Psalms 83:15

This levity, by which consent is easily given to what is evil, is followed by severe torment; therefore he proceeds:— "Like as the fire that burns up the wood, and as the flame that consumes the mountains" [Psalm 83:14]: "so shall You persecute them with Your tempest, and in Your anger shall disturb them" [Psalm 83:15]. Wood, he says, for its barrenness, mountains for their loftiness; for such are the enemies of God's people, barren of righteousness, full of pride. When he says, "fire" and "flame," he means to repeat under another term, the idea of God judging and punishing. But in saying, "with Your tempest," he means, as he goes on to explain, "Your anger:" and the former expression, "You shall persecute," answers to, "You shall disturb." We must take care, however, to understand, that the anger of God is free from any turbulent emotion; for His anger is an expression for His just method of taking vengeance: as the law might be said to be angry when its ministers are moved to punish by its sanction.

My God, set them like a wheel. Let them not be stable, but forever uncertain: that they may have no seat, and be forever rolled about unstably. For just as a wheel is not of itself stable, so also the heretics do not stand firm in their opinion, but forever change their doctrines. Like stubble before the face of the wind. Eleven punishments he asks against them, because they have denied the mysteries of the eleven apostles. But let the prudent reader say: How will you divide one verse into two? And you do violence to the Scripture: you say eleven apostles, when we know that the Lord and Savior had twelve disciples. For this reason, then, we set down the number eleven, because Judas the traitor, who had been the twelfth, departed from the number. My God, set them like a wheel. You have one plague: count therefore more carefully the rest that follow. Like stubble before the face of the wind: behold the second. Like fire which burns a forest: behold the third. Like a flame burning the mountains: the fourth. So will you pursue them in your tempest: the fifth. And in your anger you will confound them: the sixth. Fill their faces with shame: the seventh. And let them seek your name, O Lord: the eighth. Let them be ashamed and troubled forever and ever: the ninth. And let them be confounded and perish: the tenth. And let them know that your name is Lord: the eleventh. You alone are the Most High over all the earth. Thus far it is wrath: what follows is now mercy. And in your anger you will trouble them. He did not say, kill, but, trouble them, that they may return to you: behold the sixth. Fill their faces with shame: not with punishment, lest, shut out by death, they be unable to return to the Lord. Fill their faces with shame, not with punishment. Why then do you not kill them? The divine word explains: That they may seek your name, O Lord. […]

So persecute them with thy tempest,.... Pursue them with thy fury, follow them with thy vengeance; cause it to fall upon them like a mighty tempest: and make them afraid with thy storm; God has his storms and tempests of wrath and vengeance, which he sometimes causes to fall upon wicked men in this life, to their inexpressible terror, and with which he takes them out of this world; and he has still more horrible ones to rain upon them hereafter: see Job 27:20.

This, in the singing of it, we may apply to the enemies of the gospel-church, all anti-christian powers and factions, representing to God their confederacies against Christ and his kingdom, and rejoicing in the hope that all their projects will be baffled and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church.

): So persecute them with thy tempest, persecute them to their utter ruin, and make them afraid with thy storm. See how sinners are made miserable; the storm of God's wrath raises terrors in their own hearts, and so they are made completely miserable.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens