Psalm 68:11

Note

The Lord gives a word, and those who carry it become a great host. The Hebrew says they are women: the women of Israel who spread the news of victory in song.

Psalm 68, a psalm of David, opens with the cry that once sent the ark on its way through the wilderness: "God arises. His enemies are scattered, and those who hate Him flee His presence" (Psalm 68:1; compare Numbers 10:35). The psalm remembers God marching before His people through the wasteland while Sinai shook (Psalm 68:7–8), and sings that "from Your bounty You provided for the poor" (Psalm 68:10). Our verse comes next, and the line after it sounds like the news itself: "Kings and their armies flee in haste; she who waits at home divides the plunder" (Psalm 68:12). Later the psalm sees God go up in triumph: "You have ascended on high; You have led captives away" (Psalm 68:18), a line Paul applies to the ascension of Christ (Ephesians 4:8).

What the Lord gives is an omer, a word or saying. Those who carry it are hamvaserot, the piel participle of basar (בָּשַׂר) in the feminine plural with the article: the women bringing the news. They are called a "great company," tsava rav, and tsava is the ordinary word for an army. While the women heralds form a great army, in the next verse the ‘kings of armies,’ the same word again, run away. In Israel it was often women who announced a victory in song. After the crossing of the sea, Miriam "took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her with tambourines and dancing" (Exodus 15:20). When David came back from killing the Philistine, "the women came out of all the cities of Israel" (1 Samuel 18:6) singing and dancing.

The translations make different choices here. The KJV says "great was the company of those that published it," which leaves the heralds unnamed and dwells on their number. The BSB keeps the Hebrew gender, "a great company of women proclaim it," and goes on to print verse 12 inside quotation marks as what they proclaim. The LSV is the most literal: "The female proclaimers [are] a numerous host." The Korean Bibles split along that line too: the 흠정역 follows the KJV, while the 개역한글 says the women who announce the news are a great host.

The Septuagint renders the line κύριος δώσει ῥῆμα τοῖς εὐαγγελιζομένοις δυνάμει πολλῇ, a promise that the Lord will give a word to those who bring good news with great power. The heralds are named with a participle of euangelizomai, the verb Paul uses for Isaiah's heralds, "those who bring good news" (Romans 10:15). For the great host it has δύναμις, a word the Septuagint often uses for an army, which also means power; so the line reads ‘with great power,’ and on that reading the heralds receive from the Lord both the word and the strength to carry it.

Wesley's note on "Gave" is brief: "He put this triumphant song into their mouths" Wesley. Matthew Henry reads the whole passage forward: "The account of Israel's victories is to be applied to the victories over death and hell, by the exalted Redeemer, for those that are his" Matthew Henry. Of the rain in the verses before, he writes, "The Spirit of grace and the gospel of grace are the plentiful rain, with which God confirms his inheritance" Matthew Henry.

In the Gospels the first news of the resurrection was also carried by women. Leaving the empty tomb, they "hurried away from the tomb in fear and great joy, and ran to tell His disciples" (Matthew 28:8), and "Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!”" (John 20:18). Like the women of the psalm, the women at the tomb carried a word they had been given, not one of their own. The news comes from the Lord; those who carry it only pass it on.