Psalm 75:3

The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it. Selah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) The earth . . .—Better—

“Are earth and all its inhabitants dissolved?

It was I adjusted its pillars.”

(See Hannah’s song, 1Samuel 2:8.) Though the crisis be such that all is confusion and anarchy (comp. Isaiah 24:19-20 for the figure), there is no cause for fear; there is still a Ruler in heaven, He who built up the edifice which now seems to totter to its fall. The verb rendered in the Authorised Version “bear up,” is used in Job 28:15, Isaiah 40:12 in the sense of “weighing” or “measuring;” but with the same allusion to the creative work of God. Here it plainly means, so to adjust the pillars as to make them equal to the weight they have to bear.

The “pillars” are the “mountains,” as in Job 26:11. (See Note, Psalm 24:2.) Comp. Shelley—

“Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns are.”

Benson Commentary

Psalm 75:3. The earth — Or land; and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved — Or melted, as נמגים, nemogim, may be rendered. It seems to mean, either that the Israelitish affairs were thrown into confusion, and the frame of the government dissolved by their civil distractions, or that the people were consumed and destroyed by the continual irruptions of foreign enemies. I bear up the pillars of it — How much soever I am traduced by mine enemies, as the great disturber of the land, I must do myself this right to affirm that, under God, I do support and establish it, by maintaining religion and justice, by appointing, countenancing, and supporting good magistrates, and by encouraging the Lord’s prophets and servants, and all good men, who are indeed the pillars of a nation.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

75:1-5 We often pray for mercy, when in pursuit of it; and shall we only once or twice give thanks, when we obtain it? God shows that he is nigh to us in what we call upon him for. Public trusts are to be managed uprightly. This may well be applied to Christ and his government. Man's sin threatened to destroy the whole creation; but Christ saved the world from utter ruin. He who is made of God to us wisdom, bids us be wise. To the proud, daring sinners he says, Boast not of your power, persist not in contempt. All the present hopes and future happiness of the human race spring from the Son of God.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved - The word rendered "dissolved" means properly to melt, to flow down; then, to melt away, to pine away, to perish. Isaiah 64:7; Job 30:22; Nahum 1:5; Psalm 107:26. Here it means that there was, as it were, a general breaking up of things; or that none of the institutions of the land seemed to have any stability. There seemed to be no government, but universal anarchy and confusion.

I bear up the pillars of it - Of the earth; of society. The earth here is compared with an edifice supported by pillars. Compare Judges 16:26; 1 Samuel 2:8; 1 Timothy 3:15. As applied to a prince or ruler, this means that the permanent structure of the state, the welfare of society, depended on his administration. If, according to the view of others, it is applied to God, the meaning is, that as he upholds the world, there cannot be permanent misrule; that amidst all the commotions of earth, and all that seemed to threaten ruin, his hand sustained all, and he would not allow things to proceed to permanent disorder. In the former case, the assertion would be true if a prince felt that he had power to support the government, and to restore order; in the latter case, it must be true, for God sustains the earth, and as he can check disorder when he shall judge it best to interpose, so he will not permit it ultimately to prevail.

Selah - A musical pause. See the notes at Psalm 3:2.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. pillars of it—(1Sa 2:8).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Dissolved; or, melted, consumed or destroyed; partly by the ill government of Saul and Ish-bosheth, and the great officers of state and war under them; and partly by intestine divisions and wars.

I bear up the pillars of it: howsoever I am traduced by mine enemies as the great disturber of the land, I must do myself this right, to affirm that, under God, I do support and establish it, by maintaining religion and justice, and by setting us good magistrates, and encouraging good ministers, and good men, which are indeed the pillars of a nation.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved,.... Or "melted" (p); the inhabitants, through fear and dread of the righteous Judge, appearing in the clouds of heaven, and of the wrath that is coming on they are deserving of; and the earth, through fire, when the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works therein shall be burnt up, 2 Peter 3:10.

I bear up the pillars of it.: so that it shall not utterly perish; for though by the fire, at the general conflagration, the heavens and the earth will be so melted and dissolved as to lose their present form, and shall be purged and purified from all noxious qualities, the effects of sin; yet the substance will remain, out of which will be formed new heavens and a new earth, and this through the power of Christ sustaining it, and preserving it from entire destruction or annihilation. R. Obadiah by "pillars" understands in a figurative sense the righteous, for whose sake the world is continued in its being; these at the general conflagration will be bore up and preserved by Christ, whom they shall meet in the air, even the church, who is the pillar and ground of truth; and not only the ministers of the Gospel, who are pillars in Christ's house, but also every believer, which is a pillar there, that shall never go out, 1 Timothy 3:15. Aben Ezra and Kimchi interpret the pillars of the mountains.

Selah. See Gill on Psalm 3:2.

(p) "liquefacti", Montanus; "liquefiet", Musculus.

Geneva Study Bible

The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars {d} of it. Selah.

(d) Though all things are brought to ruin, yet I can restore and preserve them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. The first line virtually forms the protasis of the sentence: Though the earth &c.; I have set up the pillars of it. Though all the world is in terror and confusion, I (emphatic) have established a moral order in it. The material world is often compared to a building with its foundations and pillars (1 Samuel 2:8; Job 9:6; Job 38:4 ff.); and the moral world is described by the same figure. Cp. Psalm 11:3; Psalm 82:5.

