John Calvin Commentary Psalms 78:65

"Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, Like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine." — Psalms 78:65 (ASV)

But the Lord awoke as one asleep. Some understand this as spoken of the Israelites, implying that the Lord awoke against them, and others, as spoken of their enemies. If the first sense is adopted, it need not cause us surprise that the Israelites are called, in the 66th verse, the enemies of God, just as they are also designated in Isaiah 1:24.

Therefore, says the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah! I will ease me of my adversaries, and avenge me of my enemies (Isaiah 1:24).

And thus the meaning will be that the Israelites paid dearly for abusing the patience of God, by taking encouragement from it to indulge in greater excess in committing sin; for, awakening suddenly, He rushed upon them with all the greater fury. But as we find the prophets drawing their doctrine from Moses, and also modeling their language on his as a standard, the opinion of those who understand this and the following verse as referring to the Philistines is just as probable.

The prophet here appears to have borrowed this order from the song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:27), where God declares that while He punished His own people, He, at the same time, did not forget to restrain their enemies. Since it is a common proverb that the outcome of wars is uncertain, if, after the enemies of the chosen tribes had obtained the victory, no change had happened to them, it would not have been so evident that what befell His own people was a punishment inflicted upon them by God.

But when God, after having afflicted and humbled the Israelites, made His judgments fall on their conquerors—without human agency, beyond all human expectation, and contrary to what happens in the ordinary course of events—from this it is all the more plainly evident that when the Israelites were laid in the dust, it was the work of God, who intended thus to punish them.

The prophet, however, at the same time, helps us understand that God was constrained, so to speak, by necessity, to punish them with greater severity. This was because, in afterwards inflicting His judgments upon the Philistines, He gave abundant evidence of His regard for His covenant, which the Israelites might easily think He had completely forgotten. Although He had, so to speak, taken the side of the Philistines for a time, it was not His intention utterly to withdraw His love from the children of Abraham, lest the truth of His promise should become void.

The figure of a drunken man may seem somewhat harsh; but the appropriateness of using it will appear when we consider that it is employed to accommodate the stupidity of the people. If they had possessed a pure and clear understanding, God would not have transformed Himself in this way and assumed a character foreign to His own.

When He, therefore, compares Himself to a drunken man, it was the drunkenness of the people—that is to say, their insensibility—that constrained Him to speak in this way, which was all the greater shame to them. With respect to God, the metaphor detracts nothing from His glory. If He does not immediately remedy our calamities, we are ready to think that He has sunk into a profound sleep.

But how can God, it may be said, be asleep in this way, when He is superior in strength to all the giants, and yet they can easily watch for a long time and are satisfied with little sleep? I answer, when He exercises forbearance and does not promptly execute His judgments, the interpretation that ignorant people place upon His conduct is that He loiters in this manner like a man who is stupefied and does not know how to proceed.

The prophet, on the contrary, declares that this sudden awakening of God will be more alarming and terrible than if He had at first lifted up His hand to execute judgment. It will be as if a giant, drunken with wine, should start up suddenly out of his sleep, while he still had not slept off his surfeit.

Many restrict the statement in the 66th verse, concerning God’s smiting His enemies behind, to the plague which He sent upon the Philistines, recorded in 1 Samuel 5:12. The phrase, everlasting disgrace, agrees very well with this interpretation, for it was a shameful disease to be afflicted with hemorrhoids in their hinder parts. But as the words, They were smitten behind, admit of a simpler sense, I leave the matter undecided.