Psalms 93 - Introduction

This Psalm is the prelude to the remarkable group of -theocratic Psalms" 95 100, and should be studied in connexion with them. Jehovah had from the first been Israel's king (Exodus 15:18; Deuteronomy 33:5; 1 Samuel 12:12), but when He abandoned His people to their enemies He seemed to have abdicated His throne. Now however He has reassumed His royal state, and once more proclaimed Himself King. The prophecy of Isaiah 52:7 has been fulfilled. The poet takes up the watchword, Thy God hath proclaimed Himself king, and in the judgement of Babylon and the restoration of Israel he sees the proof of Jehovah's sovereignty not over Israel only but over all the world. The heaving waves of the sea of nations may lash themselves into wild fury against the rock of His throne, but it stands eternally unmoved.

This and the other -theocratic" Psalms have sometimes been interpreted as prophetic pictures of the final advent of Jehovah, the "one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves." But it is far more natural to regard them as thanksgivings for some actual event by which Jehovah's sovereignty had been visibly declared. It can hardly be doubted that this event was the Return from Babylon, and that this group of Psalms belongs to the early days of the Restoration. It was in truth a great -day of Jehovah"; and if in eager faith Prophets and Psalmists spoke of it as though the final revelation of His power had already come, they did but speak as the prophets of an earlier age who looked for the Messiah as the Deliverer from the troubles of their own day, or the Apostles who anticipated the Return of the Lord in their own lifetime. They foreshortened the perspective of the glorious vision that was presented to their view, and it was only as years rolled on that men learned that the purposes which are eternally present to the mind of God can only be realised on the stage of the world's history by slow degrees.

In the LXX is prefixed the title, For the day before the sabbath, when the land[or earth had been filled with inhabitants: a praise-song of David. The latter part of this title is valueless: the first part is confirmed by the Talmudic tradition. Psalms 93 was in fact the Psalm for Friday in the service of the Second Temple (see Introd.p. xxvii), and the reason given in the Talmud is that on the sixth day God finished the work of creation, and began to reign over it. The title in the LXX, ὅτε κατῴκισται ἡ γῆ, may, as Delitzsch supposes, reflect this tradition, and mean when the earth was filled with inhabitants. But it may equally well mean when the land was peopled, i.e. after the return from the Exile. Cp. the Sept. title of Psalms 97; and for the use of κατοικίζειν see LXX of Jeremiah 17:25, κατοικισθήσεται ἡ πόλις αὔτη εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.