Psalms 83:12

12 for they said, “Let us seize for our own use these pasturelands of God!”

Psalms 83:12 Meaning and Commentary

Psalms 83:12

Who said
Not the kings and princes of Midian just mentioned, but the confederate enemies of Israel, named ( Psalms 83:6-8 ) , to whom the like things are wished as to the Midianites and others, because they said what follows:

let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession;
not only the temple, which was eminently the house of God, but all the habitations of the Israelites in Jerusalem, and other places, where the Lord vouchsafed to dwell; unless this should be ironically spoken by their enemies calling them so, because they pretended, as they reckoned it, to have and to hold them by the gift of God; whereas, of right, they belonged to them, at least some of them: such a claim was made by the Ammonites in the times of Jephthah, ( Judges 11:13 ) , and to dispossess the Israelites was the intention of the Ammonites and Moabites in the times of Jehoshaphat, ( 2 Chronicles 20:10 2 Chronicles 20:11 ) .

Psalms 83:12 In-Context

10 They were destroyed at Endor, and their decaying corpses fertilized the soil.

11 Let their mighty nobles die as Oreb and Zeeb did. Let all their princes die like Zebah and Zalmunna,

12 for they said, “Let us seize for our own use these pasturelands of God!”

13 O my God, scatter them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind!

14 As a fire burns a forest and as a flame sets mountains ablaze,