together by means of Dechî, and עז התאזּר together by means of Athnach. עז, as in Psa 29:1-11, points to the enemies; what is so named is God's invincibly triumphant omnipotence. This He has put on (Isa 51:9), with this He has girded Himself - a military word (Isa 8:9): Jahve makes war against everything in antagonism to Himself, and casts it to the ground with the weapons of His wrathful judgments. We find a further and fuller description of this עז התאזר in Isa 59:17; Isa 63:1., cf. Dan 7:9.[1]
That which cannot fail to take place in connection with the coming of this accession of Jahve to the kingdom is introduced with אף. The world, as being the place of the kingdom of Jahve, shall stand without tottering in opposition to all hostile powers (Psa 96:10). Hitherto hostility towards God and its principal bulwark, the kingdom of the world, have disturbed the equilibrium and threatened all God-appointed relationships with dissolution; Jahve's interposition, however, when He finally brings into effect all the abundant might of His royal government, will secure immoveableness to the shaken earth (cf. Psa 75:4). His throne stands, exalted above all commotion, מאז; it reaches back into the most distant past. Jahve is מעולם; His being loses itself in the immemorial and the immeasurable. The throne and nature of Jahve are not incipient in time, and therefore too are not perishable; but as without beginning, so also they are endless, infinite in duration.
Verses 3-5
All the raging of the world, therefore, will not be able to hinder the progress of the kingdom of God and its final breaking through to the glory of victory. The sea with its mighty mass of waters, with the constant unrest of its waves, with its ceaseless pressing against the solid land and foaming against the rocks, is an emblem of the Gentile world alienated from and at enmity with God; and the rivers (floods) are emblems of worldly kingdoms, as the Nile of the Egyptian (Jer 44:7.), the Euphrates of the Assyrian (Isa 8:7.), or more exactly, the Tigris, swift as an arrow, of the Assyrian, and the
