Do not keep silent, O God;Do not hold Your peace or be still, O God. For behold, Your enemies are in tumult,And those who hate You have raised their heads [in hatred of You]. They concoct crafty schemes against Your people,And conspire together against Your hidden and precious ones. They have said, “Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation;Let the name of Israel be remembered no more.” For they have conspired together with one mind;Against You they make a covenant— The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,Of Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre. Assyria also has joined with them;They have helped the children of Lot [the Ammonites and the Moabites] and have been an arm [of strength] to them. Selah. Deal with them as [You did] with Midian,As with Sisera and Jabin at the brook of Kishon, Who were destroyed at En-dor,Who became like dung for the earth. Make their nobles like Oreb and ZeebAnd all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, Who said, “Let us possess for ourselvesThe pastures of God.” O my God, make them like whirling dust,Like chaff before the wind [worthless and without substance]. Like fire consumes the forest,And like the flame sets the mountains on fire, So pursue them with Your tempestAnd terrify them with [the violence of] Your storm. Fill their faces with shame and disgrace,That they may [persistently] seek Your name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever;Yes, let them be humiliated and perish, That they may know that You alone, whose name is the Lord,Are the Most High over all the earth.

Psalm 83

Your circumstances may seem so overwhelming you feel like the very seasick passenger who had turned several shades of green and was leaning over the rail of the ocean liner. The steward came along, sized up what was happening, and threw out this cheerful word: “Don’t be discouraged. Just remember, no one’s ever died yet of seasickness.”

The nauseous man, his face ashen, looked up at the steward and replied, “Oh, don’t say that. It’s only the hope of dying that’s keeping me alive.”

Have things gone wrong in a big way for you? You face several calamities at once and no help is in sight. You feel surrounded by trouble, evil, or sorrow, and you cannot see a path of escape? Only the hope of dying is keeping you alive?

Welcome to Psalm 83- a prayer for God to defend you and take action against your problems.

George Wood

Psalm 83 begins with a question: is help on the way? While we realize how serious things are, we wonder if God does. We are not alone if we feel as though we are more alert to our danger than God. In this psalm, the psalmist begins by asking God to pay attention.

Often, from our view, God appears silent, still or quiet. We are in turn often like the disciples in the storm- we’re panicking while He’s asleep. It appears that our Heavenly Helper is oblivious to the threats we clearly see. Life can seem unresponsive in many of life’s dark passages and excruciating pressures.

We are left on our own to deal with terror and like the psalmist, we wish for God to speak, and failing to do so, He cold at least open His eyes and take a look at what we’re facing.

We must not see the psalmist tone as accusatory for deep down he knows that God truly cares for him and that beyond his own personal safety, God’s honor is on trial. He refers to the enemies as “yours” rather than “mine.”

The interesting thing that this psalm tells is that the people who were against Israel were close relatives which made the distress more intense. Exon and Ishmael were the half-brothers to Jacob and Isaac while Moab and Ammon were the sons of Lot. The other neighbors joined to form a circle about Israel on all sides. It is clear that the psalmist clearly knows the names of his problems, just as we know the identities of the things which plague us. We can take comfort, for God does, too.

Our response as we deal with our current adversity is to remember what God has done for us in the past. We, as the people of God have a battle-scarred history. If we know that the Lord has helped us before, what makes us think He will fail us this time?

In this psalm, the writer runs through a list of selected names of Israel’s enemies who had been vanquished, but we have a longer list because we know Christ Jesus. We are to remember that Christ was “delivered over to death for our sins…and raised to life for our justification (Romans 4:25), that “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross”(Colossians 2:15). Because of this we have hope for “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).

A season of prayer will put faith into our hearts to believe that our adversaries are as blowable as tumbleweeds and as combustible as chaff rather than seeing them as formidable and unstoppable. It is deception to believe that our problems are permanent for God in His time will make them vanish before the smoke of the flames of His judgement and before the might of His wind.

This is a powerful model, like many of the psalms, of prayer. This psalm reveals what the first thing we focus on when we have really big problems- our own needs. Asaph, because of his concern that God might not do anything, asks Him to start speaking and looking.

By the time Asaph get to the end of Psalm 83, his external circumstances are no different than they were in the beginning. His enemies are still in place; God hasn’t done anything yet, but as he prays, Asaph is being reminded that God has acted before to defend His people, that in his personal danger, God’s cause is at stake, and whenever God puts forth His power the ones who have terrified others become terrified themselves.

Will we perish because of the present hardships? No, but our adversaries will, for while our problems are only temporary, God’s action against them is permanent.

The prayer of Asaph ends by asking God to reveal Himself as Lord to the enemies of His people, Israel. Let this encourage us, in our situation to pray for a revelation of God’s presence in our own lives.

If we choose to pray this psalm, we will let the Holy Spirit help us so that we can minimize the things that threaten us and maximize what God has for our future.

Ready, set, pray!

Dr. John Thompson