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in the days of old, rides along through the highest heavens at the head of His people, casts down all powers hostile to Him and to His people, and compels all the world to confess that the God of Israel rules from His sanctuary with invincible might. A far more appropriate occasion is, therefore, to be found in the Syro-Ammonitish war of David, in which the Ark was taken with them by the people (2Sa 11:11); and the hymn was not at that time first of all composed when, at the close of the war, the Ark was brought back to the holy mountain (Hengstenberg, Reinke), but when it was set in motion from thence at the head of Israel as they advanced against the confederate kings and their army (2Sa 10:6). The war lasted into the second year, when a second campaign was obliged to be undertaken in order to bring it to an end; and this fact offers at least a second possible period for the origin of the Psalm. It is clear that in Psa 68:12-15, and still more clear that in Psa 68:20-24 (and from a wider point of view, Psa 68:29-35), the victory over the hostile kings is only hoped for, and in Psa 68:25-28, therefore, the pageantry of victory is seen as it were beforehand. It is the spirit of faith, which here celebrates beforehand the victory of Jahve, and sees in the single victory a pledge of His victory over all the nations of the earth. The theme of the Psalm, generalized beyond its immediate occasion, is the victory of the God of Israel over the world. Regarded as to the nature of its contents, the whole divides itself into two halves, vv. 2-19, 20-35, which are on the whole so distinct that the first dwells more upon the mighty deed God has wrought, the second upon the impressions it produces upon the church and upon the peoples of the earth; in both parts it is viewed now as future, now as past, inasmuch as the longing of prayer and the confidence of hope soar aloft to the height of prophecy, before which futurity lies as a fulfilled fact. The musical Sela occurs three times (Psa 68:8, Psa 68:20, Psa 68:33). These three forte passages furnish important points of view for the apprehension of the collective meaning of the Psalm.
But is David after all the author of this Psalm? The general character of the Psalm is more Asaphic than Davidic (vid., Habakkuk, S. 122). Its references to Zalmon, to Benjamin and the Northern tribes, to the song of Deborah, and in general to the Book of Judges (although not in its present