Psalm 83: Keep Not Thou Silence
Ten nations, named one after another like the roll call of a nightmare: Edom, Ishmael, Moab, the Hagarenes, Gebal, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia, Tyre, and Assur looming at the back. They have "taken crafty counsel" against God's hidden ones — against the people whose whole existence is a kind of secret the world does not know what to do with. And so Asaph prays the prayer of the encircled: do not be silent, do not hold thy peace. Do to them as to Midian, to Sisera, to Oreb and Zeeb. Scatter them like stubble before the wind, like a wheel that will not stop rolling. It sounds fierce, and it is. But look carefully at what he is actually asking for: "Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Lord." Even in the psalm's hottest anger, the goal is not annihilation but recognition — that the confederacy of the proud might one day lift their bruised faces and discover who was really on the throne the whole time.
00:00 The Confederacy Against Thy Hidden Ones
01:00 Do to Them as to Midian
02:00 That Men May Know Thy Name