Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

89:38-45 But Now You Have Renounced Your Promises to David. With all this glorious background, the psalm moves to its current situation: it looks and feels as if God has forsaken his promises to the house of David (and thus to his people). This section takes up words from the preceding parts of the psalm in order to stress the feeling of reversal: God's anointed (v. 38) was his special choice (v. 20), but now God is full of wrath against him; the covenant (v. 39) that should have meant security (v. 34), God has renounced; the king's "right hand" (v. 42) should govern even the rivers (v. 25), but now God has exalted the right hand of his foes; David's throne (v. 44) was to endure as long as the sun (vv. 29, 36), but now God has cast it to the ground. Rather than the reigning heir of David being "the highest of the kings of the earth" (v. 27), now all the Gentiles triumph over him and his people (vv. 40-43). Although this description sounds bleak, the psalm is not hopeless. In recognizing that the current situation seems to express God's "wrath against the anointed" (v. 38), it looks back to vv. 30-32: this current hardship may be God's chastisement upon the king for unfaithfulness, and thus be a call to repentance.