John Calvin Commentary Psalms 9:20

"Put them in fear, O Jehovah: Let the nations know themselves to be but men. Selah" — Psalms 9:20 (ASV)

Put them in fear, O Jehovah. The Septuagint translates מורה, morah, [νομοθέτης,] a lawgiver, deriving it from ירה, yarah, which sometimes means to teach. But the scope of the passage requires that we should understand it as fear or dread; and this is the opinion of all sound expositors.

Now, we must consider what kind of fear David speaks of. God commonly subdues even His chosen ones to obedience by means of fear. But as He moderates His rigor towards them and, at the same time, softens their stony hearts, so that they willingly and quietly submit themselves to Him, He cannot be properly said to compel them by fear.

With respect to the reprobate, He takes a different way of dealing. As their obduracy is inflexible, so that it is easier to break than to bend them, He subdues their desperate obstinacy by force; not, indeed, that they are reformed, but, willingly or unwillingly, an acknowledgment of their own weakness is extorted from them. They may gnash their teeth and boil with rage, and even exceed wild beasts in cruelty, but when the dread of God seizes them, they are thrown down by their own violence and fall by their own weight. Some explain these words as a prayer that God would bring the nations under the yoke of David and make them tributaries to his government; but this is a cold and forced explanation. The word fear generally comprehends all the plagues of God, by which the rebellion of those who would never obey Him except by compulsion is repulsed, as by the heavy blows of a hammer.

Next follows the point to which the nations must be brought: namely, to acknowledge themselves to be mortal men. This, at first sight, seems to be a matter of small importance, but the doctrine it contains is far from being trifling. What is man, that he dares on his own to move a finger?

And yet all the ungodly run to excess as boldly and presumptuously as if there were nothing to hinder them from doing whatever they please. It is certainly through a disordered imagination that they claim for themselves what is peculiar to God; and, in short, they would never run to such great excess if they were not ignorant of their own condition.

David, when he beseeches God to strike the nations with terror, that they may know that they are men, does not mean that the ungodly will profit so much under the rods and chastisements of God as to humble themselves truly and from the heart; but the knowledge he speaks of simply means an experience of their own weakness.

His language is as if he had said, "Lord, since it is their ignorance of themselves that drives them to their rage against me, make them actually experience that their strength is not equal to their infatuated presumption; and after they are disappointed in their vain hopes, let them lie confounded and abased with shame."

It may often happen that those who are convinced of their own weakness do not yet reform; but much is gained when their ungodly presumption is exposed to mockery and scorn before the world, so that it may become apparent how ridiculous was the confidence they presumed to place in their own strength.

With respect to the chosen of God, they ought to profit under His chastisements in a different manner. It is fitting for them to be humbled by a sense of their own weakness, and willingly to divest themselves of all vain confidence and presumption. And this will be the case if they remember that they are but men.

Augustine has well and wisely said that the whole humility of man consists in the knowledge of himself. Moreover, since pride is natural to all, God must strike terror into all men indiscriminately, so that, on the one hand, His own people may learn to be humble, and on the other hand, the wicked, although they do not cease to elevate themselves above the condition of man, may be repulsed with shame and confusion.