Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 73

Truly. — See Note, Psalms 62:2. This particle often, like the Latin at, introduces a rejoinder to some supposed statement.

Dryden’s lines express the feeling of this opening:

“Yet sure the gods are good! I would gladly think so,
If they would give me leave!
But virtue in distress, and vice in triumph,
Make atheists of mankind.”

The question arises whether the second clause of the verse limits, or only repeats, the first. No doubt, in theory, God was understood to be good to Israel generally, but the very subject of the psalm seems to require a limitation here.

The poet sees that a moral correspondence with their profession is necessary, even in the chosen people—the truth which St. Paul stated with such insistence, “For they are not all Israel which are of Israel.”

Slipped. —Literally, were poured out. This metaphor for weakness and instability is obvious. Compare.

“Dissolvuntur enim tum demum membra fluuntque.”

Lucretius, 4.920.

Foolish. —Better, arrogant.

When I saw. —Perhaps the conjunction is wrongly supplied, and the word “saw” here is synonymous with “envied” in the first clause. (Compare the Latin invideo.)

For there are no bands in their death. —This is quite unintelligible, and does not accurately render the Hebrew, which gives, For there are no bands to their death. And by analogy of the derivation of tormenta from tor queo, we might give the Hebrew word bands the sense of pangs, rendering, “they have a painless death,” if such a statement about the wicked were not quite out of keeping with the psalm. The ancient versions give us no help. Some emendation of the text is absolutely necessary.

In the only other place it occurs (Isaiah 58:6) the word means specially the bands of a yoke; hence a most ingenious conjecture, which, by only a change of one letter, gives there are no bands to their yoke, i.e., they are “chartered libertines,” men of libido effrenata et indomita, a description admirably in keeping with that of the animal grossness in the next clause, “fat is their belly.” (Compare to the image of an animal restive from over-feeding, Deuteronomy 32:15; Burgess, Notes on the Hebrew Psalms.)

Strength. —The word is curious, but explained by Arabic cognates to mean belly, possibly from its roundness (“a fair round belly with good capon lined”); from root meaning roll.

Therefore. —Better,

“Therefore pride is their necklace,
And violence their mantle.”

The first metaphor might have been suggested either by the fact that the rich lavished large sums on jewellery, especially necklaces (see Note, Song of Solomon 1:10), or possibly from the usual description of the proud as “stiffnecked.”