Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 75

For that ... —The wonders just performed for Israel have repeated the old conviction that God’s name, a word of power to save (Psalms 145:18), is near. .

When I. —Rather, When I have chosen my time, I will judge uprightly. This sense: “my time” being shown by the emphatic “I” of the Hebrew. (Compare to Acts 17:31.) The word rendered in the Authorised Version “congregation” (moed), has plainly here its first derivative sense of a set time, or “occasion.” (Habakkuk 2:3.) So Septuagint and Vulgate here; but Symmachus gives “synagogue.”

It is quite clear that the speaker of these words is God Himself, who suddenly, as in Psalm 46:10, breaks in with the announcement of judgment. But how far the Divine utterance extends in the psalm is not quite clear. Some end it with Psalm 75:3; others with Psalm 75:5.

The earth ... —Better—

“Are earth and all its inhabitants dissolved?
It was I adjusted its pillars.”

(See Hannah’s song, 1 Samuel 2:8.) Though the crisis is such that all is confusion and anarchy (compare Isaiah 24:19-20 for the figure), there is no cause for fear. There is still a Ruler in heaven, He who built up the edifice which now seems to totter to its fall.

The verb rendered in the Authorised Version “bear up,” is used in Job 28:15 and Isaiah 40:12 in the sense of “weighing” or “measuring,” but with the same allusion to the creative work of God. Here it plainly means, so to adjust the pillars as to make them equal to the weight they have to bear.

The “pillars” are the “mountains,” as in Job 26:11. (See Note, Psalms 24:2.) Compare Shelley—

“Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns are.”

Fools ... foolishly. —Better, arrogant ... arrogantly. See Psalms 73:3. (Compare to 1 Samuel 2:3.)

Lift not up your horn. —The “horn” is a symbol of honour (Psalms 112:9); of strength (Micah 4:13; Deuteronomy 33:17). The figure is taken from horned animals. (See 1 Samuel 2:1; 1 Samuel 2:10.)

With a stiff neck. —Better, with the neck proudly or wantonly raised.