the breach between the two kingdoms is here indicated. (See the use of perez=breach, in Judges 21:15.)

Thou hast scattered us - Margin, broken. So the Hebrew. The word is applied to the forces of war which are broken and scattered by defeat, 2 Samuel 5:20.

Thou hast been displeased - The word used here means "to breathe"; to breathe hard; and then, to be angry. See the notes at Psalm 2:12. God had treated them as if he was displeased or angry. He had suffered them to be defeated.

O turn thyself to us again - Return to our armies, and give us success. This might be rendered, "Thou wilt turn to us;" that is, thou wilt favor us - expressing a confident belief that God would do this, as in Psalm 60:12. It is more in accordance, however, with the usual structure of the Psalms to regard this as a prayer. Many of the psalms begin with a prayer, and end with the expression of a confident assurance that the prayer has been, or would certainly be heard.

Ps 60:1-12. Shushan-eduth—Lily of testimony. The lily is an emblem of beauty (see on [601]Ps 45:1, title). As a description of the Psalm, those terms combined may denote a beautiful poem, witnessing—that is, for God's faithfulness as evinced in the victories referred to in the history cited. Aram-naharaim—Syria of the two rivers, or Mesopotamia beyond the river (Euphrates) (2Sa 10:16). Aram-zobah—Syria of Zobah (2Sa 10:6), to whose king the king of the former was tributary. The war with Edom, by Joab and Abishai (2Ch 18:12, 25), occurred about the same time. Probably, while doubts and fears alternately prevailed respecting the issue of these wars, the writer composed this Psalm, in which he depicts, in the language of God's people, their sorrows under former disasters, offers prayer in present straits, and rejoices in confident hope of triumph by God's aid.

1-3. allude to disasters.

cast … off—in scorn (Ps 43:2; 44:9).

scattered—broken our strength (compare 2Sa 5:20).

Oh, turn thyself—or, "restore to us" (prosperity). The figures of physical, denote great civil, commotions (Ps 46:2, 3).

2 Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh.

3 Thou hast showed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.

Psalm 60:1

Before the days of Saul, Israel had been brought very low; during his government it had suffered from internal strife, and his reign was closed by an overwhelming disaster at Gilboa. David found himself the possessor of a tottering throne, troubled with the double evil of faction at home, and invasion from abroad. He traced at once the evil to its true source, and began at the fountainhead. His were the politics of piety, which after all are the wisest and most profound. He knew that the displeasure of the Lord had brought calamity upon the nation, and to the removal of that displeasure he set himself by earnest prayer. "O God, thou hast cut us off." Thou hast treated us as foul and offensive things, to be put away; as mean and beggarly persons, to be shunned with contempt; as useless dead boughs to be torn away from the tree which they disfigure. To be cast off by God is the worst calamity that can befal a man or a people; but the worst form of it is when the person is not aware of it and is indifferent to it. When the divine desertion causes mourning and repentance, it will be but partial and temporary. When a cast-off soul sighs for its God it is not indeed cast off at all. "Thou hast scattered us." David clearly sees the fruits of the divine anger, he traces the flight of Israel's warriors, the breaking of her power, the division in her body politic, to the hand of God. Whoever might be the secondary agent of these disasters, he beholds the Lord's hand as the prime moving cause, and pleads with the Lord concerning the matter. Israel was like a city with a breach made in its wall, because her God was wroth with her. These first two verses, with their depressing confession, must be regarded as greatly enhancing the power of the faith which in the after verses rejoices in better days, through the Lord's gracious return unto his people. "Thou hast been displeased." This is the secret of our miseries. Had we pleased thee, thou wouldst have pleased us; but as we have walked contrary to thee, thou hast walked contrary to us. "O turn thyself to us again." Forgive the sin and smile once more. Turn us to thee, turn thou to us. Aforetime thy face was towards thy people, be pleased to look on us again with thy favour and grace. Some read it, "Thou wilt turn to us again," and it makes but slight difference which way we take it, for a true-hearted prayer brings a blessing so soon that it is no presumption to consider it as already obtained. There was more need for God to turn to his people than for Judah's troops to be brave, or Joab and the commanders wise. God with us is better than strong battalions; God displeased is more terrible than all the Edomites that ever marched into the valley of salt, or all the devils that ever opposed the church. If the Lord turn to us, what care we for Aram-naharaim or Aram-zobah, or death, or hell? but if he withdraw his presence we tremble at the fall of a leaf.

Psalm 60:2

"Thou hast made the earth to tremble." Things were as unsettled as though the solid earth had been made to quake; nothing was stable; the priests had been murdered by Saul, the worst men had been put in office, the military power had been broken by the Philistines, and the civil authority had grown despicable through insurrections and intestine contests. "Thou hast broken it." As the earth cracks, and opens itself in rifts during violent earthquakes, so was the kingdom rent with strife and calamity. "Heal the breaches thereof." As a house in time of earthquakes is shaken, and the walls begin to crack, and gape with threatening fissures, so was it with the kingdom. "For it shaketh." It tottered to a fall; if not soon propped up and repaired it would come down in complete ruin. So far gone was Israel, that only God's interposition could preserve it from utter destruction. How often have we seen churches in this condition, and how suitable is the prayer before us, in which the extremity of the need is used, as an argument for help. The like may be said of our own personal religion, it is sometimes so tried, that like a house shaken by earthquake it is ready to come down with a crash, and none but the Lord himself can repair its breaches, and save us from utter destruction.

