Psalms 68:11

THE THIRTY-TWO KINGDOMS OF CANAAN WERE DEFEATED

"The Lord giveth the word:

The women that publish the tidings are a great host.

Kings of armies flee, they flee;

And she that tarrieth at home divideth the spoil.

When ye lie among the sheepfolds,

It is as the wings of a dove covered with silver,

And her pinions with yellow gold.

When the Almighty scattered kings therein,

It was as when it snoweth in Zalmon."

"The last two verses here are unintelligible as they stand; we do know that Zalmon was a town near Shechem."[11] The presence of many italicized words in the various versions show how the scholars have "emended" and added words to arrive at what they consider to be the meaning. This is perhaps the most difficult part of the psalm.

The comment which to us best explains this passage is that of McCaw.

"A great host of women shouted God's praises as they accompanied the ark to Jerusalem (Psalms 68:11). Their chants consisted of disjointed sentences; some cried one thing, some another, snatches of old war songs (Psalms 68:2,13), fragments of unpreserved psalms (Psalms 68:18), and festive folk songs (Psalms 68:13). All of these are woven together so as to create a sense of pageantry enriched by memory, just as modern radio and TV documentaries are able to evoke a certain frame of mind by a series of impressions swiftly and successively faded in and out."[12]

This is as good an explanation as we have encountered regarding the apparently jumbled nature of these remarkable verses.