2 Samuel 22:40

For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

MacLaren's Expositions

2 Samuel

DAVID’S HYMN OF VICTORY

2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:51.

The Davidic authorship of this great hymn has been admitted even by critics who are in general too slow to recognise it. One of these says that ‘there is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in the psalm apply so closely as to David.’ The favourite alternative theory that the speaker is the personified nation is hard to accept. The voice of individual trust and of personal experience sounds clear in the glowing words. Two editions of the hymn are preserved for us,-in Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50 and 2 Samuel 22:1 - 2 Samuel 22:51. Slight variations exist in the two copies, which may probably be merely accidental. Nothing important depends on them. The text begins with the closing words of a description of God’s arming the singer for his victories, and goes on to paint the tumult of battle and the rout of the foe {2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:43}; then follows triumphant expectation of future wider victories {2 Samuel 22:44 - 2 Samuel 22:46}; and that leads up to the closing burst of grateful praise {2 Samuel 22:47 - 2 Samuel 22:51}.

I. We are not to forget that what is described in 2 Samuel 22:40 f11 - 2 Samuel 22:43 is a literal fight, with real swords against very real enemies. We may draw lessons of encouragement from it for our conflict with spiritual wickednesses, but we must not lose sight of the bloody combat with flesh and blood which the singer had waged. He felt that God had braced his armour on him, had given him the impenetrable ‘shield’ which he wore on his arm, and had strengthened his arms to bend the ‘bow of steel.’ We see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe, crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. ‘I did beat them small as the dust of the earth.’ His blows fell like those of a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. ‘I did stamp them as the mire of the streets,’-a vivid picture of trampling down the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50 gives the less picturesque variant, ‘did cast them out.’ In their despair the fugitives shriek aloud for God’s help, and the Psalmist has a stern joy in knowing their cries to be unheard.

Now, such delight in an enemy’s despair and destruction, such gratification at the vanity of his prayers, are far away from being Christian sentiments, and the gulf is not wholly bridged by the consideration that David felt himself to be God’s Anointed, and enmity to him to be, consequently, treason against God. His feelings were most natural and entirely consistent with the stage of revelation in which he lived. They were capable of being purified into that triumph in the victory of good and the ruin of evil without which there is no vigorous sympathy with Christ’s conflict. They kindle, by their splendid energy and condensed rapidity, an answering glow even in readers so far away from the scene as we are. But still they do belong to a lower level of feeling, and result from a less full revelation than belongs to Christianity. The light of battle which blazes in them is not the fire which Jesus longed to kindle on earth.

But we may well take a pattern from the stern soldier’s recognition that all his victory was due to God alone. The strength that he put forth was God’s gift. It was God who subdued the insurgents, not David. The panic which made the foe take to flight was infused into them by God. No name but Jehovah’s was to be carved on the trophy reared on the battlefield. The human victor was but the instrument of the divine Conqueror. Such lowly reference of all our power and success to Him will save us from overweening self-adulation, and is the surest way to retain the power which He gives, and which is lost most surely when we take the credit of it to ourselves.

II. The enemies thus far have been from among his own subjects, but in 2 Samuel 22:44 - 2 Samuel 22:46 a transition is made to victory over ‘strangers’; that is, foreign nations. The triumph over ‘the strivings of my people’ heartens the singer to expect that he will be’ head of the nations.’ The other version of the hymn {Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50} reads simply ‘the people.’

The picture of hasty surrender ‘as soon as they hear of me’ is graphic. His very name conquers. ‘The strangers shall submit themselves unto me’ is literally ‘shall lie,’ or yield feigned obedience. They ‘fade away’ as if withered by the hot wind of the desert. ‘They shall come limping’ {as the word here used signifies}, as if wounded in the fight, for which Psalm 18:1 - Psalm 18:50 reads ‘trembling.’

Now this vision of extended conquests, based as it is on past smaller victories, carries valuable lessons. David here lays hold of the great promises to his house of a wide dominion, and expects the beginnings of their fulfilment to himself. And he did extend his conquests beyond the territory of Israel. But we may take the hope as an instance in a particular direction of what should be the issue of all experience of God’s mercies. ‘To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.’ Smaller victories will be followed by greater. Our reception of God’s favouring help should widen our anticipations. Our gratitude to Him should be ‘a lively sense of favours to come.’ Progressive victory should be the experience of every believer.