Psalm 60:3

"Thou hast showed thy people hard things." Hardships had been heaped upon them, and the Psalmist traces these rigorous providences to their fountainhead. Nothing had happened by chance, but all had come by divine design and with a purpose, yet for all that things had gone hard with Israel. The Psalmist claims that they were still the Lord's own people, though in the first verse he had said, "thou hast cast us off." The language of complaint is usually confused, and faith in time of trouble ere long contradicts the desponding statements of the flesh. "Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment." Our afflictions have made us like men drunken with some potent and bitter wine; we are in amazement, confusion, delirium; our steps reel, and we stagger as those about to fall. The great physician gives his patients potent potions to purge out their abounding and deep-seated diseases. Astonishing evils bring with them astonishing results. The grapes of the vineyard of sin produce a wine which fills the most hardened with anguish when justice compels them to quaff the cup. There is a fire-water of anguish of soul which even to the righteous makes a cup of trembling, which causes them to be exceeding sorrowful almost unto death. When grief becomes so habitual as to be our drink, and to take the place of our joys, becoming our only wine, then are we in an evil case indeed. Shushan-eduth: this, like the rest, seems to be the name of an instrument, or song, or tune, then well known, but now quite unknown and forgotten; it may be and is by some rendered, the lily or rose of thy testimony or oracle; but why it was so called is a matter of mere conjecture, and of small importance to us to know. To teach, to wit, in an eminent manner; or for the special instruction of God’s church and people in some points of great moment; as, concerning the grievous calamities to which God’s church and people were obnoxious, Psalm 60:1-3, and concerning the certainty of God’s promises, and of their deliverance out of them, upon condition of their faith and obedience; which doctrines were of great moment, especially to the Israelites, who were, and were likely to be, exercised in the same manner, and with the same variety and vicissitudes of condition, under which their ancestors had been. Or whereas other songs were to be learned only by the Levites, or by some of them, this possibly was one of them, which the people also were to be taught, and were to sing upon occasion, because of the public and general concernment which they all had in the matter herein contained.

Aram-naharaim; or, the Syrians (so called from Aram, the son of Shem, Genesis 10:22) of the two rivers, or of Mesopotamia, the country between those two great and famous rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. Aram-zobah, or, the Syrians of Zobah, part of Syria so called, 2 Samuel 8:5,12.

This report seems not to agree with the histories to which this Psalm is supposed to relate, 2 Samuel 8:13 1 Chronicles 18:12, neither in the persons slain, who are Edomites 1 Chronicles 18:12, but Syrians here, and 2 Samuel 8:13; nor in their numbers, which are here only twelve thousand, and there eighteen thousand; nor in the persons to whom this victory is ascribed, who is Joab here, David 2 Samuel 8:13, and Abishai 1 Chronicles 18:12. But these difficulties may easily be resolved by these considerations:

1. That David being king, and Joab lord-general of all his forces, and Abishai his lieutenant-general as to a considerable part of his army, the same victory may well be ascribed to any or every one of them; as it is usually done in like cases in the Roman and Grecian histories.

2. That the Edomites and Syrians were united in this war.

3. That twelve thousand might be slain in the pitched battle, and the rest by the pursuers in their flight.

4. That these several places may speak of several fights. See more of this business See Poole "2 Samuel 8:13".

The psalmist, complaining of former sad judgments, Psalm 60:1-3, acknowledgeth God’s present mercy, Psalm 60:4. Comforting himself in the promises, he prayeth for help, and therein trusteth, Psalm 60:5-12.

Cast us off; or, rejected or forsaken us, as to thy gracious and powerful presence, not only in the time of the judges, but also during Saul’s reign.

Scattered us, Heb. broken us; partly by that dreadful overthrow by the Philistines, 1 Samuel 31, and partly by the civil war in our own bowels, between me and Ishbosheth.

thou hast scattered us; as they were by the Romans among the various nations of the world, and among whom they are dispersed to this day; or "thou hast broken us" (k), as in Psalm 80:12; not only the walls of their city were broken by the battering rams of the Romans, but their commonwealth, their civil state, were broke to pieces by them. Jarchi applies this to the Romans; his note is this;

"when Edom fell by his hand (David's), he foresaw, by the Holy Ghost, that the Romans would rule over Israel, and decree hard decrees concerning them;''

thou hast been displeased; not only with their immorality and profaneness, with their hypocrisy and insincerity, with their will worship and superstition, and the observance of the traditions of their elders; but also with their rejection of the Messiah, and contempt of his Gospel and ordinances;

O turn thyself to us again; which prayer will be made by them, when they shall become sensible of their sins, and of their state and condition, and shall turn unto the Lord; and when he will turn himself to them, and turn away iniquity from them, and all Israel shall be saved, Romans 11:25; or "thou wilt return unto us" (l); who before were cast off, broken, and he was displeased with; or others to us.

(k) "rupisti nos", Montanus, Michaelis; "disrupisti", Gejerus; so Ainsworth. (l) "reverteris ad nos", Pagninus, Montanus; "reduces ad nos", Gussetius, p. 836.

(a) These were certain songs after the note of which this psalm was sung.

(b) Also called Sophene, which stands by Euphrates.

(c) For when Saul was not able to resist the enemy, the people fled here and there: for they were not safe in their own homes.