Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 83:13

"O my God, make them like the whirling dust; As stubble before the wind." — Psalms 83:13 (ASV)

A wheel. —Hebrew, galgal. (See Note, Psalms 77:18, and compare to Isaiah 17:13, where the Authorized Version has literally rolling thing, the margin “thistle down,” and the Septuagint, “dust of a wheel.”)

Sir G. Grove (Smith’s Biblical Dictionary, article Oreb) says, “like the spherical masses of dry weeds which course over the plains of Esdraelon and Philistia.”

He possibly refers to the wild artichoke, which struck Mr. Thomson so forcibly as the origin of the psalmist’s figure. He describes them as vegetable globes, light as a feather, which, when the parent stem breaks, become the sport of the wind. “At the proper season thousands of them come suddenly over the plain, rolling, leaping, bounding with vast racket, to the dismay both of the horse and rider.”

To this day the Arabs, who call it ‘akhûb, employ it in the same figurative way:—

“May you be whirled like ‘akhûb before the wind!”

THOMSON: Land and Book, 563.