Psalms 69:25

25. Let their habitation be desolate Again the verb should take the declarative, not the optative, sense: Their habitation shall be laid waste.

The imagery is nomadic, after the true Arab life, and the word “habitation” may take the sense of encampment, or village life in the desert, with the radical idea of fortified, or strong, “habitation,” where the greater safety was enjoyed. To lay these waste by plunder and rapine, or by divine judgments, was a most terrible calamity to a Shemite. In Psalms 69:23 their “loins” are represented as shaking through fear and alarm; here their safest dwellingplaces are laid waste, and they hence rooted out.

Let none dwell in their tents The Apostle Peter says of this entire verse, that “the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake [it] before concerning Judas.” Acts 1:16-20. It is, therefore, in harmony with eternal justice, and with the spirit of the New Testament, no less than with that of the Old.