We may see, too, dimly apparent through the large hope of the Psalmist-King, the prophecy of the worldwide victories of his Son, in whom the great promises of a dominion ‘from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth,’ are fulfilled.

III. 2 Samuel 22:46 - 2 Samuel 22:51 make a noble close to a noble hymn, in which the singer’s strong wing never flags, nor the rush of thought and feeling ever slackens. In it, even more absolutely than in the rest of the psalm, his victory is all ascribed to Jehovah. He alone acts, David simply receives. To have learned by experience that’ He lives,’ and is ‘my Rock,’ and to gather all the feelings excited by the retrospect of a long life into ‘Blessed be my Rock,’ is to have reaped and garnered the richest harvest which earth can yield. So at last sings the man whose early years had been full of struggles and privations. A morning of tempest has cleared into sunny evening calm, as it will with us all if the tempest blows us into our true shelter.

This psalm begins with a rapturous heaping together of the precious names of God, as the singer has had them revealed to him by experience. Foremost among these stands that one, ‘my Rock,’ which is caught up again in this closing burst of thanksgiving. That great Rock towers unchangeable above fleeting things. The river runs past its base, the woods nestling at its feet bud, and shed their pride of foliage, but it stands the same. David had many a time hid in ‘the clefts of the rocks’ in his years of wandering, and the figure is eloquent on his lips.

These closing strains gather together once more the main points of the previous verses, his deliverance from domestic foes, and his conquests over external enemies. These are wholly God’s work. True thankfulness delights to repeat its acknowledgments. God does not weary of giving, we should not weary of praising the Giver and His gifts. We renew our enjoyment of our long-past mercies by reiterating our thankfulness for them. They do not die as long as gratitude keeps their remembrance green.

But the Psalmist’s experience impels him to a vow {2 Samuel 22:50}. He will give thanks to God among the nations. God’s mercies bind, and, if rightly felt, will joyfully impel, the receiver to spread His name as far as his voice can reach. Love is sometimes silent, but gratitude must speak. The most unmusical voice is tuned to melody by God’s great blessings received and appreciated, and they need never want a theme who can tell what the Lord has done for their souls. ‘Then shall. . . the tongue of the dumb sing.’ A dumb Christian is a monstrosity. We are ‘the secretaries of His praise,’ and have been saved ourselves that we may declare His goodness.

2 Samuel 22:51 has been supposed by some to be a liturgical addition, on the ground that, if David were the author, he would not be likely to name himself thus. But there does not seem to be anything unnatural in his mentioning himself by name in such a connection, and the reference to his dynasty, based as it is on Nathan’s promise, is most fitting. The last thought about his mercies which the humble gratitude of the Psalmist utters is that they were not given to him for any good in himself, nor to be selfishly enjoyed, but that they were bestowed on him because of the place that he filled in the divine purposes, and belonged to ‘his seed’ as truly as to himself. So lowly had his prosperity made him. So truly had he sunk himself in his office, and in the great things that God meant to do through him and his house. We know better than David did what these were, and how the promise on which he rested his hopes of the duration of his house is fulfilled in his Son, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and who bears God’s name to all the nations.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

22:1-51 David's psalm of thanksgiving. - This chapter is a psalm of praise; we find it afterwards nearly as Ps 18. They that trust God in the way of duty, shall find him a present help in their greatest dangers: David did so. Remarkable preservations should be particularly mentioned in our praises. We shall never be delivered from all enemies till we get to heaven. God will preserve all his people, 2Ti 4:18. Those who receive signal mercies from God, ought to give him the glory. In the day that God delivered David, he sang this song. While the mercy is fresh, and we are most affected with it, let the thank-offering be brought, to be kindled with the fire of that affection. All his joys and hopes close, as all our hopes should do, in the great Redeemer.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

This song, which is found with scarcely any material variation as Psalm 18, and with the words of this first verse for its title, belongs to the early part of David's reign when he was recently established upon the throne of all Israel, and when his final triumph over the house of Saul, and over the pagan nations 2 Samuel 22:44-46, Philistines, Moabites, Syrians, Ammonites, and Edomites, was still fresh 2 Samuel 21. For a commentary on the separate verses the reader is referred to the commentary on Psalm 18.

