5 God will likewise destroy you forever. He will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living. Selah.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
God shall likewise destroy thee for ever. From these words it is made still more evident that his object in dwelling upon the aggravated guilt of Doeg, was to prove the certainty of his approaching doom, and this rather for his own conviction and comfort, than with a view to alarming the conscience of the offender. Accordingly, he declares his persuasion that God would not allow his treachery to pass unpunished, though he might for a time connive at the perpetration of it. The ungodly are disposed, so long as their prosperity continues, to indulge in undisturbed security; and the saint of God, when he sees the power of which they are possessed, and witnesses their proud contempt of the divine judgments, is too apt to be overwhelmed with unbelieving apprehensions. But in order to establish his mind in the truth which he announces, it is observable that the Psalmist heaps one expression upon another, -- God shall destroy thee, take thee away, pluck thee out, root thee out, -- as if by this multiplicity of words he would convince himself more effectually, that God was able to overthrow this adversary with all his boasted might and authority. [1] In adding that God would root him out of his dwelling-place or tent, [2] and out of the land of the living, he insinuates that the wicked will be destroyed by God, however securely they may seem to repose ir the nest of some comfortable mansion, and in the vain hope of living upon earth for ever. Possibly he may allude, in mentioning a tent, to the profession of Doeg, as shepherds have their dwelling in tents.
1 - "Wonderful," says Bishop Horne, "is the force of the verbs in the original, which convey to us the four ideas of laying prostrate,' dissolving as by fire,' sweeping away as with a besom,' and totally extirpating root and branch,' as a tree eradicated from the spot on which it grew." The second verb, ychtk, yachtecha, Bythner explains, "will snatch thee away, as one snatches fire from a hearth. From chth, chatheh, he snatched off live coals or fire from one place to another."
2 - There is another interpretation of this expression which may here be stated. It has been thought that the allusion is to God's tabernacle. "m'hl, meohel," says Hammond, "is literally from the tabernacle,' not from thy dwelling-place:' and so the LXX. render it, Apo skenomatos,' from the tabernacle;' and though the Latin, and Syriac, and Arabic, have added tuo, thy, yet neither will the Hebrew bear, nor do the Chaldee acknowledge it, who read by way of paraphrase, He shall cause thee to depart from inhabiting in the place of the Schechina, or tabernacle, the place of God's presence.'" Hammond supposes that the expression is to be understood "of the censure of excommunication, which in the last and highest degree was Schammatha, delivering up the offender to the hand of heaven to be cut off, himself and his posterity." "Doeg," says Archbishop Secker, "had no office in the tabernacle; but it seems, by his history, that he frequented it, which he might do to seem a good man. And there seems an opposition between his being plucked out of God's dwelling-place, and David's continuing in the house of God, verse eighth."
God shall likewise destroy thee for ever - Margin, "beat thee down." The Hebrew word means to "tear, to break down, to destroy:" Leviticus 14:45; Judges 6:30. The reference here is not to the "tongue" alluded to in the previous verses, but to Doeg himself. The language in the verse is intensive and emphatic. The main idea is presented in a variety of forms, all designed to denote utter and absolute destruction - a complete and entire sweeping away, so that nothing should be left. The word "here" used would suggest the idea of "pulling down" - as a house, a fence, a wall; that is, the idea of completely "demolishing" it; and the meaning is, that destruction would come upon the informer and slanderer "like" the destruction which comes upon a house, or wall, or fence, when it is entirely pulled down.
He shall take thee away - An expression indicating in another form that he would be certainly destroyed. The verb used here - חתה châthâh - is elsewhere used only in the sense of taking up and carrying fire or coals: Isaiah 30:14; Proverbs 6:27; Proverbs 25:22. The idea here "may" be that he would be seized and carried away with haste, as when one takes up fire or coals, he does it as rapidly as possible, lest he should be burned.
And shall pluck thee out of thy dwelling-place - literally, "out of the tent." The reference is to his abode. The allusion here in the verb that is used - נסח nâsach - is to the act of pulling up plants; and the idea is, that he would be plucked up as a plant is torn from its roots.
And root thee out of the land of the living - As a tree is torn up from the roots and thus destroyed. He would be no more among the living. Compare Psalm 27:13. All these phrases are intended to denote that such a man would be utterly destroyed.
God shall likewise destroy thee -
1. God shall set himself to destroy thee; יתצך yittotscha, "he will pull down thy building;" he shall unroof it, dilapidate, and dig up thy foundation.
2. He shall bruise or break thee to pieces for ever; thou shalt have neither strength, consistence, nor support.
3. He will mow thee down, and sweep thee away like dust or chaff, or light hay in a whirlwind, so that thou shalt be scattered to all the winds of heaven. Thou shalt have no residence, no tabernacle: that shall be entirely destroyed. Thou shalt be rooted out for ever from the land of the living. The bad fruit which it has borne shall bring God's curse upon the tree; it shall not merely wither, or die, but it shall be plucked up from the roots, intimating that such a sinner shall die a violent death. Selah. So it shall be, and so it ought to be.
