to fill or (intransitively) be full of · verb, piel imperative, 2nd person masculine singular
faces
פְנֵיהֶ֣םfe.nei.Hem
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
shame
קָל֑וֹןka.Lon
H7036
disgrace · noun, common masculine singular absolute
seek
וִֽיבַקְשׁ֖וּvi.vak.Shu
H1245
to search out (by any method · conjunction + verb, piel, 3rd person masculine plural
name
שִׁמְךָ֣shim.Kha
H8034
an appellation · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
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 6:10 Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly.
Psalms 9:19-20 Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.
Job 10:15 If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine afflicti…
Psalms 34:5 They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.
Psalms 109:29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
Psalms 132:18 His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 83:9–end
The psalmist here, in the name of the church, prays for the destruction of those confederate forces, and, in God's name, foretels it; for this prayer that it might be so amounts to a prophecy that it shall be so, and this prophecy reaches to all the enemies of the gospel-church; whoever they be that oppose the kingdom of Christ, here they may read their doom. The prayer is, in short, that these enemies, who were confederate against Israel, might be defeated in all their attempts, and that they might prove their own ruin, and so God's Israel might be preserved and perpetuated. Now this is here illustrated,
I. By some precedents. Let that be their punishment which has been the fate of others w…
Fill their faces with shame,.... For their sins, or rather through disappointment, not being able to put their desperate and deep laid schemes into execution: or "with lightness" (o); instead of a weight of honour and glory upon them, let them be despised. R. Joseph Kimchi renders it, "fill their faces with fire"; let their faces be as if they were on fire, as men's faces are, who are put to an exceeding great blush, or are most sadly confounded and ashamed:
that they may seek thy name, O Lord; not they themselves, who are filled with shame; for it is imprecated, that they be ashamed, and troubled for ever, and so as to perish, Psalm 83:17 but others; for the words may be supplied, as in Ps…
Psalm 83:13-18
13. O my God! make them like a whirling ball, [447] like stubble before the wind. 14. As fire burns a forest [448] and as the flame kindles the mountains, [449] 15. So pursue them with thy tempest, [450] and terrify them with thy whirlwind. 16. Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Jehovah! 17. Let them be ashamed, and terrified perpetually, and let them be confounded, and perish. 18. And let them know that thou art, thy name Jehovah, thou alone the Most High over all the earth. [451]
13. O my God! make them like a whirling ball. As the ungodly, when they gird and prepare themselves for destroying the Church, are usually inflated with intolerable pride,…
The Church Fathers
Fill their faces with shame, that they may be confounded. Why this? And they shall seek your name, O Lord. You see, then, that he prays not against them, but for their salvation.
"Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek Your name, O Lord" [Psalm 83:16]. Good and desirable is this which he prophesies for them: and he would not prophesy thus, unless there were even in that company of the enemies of God's people, some men of such kind that this would be granted to them before the last judgment: for now they are mixed together, and this is the body of the enemies, in respect of the envy whereby they rival the people of God. And now, where they can, they make a noise and lift up their head: but severally, not universally as they will do at the end of the world, when the last judgment is about to fall. But it is the same body, even in those who out of this number shall believe and pass into another body (for the faces of these are filled with shame, that they may seek the name of the Lord), as well as in those others who persevere unto the end in the same wickedness, who are made as stubble before the wind, and are consumed like a wood and barren mountains. To these he again returns, saying, "They shall blush and be vexed for ever and ever" [Psalm 83:17]. For those are not vexed for ever and ever who seek the name of the Lord, but having respect unto the shame of their sins, they are vexed for this purpose, that they may seek the name of the Lord, through which they may be no more vexed.
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
Seekers · 5:8;8:5,6; — 5:8;8:5,6;
Seeking God · Includes seeking: His Name — Includes seeking: His Name
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).
With the אלהי, which constrains God in faith, the "thundering down" begins afresh. גּלגּל signifies a wheel and a whirling motion, such as usually arises when the wind changes suddenly, then also whatever is driven about in the whirling, Isa 17:13.
(Note: Saadia, who renders the גּלגּל in Psa 77:19 as an astronomical expression with Arab. 'l-frk, the sphere of the heavens, here has professedly Arab. kâlgrâblt, which would be a plural from expanded out of Arab. grâbı̂l, "sieves" or "tambourines;" it is, however, to be read, as in Isa 17:13, Codex Oxon., Arab. kâlgirbâlt. The verb Arab. garbala, "to sift," is transferred to the wind, e.g., in Mutanabbi (edited with Wahidi's commentary by…
fire . . . fierce storm . . . tempest: These are images of God’s manifestation in judgment (see Isa 29:6).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 83:16
Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Lord.
Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Lord. Shame has often weaned men from their idols, and set them upon seeking the Lord. If this was not the happy result, in the present instance, with the Lord's enemies, yet it would be so with his people who were so prone to err. They would be humbled by his mercy, and ashamed of themselves because of his grace; and then they would with sincerity return to the earnest worship of Jehovah their God, who had delivered them.