The last words of David - i. e., his last Psalm, his last "words of song" 2 Samuel 22:1. The insertion of this Psalm, which is not in the Book of Psalms, was probably suggested by the insertion of the long Psalm in 2 Samuel 22.

David the son of Jesse said ... - The original word for "said" is used between 200 and 300 times in the phrase, "saith the Lord," designating the word of God in the mouth of the prophet. It is only applied to the words of a man here, and in the strikingly similar passage Numbers 24:3-4, Numbers 24:15-16, and in Proverbs 30:1; and in all these places the words spoken are inspired words. The description of David is divided into four clauses, which correspond to and balance each other.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 22

2Sa 22:1-51. David's Psalm of Thanksgiving for God's Powerful Deliverance and Manifold Blessings.

The song contained in this chapter is the same as the eighteenth Psalm, where the full commentary will be given [see on [278]Ps 18:1, &c.]. It may be sufficient simply to remark that Jewish writers have noticed a great number of very minute variations in the language of the song as recorded here, from that embodied in the Book of Psalms—which may be accounted for by the fact that this, the first copy of the poem, was carefully revised and altered by David afterwards, when it was set to the music of the tabernacle. This inspired ode was manifestly the effusion of a mind glowing with the highest fervor of piety and gratitude, and it is full of the noblest imagery that is to be found within the range even of sacred poetry. It is David's grand tribute of thanksgiving for deliverance from his numerous and powerful enemies, and establishing him in the power and glory of the kingdom.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me. See Gill on Psalm 18:39.

Geneva Study Bible

For thou hast {q} girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me.

(q) He acknowledges that God was the author of his victories, who gave him strength.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

2 Samuel 22:40

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

38 I will pursue my enemies and destroy them,

I will not turn till they are consumed.

39 I will consume them and dash them in pieces, that they may not arise,

And may fall under my feet.

40 And Thou girdest me with strength for war,

Thou bowest mine adversaries under me.

41 And Thou makest mine enemies turn the back to me;

My haters, I root them out.

The optative form ארדּפה serves to make the future signification of ארדּף (in the psalm) the more apparent. Consequently it is quite out of the question to take the other verbs as preterites. We are not compelled to do this by the interchange of imperfects c. vav consec. with simple imperfects, as the vav consec. is not used exclusively as expressive of the past. On the contrary, the substance of the whole of the following description shows very clearly that David refers not only to the victories he has already won, but in general to the defeat of all his foes in the past, the present, and the future; for he speaks as distinctly as possible not only of their entire destruction (2 Samuel 22:38, 2 Samuel 22:39, 2 Samuel 22:43), but also of the fact that God makes him the head of the nations, and distant and foreign nations to him homage. Consequently he refers not only to his own personal dominion, but also, on the strength of the promise which he had received from God, to the increase of the dominion of the throne of his house, whilst he proclaims in the Spirit the ultimate defeat of all the enemies of the kingdom of God. This Messianic element in the following description comes out in a way that cannot be mistaken, in the praise of the Lord with which he concludes in 2 Samuel 22:47-51. ואשׁמידם, "I destroy them," is stronger than ואשּׂיגם, "I reach them" (in the psalm). In 2 Samuel 22:39 the words are crowded together, to express the utter destruction of all foes. In the psalm ואכלּם is omitted. ותּזרני for ותּאזּרני in the psalm is not a poetical Syriasm, and still less a "careless solecism" (Hupfeld), but a simple contraction, such as we meet with in many forms: e.g., מלּפנוּ for מאלּפנוּ (Job 35:11; cf. Ewald, 232, b.). The form תּתּה for נתתּה (in the psalm) is unusual, and the aphaeresis of the נ can only be accounted for from the fact that this much-used word constantly drops its נ as a radical sound in the imperfect (see Ewald, 195, c.). The phrase ערף לּי תּתּה is formed after Exodus 23:27. "Giving the enemy to a person's back" means causing them to turn the back, i.e., putting them to flight.