Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin (continued)
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 2 to abandon their obstinate attempts to maintain the interests of a throne which lay under the divine reprobation.
Psalm 60:4-8
4. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed before the truth. Selah. 5. That thy beloved may be delivered, 384 save with thy right hand, and hear me. 6. God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice: I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth. 7. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is mine strength of my head; Judah is my lawgiver. 385
8. Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast my shoe: Palestina, triumph over me.
4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee. Some interpreters would change the past tense, and read the words as if they formed a continuation of the prayers which precede — O that thou wouldst give a banner to them that fear thee! 386 But it is better to suppose that David diverges to the language of congratulation, and, by pointing to the change which had taken place, calls attention to the evident appearances of the divine favor. He returns thanks to God, in the name of all the people, for having raised a standard which might at once cheer their hearts, and unite their divided numbers. 387 It is a poor and meagre interpretation which some have attached to the words, before the truth, that God showed favor to the Jews because he had found them true-hearted, and sound in his cause.
It was customary among the Hebrews to make their wine stronger and more inebriating by the addition of hotter and more powerful ingredients; such as honey, spices, defrutum, (i e., wine inspissated by boiling it down to two-thirds or one-half of the quantity,) mandrakes, opiates, and other drugs. Such were the stupifying ingredients which the celebrated Helen is represented, in Homer's Odyssey, as mixing in the bowl, together with the wine, for her guests oppressed with grief, to raise their spirits; and such is probably the wine to which there is here an allusion. The people were stupified by the heavy judgments of God, like a person stupified with wine which had been rendered more intoxicating by the deleterious drugs with which it had been mingled. This highly poetical language is not unfrequently employed to express the divine judgments: as in Isaiah 51:17, 20-22, and Jeremiah 25:15, 16. The original word,תרעלהtarelah, means properly trembling, from the verb,רעלraal, from which the English word reel is perhaps derived. We might therefore read, "the wine of trembling."
"Ou, que tes bien aimez soyont delivrez." — Fr. marg. "Or, let thy beloved be delivered."
"Ou, gouverneur." — Fr. marg. "Or, governor."
Boothroyd gives a translation similar to this, and thinks that this is required by the connection. But see note 3, p. 397.