I bear up] Lit. I have proportioned, or, adjusted by line and measure. The rendering of R.V. marg., When the earth … I set up, will mean that when confusion reigns, God re-establishes order: but it is better to understand the perfect tense (I have set up) of the fundamental laws which God has from the first ordained.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. They "melt" with fear (Psalm 44:6), either at God's coming in judgment, or at the dissolution which a hostile invasion is bringing on their land. I bear up the pillars of it. Meanwhile God upholds, and will uphold, both the moral and physical order of things. He will neither suffer the earth to be moved, nor the supports on which society depends to fail and crumble away. Psalm 75:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The church in anticipation gives thanks for the judicial revelation of its God, the near approach of which He Himself asserts to it. The connection with ו in וקרוב שׁמך presents a difficulty. Neither here nor anywhere else is it to be supposed that ו is synonymous with כּי; but at any rate even כי might stand instead of it. For Hupfeld's attempt to explain it: and "near is Thy name" Thy wonders have declared; and Hitzig's: and Thou whose Name is near, they declare Thy wondrous works - are past remedy. Such a personification of wonders does not belong to the spirit of Hebrew poetry, and such a relative clause lies altogether beyond the bounds of syntax. If we would, however, take וקרוב שׁמך, after Psalm 50:23, as a result of the thanksgiving (Campensis), then that for which thanks are rendered would remain undefined; neither will it do to take קרוב as referring to the being inwardly present (Hengstenberg), since this, according to Jeremiah 12:2 (cf. Deuteronomy 30:14), would require some addition, which should give to the nearness this reference to the mouth or to the heart. Thus, therefore, nothing remains for us but to connect the nearness of the Name of God as an outward fact with the earnest giving of thanks. The church has received the promise of an approaching judicial, redemptive revelation of God, and now says, "We give Thee thanks, we give thanks and near is Thy Name;" it welcomes the future act of God with heartfelt thanksgiving, all those who belong to it declare beforehand the wonders of God. Such was really the position of matters when in Hezekiah's time the oppression of the Assyrians had reached its highest point - Isaiah's promises of a miraculous divine deliverance were at that time before them, and the believing ones saluted beforehand, with thanksgiving, the "coming Name of Jahve" (Isaiah 30:27). The כּי which was to be expected after הודינו (cf. e.g., Psalm 100:4.) does not follow until Psalm 75:3. God Himself undertakes the confirmation of the forthcoming thanksgiving and praise by a direct announcement of the help that is hailed and near at hand (Psalm 85:10). It is not to be rendered, "when I shall seize," etc., for Psalm 75:3 has not the structure of an apodosis. כּי is confirmatory, and whatever interpretation we may give to it, the words of the church suddenly change into the words of God. מועד in the language of prophecy, more especially of the apocalyptic character, is a standing expression fore the appointed time of the final judgment (vid., on Habakkuk 2:3). When this moment or juncture in the lapse of time shall have arrived, then God will seize or take possession of it (לקח in the unweakened original sense of taking hold of with energy, cf. Psalm 18:17; Genesis 2:15): He Himself will then interpose and hold judgment according to the strictly observed rule of right (מישׁרים, adverbial accusative, cf. במישׁרים, Psalm 9:9, and frequently). If it even should come to pass that the earth and all its inhabitants are melting away (cf. Isaiah 14:31; Exodus 15:15; Joshua 2:9), i.e., under the pressure of injustice (as is to be inferred from Psalm 75:3), are disheartened, scattered asunder, and are as it were in the act of dissolution, then He (the absolute I, אנכי) will restrain this melting away: He setteth in their places the pillars, i.e., the internal shafts (Job 9:6), of the earth, or without any figure: He again asserts the laws which lie at the foundation of its stability. תכּנתּי is a mood of certainty, and Psalm 75:4 is a circumstantial clause placed first, after the manner of the Latin ablative absolute. Hitzig appropriately compares Proverbs 29:9; Isaiah 23:15 may also be understood according to this bearing of the case.

The utterance of God is also continued after the Sela. It is not the people of God who turn to the enemies with the language of warning on the ground of the divine promise (Hengstenberg); the poet would then have said אמרנוּ, or must at least have said על־כּן אמרתּי. God Himself speaks, and His words are not yet peremptorily condemning, as in Psalm 50:16., cf. Psalm 46:11, but admonitory and threatening, because it is not He who has already appeared for the final judgment who speaks, but He who announces His appearing. With אמרתּי He tells the braggarts who are captivated with the madness of supposed greatness, and the evil-doers who lift up the horn or the head,

(Note: The head is called in Sanscrit iras, in Zend aranh, equals κάρα; the horn in Sanscrit, ringa, i.e., (according to Burnlouf, Etudes, p. 19) that which proceeds from and projects out of the head (iras), Zend rva equals κέρας, קרן (ḳarn).)

hat He will have once for all said to them, and what they are to suffer to be said to them for the short space of time till the judgment. The poet, if we have assigned the right date to the Psalm, has Rabshakeh and his colleagues before his mind, cf. Isaiah 37:23. The ל, as in that passage, and like אל in Zechariah 2:4 (vid., Khler), has the idea of a hostile tendency. אל rules also over Psalm 75:6: "speak not insolence with a raised neck." It is not to be construed עתק בצוּאר, with a stiff neck. Parallel passages like Psalm 31:19; Psalm 94:4, and more especially the primary passage 1 Samuel 5:3, show that עתק is an object-notion, and that בצוּאר by itself (with which, too, the accentuation harmonizes, since Munach here is the vicarius of a distinctive), according to Job 15:26, has the sense of τραχηλιῶτες or ὑπεραυχοῦντες.