The mountains... — Better, literally, Let the mountains and the hills bring forth to the people peace in (or by) righteousness. This imperative sense, instead of the future, is by most modern commentators preserved throughout the psalm. The LXX. give it here and in Psalms 72:17, but else use the future.

The verb here employed (properly meaning “lift up”) is used in Ezekiel 17:8, for “bearing fruit,” and in Isaiah 32:17 peace is described as the natural work or fruit of righteousness. (Comp. Psalms 85:10.) For the same prominence given to its hills as the characteristic feature of Palestine, a land which is “not only mountainous, but a heap of mountains,” comp. Joel 3:18.

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