Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvin(Psalm 105:15.)He will have the anointing with which he has anointed us to be, as it were, a buckler to keepus in perfect safety. The nations here enumerated did not avowedly make war against him; but as,when he sees his servants unrighteously assaulted, he interposes himself between them and theirenemies to bear the blows aimed at them, they are here justly represented as having entered into aleague against God The case is analogous to that of the Papists in the present day. If any were toask them, when they hold consultations for the express purpose of accomplishing our destruction,Whether they were stronger than God? they would immediately reply, That they had no intentionwhatever of assaulting heaven in imitation of the giants of old. But God having declared that everyinjury which is done to us is an assault upon him, we may, as from a watch-tower, behold in thedistance by the eye of faith the approach of that destruction of which the votaries of Antichrist shallhave at length the sad and melancholy experience.The expression, to consult with the heart, is by some explained, to deliberate with the greatestexertion and earnestness of mind. Thus it is quite common for us to say, that a thing is done withthe heart which is done with earnestness and ardor of mind. But this expression is rather intendedto denote the hidden crafty devices complained of a little before.Some interpreters refer the tents of Edom to warlike furniture, and understand the words asmeaning, that these enemies came well equipped and provided with tents for prolonging the war;but the allusion seems rather to be to the custom which prevailed among those nations of dwellingin tents. It is, however, a hyperbolical form of expression; as if it had been said, So great was theireagerness to engage in this war, that they might be said even to pluck their tents from the placeswhere they were pitched.I do not intend to enter curiously into a discussion concerning the respective nations here named,the greater part of them being familiarly known from the frequency with which they are spoken ofin the sacred Scriptures. When it is said that Assur and the rest were an arm to the sons of Lot, thisis evidently an additional aggravation of the wickedness of the sons of Lot. It would have been anact of unnatural cruelty for them to have aided foreign nations against their own kindred. But whenthey themselves are the first to sound the trumpet, and when of their own suggestion they invitethe aid of the Assyrians and other nations to destroy their own brethren, ought not such barbarousinhumanity to call forth the deepest detestation? Josephus himself records, that the Israelites hadpassed through their borders without doing them any harm, sparing their own blood according tothe express command of God. When the Moabites and Ammonites then knew that their brethrenthe Jews spared them, remembering that they were of the same blood, and sprung from one commonparentage, ought they not also to have reciprocated so much kindness on their part as not to haveembarked in any hostile enterprise against them? But it is, as it were, the destiny of the Church,not only to be assailed by external enemies, but to suffer far greater trouble at the hands of falsebrethren. At the present day, none are more furiously mad against us than counterfeit Christians.Psalm 83:9-12207