God shall likewise (c) destroy thee for ever, he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of [thy] dwelling place, and (d) root thee out of the land of the living. Selah.
(c) Though God forbear for a time, yet at length he will recompense your falsehood.
(d) Even though you seem to be never so sure settled.
God shall likewise destroy thee for ever,.... As a just retaliation for the mischief done to others; or, "therefore God shall destroy" (z), &c. even body and soul in hell, with an everlasting destruction, which will be the case of every wicked man, and particularly of the antichristian party, Revelation 14:10; the word is used of breaking down the house in which the leprosy was, Leviticus 14:45; and denotes the utter extinction of Doeg's family, and the irrecoverable ruin of antichrist, Revelation 18:21;
he shall take thee away; as fire from the hearth, Isaiah 30:14; or as burning coals from the altar: a word from the root here used signifies a censer: and the meaning is, that as his tongue was a fire, and set on fire of hell, and he was as a burning coal, he was fit for nothing but to be cast into everlasting burnings;
and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place; "tent", or "tabernacle" (a); referring to the tents of shepherds, he being the chief of Saul's shepherds, or to some stately palace he had built for himself to dwell in, upon his advancement at court; or rather to the tabernacle of the Lord, where he had been an hypocritical worshipper; but now should be cut off from the church of God, as a rotten member, and cast out of the tabernacle of Jacob, Malachi 2:12; while David flourished as an olive tree in the house of the Lord, Psalm 52:8;
and root thee out of the land of the living. In retaliation for his rooting out Ahimelech's family, and the inhabitants of Nob; so in like manner he and his should be destroyed root and branch, and not see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, nor enjoy eternal life in the world to come.
Selah; on this word; see Gill on Psalm 3:2. The Targum renders the word "Selah" here "for ever", as in Psalm 52:3.
(z) , Sept. "propterea", V. L. "idcirco etiam", Piscator; "ideo etiam", Michaelis. (a) "de tabernaculo", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Musculus; "e tentorio", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius.
likewise--or, "so," "also," as you have done to others God will do to you (Psalm 18:27). The following terms describe the most entire ruin.
The announcement of the divine retribution begins with גּם as in Isaiah 66:4; Ezekiel 16:43; Malachi 2:9. The אהל is not, as one might suppose, the holy tent or tabernacle, that he has desecrated by making it the lurking-place of the betrayer (1-Samuel 21:7), which would have been expressed by מאהלו, but his own dwelling. God will pull him, the lofty and imperious one, down (נתץ, like a tower perhaps, Judges 8:9; Ezekiel 26:9) from his position of honour and his prosperity, and drag him forth out of his habitation, much as one rakes a coal from the hearth (חתה Biblical and Talmudic in this sense), and tear him out of this his home (נסח, cf. נתק, Job 18:14) and remove him far away (Deuteronomy 28:63), because he has betrayed the homeless fugitive; and will root him out of the land of the living, because he has destroyed the priests of God (1-Samuel 22:18). It then proceeds in Psalm 52:8 very much like Psalm 40:4, Psalm 40:5, just as the figure of the razor also coincides with Psalm belonging to exactly the same period (Psalm 51:8; Psalm 57:5, cf. לטשׁ, Psalm 7:13). The excitement and indignant anger against one's foes which expresses itself in the rhythm and the choice of words, has been already recognised by us since Ps 7 as a characteristic of these Psalm. The hope which David, in Psalm 52:8, attaches to God's judicial interposition is the same as e.g., in Psalm 64:10. The righteous will be strengthened in the fear of God (for the play of sounds cf. Psalm 40:4) and laugh at him whom God has overthrown, saying: Behold there the man, etc. According to Psalm 58:11, the laughing is joy at the ultimate breaking through of justice long hidden and not discerned; for even the moral teaching of the Old Testament (Proverbs 24:17) reprobates the low malignant joy that glories at the overthrow of one's enemy. By ויּבטח the former trust in mammon on the part of the man who is overtaken by punishment is set forth as a consequence of his refusal to put trust in God, in Him who is the true מעוז = Arab. m‛âḏ, hiding-place or place of protection (vid., on 31;3, Psalm 37:39, cf. Psalm 17:7; 22:33). הוּה is here the passion for earthly things which rushes at and falls upon them (animo fertur).
Pluck thee - Violently and suddenly as the Hebrew word signifies, from thy house and lands, and all the wages of thy righteousness. Root - Though thou seemest to have taken deep root, yet God shall pluck thee up by the very roots, and destroy thee both root and branch.
*More commentary available at chapter level.