Psalm 76

Salem is the ancient short form of Jerusalem, the name in the account of Melchizedek. Using it puts the city's roots on display: God's tent has been in this place a very long time.

What happens in the psalm happens without a battle. He breaks the arrows of the bow, the shield, the sword — and then the stouthearted are stripped, they have slept their sleep, and both chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep. An army is destroyed where it stands, and Israel does not appear to have swung a weapon.

The traditional connection is to 701 BC, when Sennacherib's army besieged the cities of Judah and then broke off outside Jerusalem after a night of catastrophe. His own account survives: the Assyrian prism inscription boasts that he shut Hezekiah up like a caged bird and lists the tribute he took — and pointedly never claims to have taken the city, which is the one thing an Assyrian king would have shouted about. The ancient Greek translation of this psalm adds a heading naming the Assyrian. Other readers take the psalm generally; the psalm itself names no enemy.

The wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath thou shalt restrain. That is a claim about limits — the enemy's rage is allowed to run a certain distance and is then cut off, like a leash reaching its end.