Psalms 149:7

"To execute vengeance upon the nations,

And punishments upon the peoples;

To bind their kings with chains,

And their nobles with fetters of iron;

To execute upon them the judgment written:

This honor have all the saints.

Praise ye Jehovah."

"To execute vengeance upon the nations" (Psalms 149:7). The vengeance spoken of here was not Israel's vengeance but God's, as evidenced by its having been written (Psalms 149:9). The kingdoms of Canaan had not oppressed Israel. Their horrible immoralities had incurred the wrath of God, and Israel was God's instrument of their punishment. The view of Israel taking vengeance upon the nations that had persecuted them, as alleged by some, is simply not in the picture at all.

Despite the view that, "It is most probable that the psalm is eschatological,"[17] we can see nothing in it that suggests that. The carnal weapons in view here are not those of the New Israel. The binding, fettering, and enslavement of kings suggests nothing that we can associate with the End Times. It appears that the eschatalogical interpretations have been forced by difficulties in the psalm, difficulties which disappear when the event to which the psalm points is properly understood as Israel's military defeat and occupation of Canaan.

The interpretation advanced by Addis, namely, that this paragraph means that, "Israel (as an earthly kingdom) is to punish and crush other nations."[18] is unacceptable. The earthly kingdom idea perished with the Advent of Christ whose `kingdom is not of this world.'

We admire the ingenuity and zeal of those interpreters who do their best to apply this psalm to the ultimate triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ in that hour when, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever" (Revelation 11:15), finding in the two-edged sword of this psalm a prophecy of that "two-edged sword" in the mouth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:15). We cannot see anything like that in this psalm.

What then, is this psalm? It is a hymn of victorious Israel as they began the conquest of the Promised Land. One great victory is behind them, probably the fall of Jericho, and they anticipate many other victories. They will indeed bind and fetter kings, and eventually cut off the thumbs of Adonibezek; but that all of this is a prophecy of what fleshly Israel would ever do upon another occasion is simply not true. That the psalmist either wrote this, or adapted a psalm already in existence, as an encouragement of the returnees from captivity, seems the best way to understand it. That fleshly Israel totally misunderstood it is fully in keeping with Israel's history.

"To execute upon them the judgment written" (Psalms 149:9). Here we are upon solid ground indeed. Israel did indeed execute the judgment that God had written against the kingdoms of Canaan in this passage:

"When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when Jehovah thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them, neither make marriages with them, Etc." (Deuteronomy 7:1-2).

This is the only passage in the Bible that envisions Israel punishing and destroying a number of nations; and therefore we conclude with a great deal of assurance that the event prophesied here in Deuteronomy has to be the event extolled in Psalms 149.

"This honor have all his saints" (Psalms 149:9b). All Israel participated in the conquest, as for example, when they all marched around the walls of Jericho, and thus all of them shared in the honor God bestowed upon them in his removal of the pagan kingdoms of Canaan and giving the Promised Land to the Israelites as an inheritance.