The third strophe now turns from those bloodthirsty, blasphemous oppressors of the people of God whose conduct calls forth the vengeance of Jahve, to those among the people themselves, who have been puzzled about the omniscience and indirectly about the righteousness of God by the fact that this vengeance is delayed. They are called בערים and כסילים in the sense of Psalm 73:21. Those hitherto described against whom God's vengeance is supplicated are this also; but this appellation would be too one-sided for them, and בּעם refers the address expressly to a class of men among the people whom those oppress and slay. It is absurd that God, the planter of the ear (הנּטע, like שׁסע in Leviticus 11:7, with an accented ultima, because the praet. Kal does not follow the rule for the drawing back of the accent called נסוג אחור) and the former of the eye (cf. Psalm 40:7; Exodus 4:11), should not be able to hear and to see; everything that is excellent in the creature, God must indeed possess in original, absolute perfection.

(Note: The questions are not: ought He to have no ear, etc.; as Jerome pertinently observes in opposition to the anthropomorphites, membra tulit, efficientias dedit.)

The poet then points to the extra-Israelitish world and calls God יסר גּוים, which cannot be made to refer to a warning by means of the voice of conscience; יסר used thus without any closer definition does not signify "warning," but "chastening" (Proverbs 9:7). Taking his stand upon facts like those in Job 12:23, the poet assumes the punitive judicial rule of God among the heathen to be an undeniable fact, and presents for consideration the question, whether He who chasteneth nations cannot and will not also punish the oppressors of His church (cf. Genesis 18:25), He who teacheth men knowledge, i.e., He who nevertheless must be the omnipotent One, since all knowledge comes originally from Him? Jahve - thus does the course of argument close in Psalm 94:11 - sees through (ידע of penetrative perceiving or knowing that goes to the very root of a matter) the thoughts of men that they are vanity. Thus it is to be interpreted, and not: for they (men) are vanity; for this ought to have been כּי הבל המּה, whereas in the dependent clause, when the predicate is not intended to be rendered especially prominent, as in Psalm 9:21, the pronominal subject may precede, Isaiah 61:9; Jeremiah 46:5 (Hitzig). The rendering of the lxx (1 Corinthians 3:20), ὅτι εἰσὶ μάταιοι (Jerome, quoniam vanae sunt), is therefore correct; המּה, with the customary want of exactness, stands for הנּה. It is true men themselves are הבל; it is not, however, on this account that He who sees through all things sees through their thoughts, but He sees through them in their sinful vanity.

Psalm 94:16 Parallel Commentaries

rise up

Exodus 32:26-29 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come to me...

Numbers 25:6-13 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses...

Judges 5:23 Curse you Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse you bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD...

1 Kings 18:39,40 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God...

2 Kings 9:32 And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs.

2 Kings 10:15 And when he was departed there, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him: and he saluted him, and said to him...

Isaiah 59:16 And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation to him...

Isaiah 63:5 And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore my own arm brought salvation to me...

Jeremiah 5:1 Run you to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if you can find a man...

Ezekiel 22:30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land...

Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad.

3 John 1:8 We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.

stand up

Nehemiah 5:7 Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said to them, You exact usury, every one of his brother...

Jeremiah 26:16-19 Then said the princes and all the people to the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die...

John 7:50,51 Nicodemus said to them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,)...