(1) Keep not thou silence, O God.—Literally, God, not silence to thee. (Comp. Isaiah 62:7; and see Note, Psalms 28:1.)

(2) Make a tumult.—Literally, roar like the sea. So (correctly) LXX. and Vulg. (See Psalms 46:3.)

(3) They have taken crafty counsel.—Literally, They have made their plot crafty; or, as we say, “They have laid a deep plot.”
Hidden ones—i.e., those under God’s close protection, as in Psalms 17:8; Psalms 27:5; Psalms 31:20.

(4) For this attack against, not only the independence, but even the continued existence of Israel as a nation, compare Esther 3:6; Esther 3:9; Jeremiah 11:19; Jeremiah 31:36; Jeremiah 48:2; Isaiah 7:8.

(5) They are confederate.—Literally, they have cut a covenant, from the custom described in Genesis 15:17. (Comp. the Greek δρκια τέμνειν.)
Against thee.—God and “His hidden ones” are one, a truth preparing the way for that grander truth of the identification of the Son of man with all needing help or pity in Matthew 25

(6) The tabernacles—i.e., the tents of the nomad tribes.
Hagarenes.—A tribe mentioned in 1 Chronicles 5:10; 1 Chronicles 5:19 (Hagarites), where see Note.

(7) Gebal.—If this is a noun, as generally supposed, and as printed in the text, we must take it as a synonym of Edom (the Gebalene of Eusebius). The Gebal of Ezekiel 27:9 is not to be thought of; but it is most likely a verb:
“Both Ammon and Amalek are joined together,
The Philistines (are joined) with the men of Tyre.”

(8) Assur.—For the more usual Ashur, Assyria. Some, however, think the Syria is here intended, that name being, in the view of the Greek writers, a corruption of Assyria. (“The Greeks call them Syrians, but the Barbarians Assyrians.”—Herod, vii., 63.) And even if etymologically incorrect, the error of the Greeks may have been consciously or unconsciously shared by the Jews, and the kingdom of the Seleucidæ be honoured by the name of the grander and more ancient power.
They have holpen.—See margin. And for the importance of the form of the statement see Introduction.
Children of Lot.—Ammon and Moab, who thus appear as the leaders of the confederacy.

(10) En-dor.—This place, for which see 1 Samuel 28, is not mentioned in Judges 4, but is in the battle-field not far from the Taanach and Megiddo of Deborah’s song. (Robinson, iii. 224)

(12) Houses.—Rather, pastures. (See Psalms 79:7.)

(13) A wheel.—Heb., galgal. (See Note, Psalms 77:18, and comp. Isaiah 17:13, where the Authorised Ver sion has literally rolling thing, the margin “thistle down,” and the LXX., “dust of a wheel.”) Sir G. Grove (Smith’s Bibl. Dict., art. Oreb) says, “like the spherical masses of dry weeds which course over the plains of Esdraelon and Philistia.” He possibly refers to the wild artichoke, which struck Mr. Thomson so forcibly as the origin of the psalmist’s figure. He describes them as vegetable globes, light as a feather, which, when the parent stem breaks, become the sport of the wind. “At the proper season thousands of them come suddenly over the plain, rolling, leaping, bounding with vast racket, to the dismay both of the horse and rider.” To this day the Arabs, who call it ‘akhûb, employ it in the same figurative way:—
“May you be whirled like ‘akhûb before the wind!”
THOMSON: Land and Book, 563.

(16) Thy name, O Lord.—Rather, thy name (which is) Jehovah. The nations were to seek Him not only as God, but as Jehovah God of Israel. This is proved by Psalms 83:18. No doubt the thought uppermost in the verse is the submission of the heathen to Jehovah’s power. But we may, looking back, read in it a nobler wish and a grander hope—the prophetic hope of a union of nations in a belief in the common fatherhood of God.