Psalms 21:12
For You will put them to flight when Your bow is trained upon them.
BSB
ASV
For thou wilt make them turn their back; Thou wilt make ready with thy bowstrings against their face.
KJV
Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.
"Turned away" [is] an expression properly applied to the sinner, for "Cain went out from the face of the Lord," and the psalmist says, "You will make them turn their back." One who is righteous does not turn away from the Lord but runs to meet him and says, "My eyes are ever toward the Lord." And when the Lord said, "Whom shall I send?" Isaiah offered himself of his own accord and said, "Behold, here I am."
Therefore shall thou make them turn their back,.... Or flee and run away to private places, to hide themselves from the wrath of God and of the Lamb, though to no purpose; or "make them turn behind thy back": God will turn his back upon them, and be negligent and careless of them, and not regard them when they cry in their misery and destruction.
"Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them." For a time the foes of God may make bold advances, and threaten to overthrow everything, but a few ticks of the clock will alter the face of their affairs. At first they advance impudently enough, but Jehovah meets them to their teeth, and a taste of the sharp judgment of God speedily makes them flee in dismay.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 64:7But God will shoot them with arrows; suddenly they will be wounded.
leads to
If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
Therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in an instant he will be shattered beyond recovery.
He shot His arrows and scattered the foes; He hurled lightning and routed them.
For you are fully aware that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!
Through
Psalms 9:3When my enemies retreat, they stumble and perish before You.
leads to
They will suffer the penalty of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might,
Through
Lamentations 3:12He bent His bow and set me as the target for His arrow.
leads to
For Your arrows have pierced me deeply, and Your hand has pressed down on me.
If I have sinned, what have I done to You, O watcher of mankind? Why have You made me Your target, so that I am a burden to You?