mighty (spoken of God) · adjective, masculine plural construct
spoiled
אֶשְׁתּוֹלְל֨וּ'esh.to.Lu
H7997
to drop or strip · verb, pual perfect, 3rd person common plural
slept
נָמ֣וּna.Mu
H5123
to slumber (from drowsiness) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
sleep
שְׁנָתָ֑םshe.na.Tam
H8142
sleep · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
men
אַנְשֵׁי'an.shei-
H582
a man in general (singly or collectively) · noun, common masculine plural construct
might
חַ֣יִלCha.yil
H2428
probably a force · noun, common masculine singular absolute
found
מָצְא֖וּma.tze.'U
H4672
properly · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
hands
יְדֵיהֶֽםye.dei.Hem
H3027
a hand (the open one (indicating power · noun, common both genders dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
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
Nahum 3:18 Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathere…
Psalms 13:3 Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Isaiah 46:12 Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness:
Jeremiah 51:39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, sait…
Job 40:10-12 Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Isaiah 31:8 Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from…
Isaiah 37:36 Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose…
Ezekiel 30:21-25 Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to m…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 76:1-6
The church is here triumphant even in the midst of its militant state. The psalmist, in the church's name, triumphs here in God, the centre of all our triumphs.
I. In the revelation God had made of himself to them, Psa 76:1. It is the honour and privilege of Judah and Israel that among them God is known, and where he is known his name will be great. God is known as he is pleased to make himself known; and those are happy to whom he discovers himself - happy people that have their land filled with the knowledge of God, happy persons that have their hearts filled with that knowledge. In Judah God was known as he was not known in other nations, which made the favour the greater, inasmuch as it…
The stout hearted are spoiled,.... The Assyrian army, its officers and generals, that came up against Jerusalem, with great resolution and courage, and with daring impiety and blasphemy against the God of heaven, as Rabshakeh and others; these were spoiled, and their armour and riches became a prey to those they thought to have made a prey of. So principalities and powers were spoiled by Christ upon the cross, and Satan, the strong man armed, has in the conversion of a sinner his armour taken from him, and his spoils divided by him that is stronger than he; and such as are stouthearted, and far from true righteousness, are stripped of their own, and made willing, in the day of Christ's power…
Psalm 76:1-6
1. God is known in Judah; his name is great in Israel. 2. And his tabernacle was in Salem, and his dwelling-place in Zion. 3. There he broke the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle. Selah. 4. Thou art more glorious and terrible than the mountains of prey. 5. The stout hearted were spoiled, they slept their sleep, [266] and all the men of might have not found their hands. 6. At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob! the chariot and the horse were cast into a deep sleep.
1. God is known in Judah. In the outset, we are taught that it was not by human means that the enemies of Israel were compelled to retire without accomplishing any thing, but by the ever-to-be-reme…
The Church Fathers
They slept their sleep, and found nothing. Truly this life is a sleep, and riches too: for when we seem to hold them, at once we lose them. Just as that which is written in the prophet: "As one who is thirsty sleeps, if he finds water he drinks; afterward, when he has awakened, the thirst itself remains," so also are riches in this world: while we hold them, we lose them.
This life is a dream; these riches flow as if in a dream. Hear the Psalm, O richest poor man: They have slept their sleep, and none of the men of wealth have found anything in their hands. Sometimes even a beggar lying on the ground, trembling with cold, occupied with sleep, dreams of treasures, and rejoices and is proud in his dreams, and does not deign to recognize his ragged father, and as long as he sleeps, he is rich. When he sleeps, he finds false joy; when he awakes, he finds true sorrow. Therefore, the rich man dying is like the poor man waking, who saw treasures in his dreams. For he was wrapped in purple and fine linen, a certain rich man, neither named nor to be named, a despiser of the poor lying before his door; he was wrapped in purple and fine linen, as the Gospel testimony is, and feasted sumptuously every day. He died, he was buried; he woke up, and found himself in flames. Therefore, he slept his sleep, and this man of wealth found nothing in his hands, because he did nothing good with his hands.
"There have been troubled all the unwise in heart" (ver. 5)....How have they been troubled? When the Gospel is preached. And what is life eternal? And who is He that hath risen from the dead? The Athenians wondered, when the Apostle Paul spake of the resurrection of the dead, and thought that he spake but fables. But because he said that there was another life which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it gone up into the heart of man, therefore the unwise in heart were troubled. But what hath befallen them? "They have slept their sleep, and all men of riches have found nothing in their hands." They have loved things present, and have gone to sleep in the midst of things present: and so these very present things have become to them delightful: just as he that seeth in a dream himself to have found treasure, is so long rich as he waketh not. The dream hath made him rich, waking hath made him poor. Sleep perchance hath held him slumbering on the earth, and lying on the hard ground, poor and perchance a beggar; in sleep he hath seen himself to lie on an ivory or golden bed, and on feathers heaped up; so long as he is sleeping, he is sleeping well, waking he hath found himself on the hard ground, whereon sleep had taken him. Such men also are these too: they have come into this life, and through temporal desires, they have as it were slumbered here; and them riches, and vain pomps that fly away, have taken, and they have passed away: they have not understood how much of good might be done therewith. For if they had known of another life, there they would have laid up unto themselves the treasure which here was doomed to perish: like as Zacchaeus, the chief of the Publicans, saw that good when he received the Lord Jesus in his house, and he saith, "The half of my goods I give to the poor, and if to any man I have done any wrong, fourfold I restore." This man was not in the emptiness of men dreaming, but in the faith of men awake....
Dictionary and topics
Death — May be simply defined as the termination of life. It is represented under a variety of aspects in Scripture: (1.) “The dust shall return to the earth as it was” (Eccl. 12:7). (2.) “Thou takest away…
Neginoth — I.e., songs with instrumental accompaniment, found in the titles of Ps. 4; 6; 54; 55; 67; 76; rendered “stringed instruments,” Hab. 3:19, A.V. It denotes all kinds of stringed instruments, as the…
Victories · In battle, from God — In battle, from 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).
The "mountains of prey," for which the lxx has ὀρέων αἰωνίων (טרם?), is an emblematical appellation for the haughty possessors of power who also plunder every one that comes near them,
(Note: One verse of a beautiful poem of the Muḥammel which Ibn Dûchı̂, the phylarch of the Beni Zumeir, an honoured poet of the steppe, dictated to Consul Wetzstein runs thus: The noble are like a very lofty hill-side upon which, when thou comest to it, thou findest an evening meal and protection (Arab. 'l-‛š' w-ḏry).)
or the proud and despoiling worldly powers. Far aloft beyond these towers the glory of God. He is נאור, illustris, prop. illumined; said of God: light-encircled, fortified in light, in t…
The psalmist praises God for his achievement and for his glorious majesty.
76:4 The victorious king’s splendor, glory, and majesty are greater than anything in the created order (8:1; 29:4; 111:3).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 76:5
The stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep: and none of the men of might have found their hands.
The stouthearted are spoiled. They came to spoil, and lo! they are spoiled themselves. Their stout hearts are cold in death, the angel of the pestilence has dried up their life blood, their very heart is taken from them. They have slept their sleep. Their last sleep—the sleep of death. And none of the men of might have found their hands. Their arms are palsied, they cannot lift a finger, for the rigour of death has stiffened them. What a scene was that when Sennacherib's host was utterly destroyed in one night. The hands which were furious to pull down Jerusalem, could not even be…