Read Psalm 60 at Bible Gateway.
1a) Psa 60:1-4, God cast off His people when they turned from Him/ He shakes in order to restore:
1a) Psa 60:1, God, You have cast us off + turn to us (restore us) again;
1) Psa 60:1a, O God, You have cast us off + broken us down + been displeased;
2) Psa 60:1b, Oh, turn Yourself to us again!
1b) Psa 60:2a, You have made the earth tremble;
1c) Psa 60:2b, You have broken it;
2c) Psa 60:2c, Heal its breaches;
2b) Psa 60:2d, For it is shaking;
2a) Psa 60:3-4, God, You have shown us hard things + given us a standard of truth under which we may rally;
1) Psa 60:3, You have shown Your people hard things + made us drink the wine of confusion;
2) Psa 60:4, You have given a banner to those who fear You, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah
1b) Psa 60:5, David’s prayer: That Your beloved may be delivered, Save with Your right hand, and hear me;
central axis) Psa 60:6-8, The promise of God concerning three territories/ tribes/ enemies:
1a) Psa 60:6a, God has spoken in His holiness: “I will exult;
1b) Psa 60:6b, I will divide Shechem + measure out the Valley of Succoth;
1c) Psa 60:7a, Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine; (Transjordan)
2c) Psa 60:7b, Ephraim also is the helmet for My head; Judah is My scepter; (Israel proper)
2b) Psa 60:8a, Moab is My washpot; Over Edom I will cast My shoe;
2a) Psa 60:8b, Philistia, cry aloud because of Me.”
2b) Psa 60:9, David’s plea: Who will bring me to the strong city? Who will lead me to Edom?
2a) Psa 60:10-12, God cast off His people, but when they return to Him, He is their help and victory over their enemies:
1a) Psa 60:10, Is it not You, O God, who cast us off + did not go out with our armies?
1b) Psa 60:11a, Give us help from trouble;
2b) Psa 60:11b, For the help of man is useless;
2a) Psa 60:12, Through God we will do valiantly, For it is He who shall tread down our enemies. {p}
The first thing to understand about this psalm, is that God is not capricious. He does not cast off His people willy nilly because He had nothing else better to do that day.
“The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.” Deu 28:20
“As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.” 1 Chr 28:9
David understood that if God had cast them off, and not gone out with their armies, then it was because His people had turned from Him first, and needed to be restored to Him. The earthquake of the 1A pair is a prophetic type. When normal life, when what is expected, gets shaken, then people take notice and begin to examine themselves and their lives to see what went wrong. God allows the shaking so that we will wake up out of our slumber and complacency, and come to realize that we have strayed and need to be restored to Him.
When His people begin to examine themselves … yes, He may show them hard things, in which they have strayed from the truth. But for those who fear Him, He has given a banner of truth, an unshakable and unchangeable standard around which to repair. I believe that banner is the Written Word and the Living Word, the substance which cast the shadow of the Written Word. In fact, He is Yehovah Nissi, the Lord is our Banner (Exo 17:15).
Even though the A pairs begin on the discouraging note of being cast off, the central axis they surround is a Messianic prophecy proclaiming victory. First, in the A pair, God/ the King exults, cries aloud with rejoicing, because He knows what will play out. Philistia, on the other hand, cries aloud (with dismay implied), because the enemies of God realize that He has defeated them. The B pair describes actions which only victors take over territories and enemies that have been conquered. The C pair, besides proclaiming rulership over Israel proper, and likewise that which is outside of Israel (the Transjordan as a prophetic type), also highlights the two houses of Israel over which He, as King, unites them: Ephraim or the Northern Kingdom, and Judah or the Southern Kingdom (and by extension, Ephraim for the Spirit/ Christians; Judah for the Word/ Jews). That David wrote this psalm before there was a divided kingdom reveals the prophetic Messianic nature of the central axis.
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