to see · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular
people
עַמְּךָ֣'a.me.Kha
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
things
קָשָׁ֑הka.Shah
H7186
severe (in various applications) · adjective, feminine singular absolute
drink
הִ֝שְׁקִיתָ֗נוּhish.ki.Ta.nu
H8248
to quaff · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix
wine
יַ֣יִןYa.yin
H3196
wine (as fermented) · noun, common masculine singular construct
astonishment
תַּרְעֵלָֽהtar.'e.Lah
H8653
reeling · noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 71:20 Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
Isaiah 51:17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of…
Isaiah 51:22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling…
Jeremiah 25:15 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to…
Psalms 75:8 For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereo…
Ezekiel 23:31-32 Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister; therefore will I give her cup into thine hand.
Nehemiah 9:32 Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all the trouble seem little bef…
Lamentations 4:21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken,…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 60:1-5
The title gives us an account, 1. Of the general design of the psalm. It is Michtam - David's jewel, and it is to teach. The Levites must teach it to the people, and by it teach them both to trust in God and to triumph in him; we must, in it, teach ourselves and one another. In a day of public rejoicing we have need to be taught to direct our joy to God and to terminate it in him, to give none of that praise to the instruments of our deliverance which is due to him only, and to encourage our hopes with our joys. 2. Of the particular occasion of it. It was at a time, (1.) When he was at war with the Syrians, and still had a conflict with them, both those of Mesopotamia and those of Zobah. (2.…
drink . . . wine of astonishment--literally, "of staggering"--that is, made us weak (compare Psa 75:8; Isa 51:17, Isa 51:22).
John Gill on Psalms 60:3
Thou hast showed thy people hard things,.... As to have their city and temple burial, multitudes of them slain, and the rest carried captive, and put into the hands of cruel lords and hard masters, and made a proverb, a taunt, and a curse, in all places; and all this done to a people that were the Lord's by profession, who called themselves so, though now a "loammi", Hosea 1:9; and these were hard things to flesh and blood, yet no other than what they deserved;
thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment; or "of trembling" (n), Isaiah 51:17; that is, to endure such troubles as made them tremble, and astonished and stupefied them; took away their senses, and made them unfit for anyth…
Psalm 60:1-3
1. O God! thou hast cast us off; thou hast scattered us; thou hast been displeased: O turn thyself to us again! 2. Thou hast made the earth [or the land] to tremble; thou hast caused it to open wide: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. 3. Thou hast showed thy people hard things: thou hast made us drunk with the wine of astonishment. [382]
1. O God! thou hast cast us off. With the view of exciting both himself and others to a more serious consideration of the goodness of God, which they presently experienced, he begins the psalm with prayer; and a comparison is instituted, designed to show that the government of Saul had been under the divine reprobation. He complains of…
The Church Fathers
The first labour is, that thou shouldest be displeasing to thyself, that sins thou shouldest battle out, that thou shouldest be changed into something better: the second labour, in return for thy having been changed, is to bear the tribulations and temptations of this world, and amid them to hold on even unto the end. Of these things therefore when he was speaking, while pointing out such things, he addeth what? "Thou hast shown to Thy people hard things" (ver. 3): to Thy people now, made tributary after the victory of David. "Thou hast shown to Thy people hard things." Wherein? In persecutions which the Church of Christ hath endured, when so much blood of martyrs was spilled. "Thou hast given us to drink of the wine of goading." "Of goading" is what? Not of killing. For it was not a killing that destroyeth, but a medicine that smarteth. "Thou hast given us to drink of the wine of goading."
When a person lays aside his past sinfulness, he is suddenly endowed with new dignity, with that cup of divine love of which it is said, "And your cup which inebriated me, how it overflows!" Inebriated with that cup, I repeat, hearts taste the sweetness of heavenly things through the strength of spiritual wisdom. Then they may merit to hear, "Taste and see how good the Lord is." Now he said "taste," because love of God can refresh the soul but cannot satisfy the desire, regardless of the amount of faith or longing with which it is sought. More and more, it arouses thirst when it is, as it were, tasted beforehand with the edge of the lips, and for this reason he says of himself, "He who eats of me will hunger still, he who drinks of me will thirst for more." Because of its sweetness, it arouses an appetite for itself, but it does not cause disgust from satiety. Just as people who are experienced in drinking wine are likely to thirst all the more when they have become drunk, so it is with the devout and chaste soul that is prudent and contrite and that can, therefore, say with the psalmist, "You have given us stupefying wine," when it has begun to think about hope in a future life and to imbibe a thirst for heavenly goods. It knows how to be filled but not how to be satisfied, so that the more it consumes according to its capacity, the more it lacks in its eagerness, and it can join with the prophet in that word of longing: "My soul pines for your salvation";4 and again: "My flesh and my heart waste away, O God of my heart"; moreover, "My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Aram-naharaim — Aram of the two rivers, is Mesopotamia (as it is rendered in Gen. 24:10), the country enclosed between the Tigris on the east and the Euphrates on the west (Ps. 60, title); called also the “field of…
Aram-zobah — (Ps. 60, title), probably the region between the Euphrates and the Orontes.
Salt, Valley of — A place where it is said David smote the Syrians (2 Sam. 8:13). This valley (the’ Arabah) is between Judah and Edom on the south of the Dead Sea. Hence some interpreters would insert the words, “and…
Shushan-Eduth — Lily of the testimony, the title of Ps. 60. (See SHOSHANNIM.)
Zobah — =Aram-Zobah, (Ps. 60, title), a Syrian province or kingdom to the south of Coele-Syria, and extending from the eastern slopes of Lebanon north and east toward the Euphrates. Saul and David had war…
Lamentations · Of David — Of David
War · 28:25-68;32:30; — 28:25-68;32:30;
Wine · Illustrative: Of the wrath and judgments of God — Illustrative: Of the wrath and judgments of God
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
This first strophe contains complaint and prayer; and establishes the prayer by the greatness of the need and Israel's relationship to God. The sense in which פּרצתּנוּ is intended becomes clear from Sa2 5:20, where David uses this word of the defeat of the Philistines, and explains it figuratively. The word signifies to break through what has hitherto been a compact mass, to burst, blast, scatter, disperse. The prayer is first of all timidly uttered in תּשׁובב לנוּ in the form of a wish; then in רפה (Psa 60:4) and הושׁיעה (Psa 60:7) it waxes more and more eloquent. שׁובב ל here signifies to grant restoration (like הניח ל, to give rest; Psa 23:3; Isa 58:12). The word also signifies to make a…
wine (Hebrew yayin) that sent us reeling: Yayin, the generic Hebrew term meaning “wine,” is often associated with drunkenness (2 Sam 13:28; Isa 5:11; 28:7-8; cp. Ps 104:15; Deut 14:26; Isa 55:1); it symbolized God’s judgment of the wicked (Ps 75:8; Jer 51:7).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 60:3
Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
Thou hast showed thy people hard things. Hardships had been heaped upon them, and the psalmist traces these rigorous providences to their fountainhead. Nothing had happened by chance, but all had come by divine design and with a purpose, yet for all that things had gone hard with Israel. The psalmist claims that they were still the Lord's own people, though in the first verse he had said, "thou hast cast us off." The language of complaint is usually confused, and faith in time of trouble ere long contradicts the desponding statements of the flesh. Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment…
