hating · verb, qal active participle, masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
turned
בְּשׁוּבbe.shuv-
H7725
to turn back (hence · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
back
אָח֑וֹר'a.Chor
H268
the hinder part · noun, common masculine singular absolute
fall
יִכָּשְׁל֥וּyi.ka.she.Lu
H3782
to totter or waver (through weakness of the legs · verb, niphal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
perish
וְ֝יֹאבְד֗וּve.yoe.Du
H6
properly · conjunction + verb, qal, 3rd person masculine plural
presence
מִפָּנֶֽיךָmi.pa.Nei.kha
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
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
2 Thessalonians 1:9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
Psalms 76:7 Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?
Psalms 80:16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.
Revelation 6:12-17 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and th…
Revelation 20:11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for…
Psalms 68:1-2 Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.
Isaiah 64:3 When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 9:1-10
The title of this psalm gives a very uncertain sound concerning the occasion of penning it. It is upon Muth-labben, which some make to refer to the death of Goliath, others of Nabal, others of Absalom; but I incline to think it signifies only some tone, or some musical instrument, to which this psalm was intended to be sung; and that the enemies David is here triumphing in the defeat of are the Philistines, and the other neighbouring nations that opposed his settlement in the throne, whom he contested with and subdued in the beginning of his reign, Sa2 5:8. In these verses,
I. David excites and engages himself to praise God for his mercies and the great things he had of late done for him and…
When . . . are turned back--It is the result of God's power alone. He, as a righteous Judge (Psa 7:11), vindicates His people. He rebukes by acts as well as words (Psa 6:1; Psa 18:15), and so effectually as to destroy the names of nations as well as persons.
John Gill on Psalms 9:3
When mine enemies are turned back,.... As the Philistines were, when Goliath their champion was dead; and as the men that came to apprehend Christ, David's antitype, went backwards and fell to the ground, through the superior power of Christ; and as sin, Satan, and the world, and at last antichrist, are made to retreat from the Lord's people, who are more than conquerors over them through Christ that has loved them. "They shall fall and perish at thy presence"; they shall stumble at one thing or another which divine Providence will throw in their way to hinder them from executing their designs, and so fall before them they meant to destroy, and perish at the presence of God as wax melteth be…
Psalm 9:1-3
1. I will praise Jehovah with my whole heart; I will tell of thy marvellous works. 2. I will rejoice and exult [156] in thee; yea, I will celebrate in songs thy name, O thou Most High. 3. When my enemies are turned back, they fall down, and are put to flight [157] at thy presence.
1. I will praise the Lord. David begins the psalm in this way, to induce God to succor him in the calamities with which he was now afflicted. As God continues his favor towards his own people without intermission, all the good he has hitherto done to us should serve to inspire us with confidence and hope, that he will be gracious and merciful to us in the time to come. [158] There is, indeed, in these…
The Church Fathers
Now, notice how he proclaims God's strength: "They will lose heart and perish before your face." Once more, on hearing "face," do not form an impression of anything bodily. At this point, in fact, he is suggesting God's power, his manifestation, the facility of his strength. Just as he says elsewhere, "He gazes on the earth and makes it tremble," so here too he says the same thing. His gaze, you see, is sufficient to destroy his enemies.
These things, he said, I will assuredly do "when my enemies are turned back." But who is such an enemy unless it is death, the enemy of life about which it is said, "You knew the enemy death will be destroyed." Destruction will be Death's end when he is turned back. But "back" where, unless the return into the pristine condition when he did not exist? "For God did not make death, but through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world." When, therefore, as death is turned back, it will no longer be, then all the rest of the enemies will be enfeebled and the enemies of your Word will be destroyed before your face.
"They will be weakened, and perish from Your face" [Psalm 9:3]. Who will be weakened and perish, but the unrighteous and ungodly? "They will be weakened," while they shall avail nothing; "and they shall perish," because the ungodly will not be; "from the face" of God, that is, from the knowledge of God, as he perished who said, "But now I live not, but Christ lives in me." [Galatians 2:20] But why will the ungodly "be weakened and perish from your face?" "Because," he says, "You have made my judgment, and my cause:" that is, the judgment in which I seemed to be judged, You have made mine; and the cause in which men condemned me just and innocent, You have made mine. For such things served Him for our deliverance: as sailors too call the wind theirs, which they take advantage of for prosperous sailing.
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
Muth-labben — Occurring only in the title of Psalm 9. Some interpret the words as meaning “on the death of Labben,” some unknown person. Others render the word, “on the death of the son;” i.e., of Absalom (2 Sam.…
Psalms, Book Of — The present Hebrew name of the book is Tehill’im, “Praises;” but in the actual superscriptions of the psalms the word Tehillah is applied only to one, (Psalms 145:1) ... which is indeed emphatically…
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).
(Heb.: 9:4-5) The call upon himself to thanksgiving sounds forth, and the ב-strophe continues it by expressing the ground of it. The preposition בּ in this instance expresses both the time and the reason together (as in Psa 76:10; Ch2 28:6); in Latin it is recedentibus hostibus meis retro. אחור serves to strengthen the notion of being driven back, as in Psa 56:10, cf. Psa 44:11; and just as, in Latin, verbs compounded of re are strengthened by retro. In Psa 9:4 finite verbs take the place of the infinitive construct; here we have futt. with a present signification, just as in Ch2 16:7 we find a praet. intended as perfect. For the rendering which Hitzig adopts: When mine enemies retreat backw…
The psalmist celebrates God’s judgment of the wicked, which is a testimony to the Lord’s reliable promise to establish his kingdom on earth (1:6; Ps 2).
9:3 retreated . . . staggered: The Lord overpowers even powerful enemies (see 27:2). Israel also experienced judgment when it resisted the Lord (107:12).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 9:3
When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.
God's presence is evermore sufficient to work the defeat of our most furious foes, and their ruin is so complete when the Lord takes them in hand, that even flight cannot save them, they fall to rise no more when he pursues them. We must be careful, like David, to give all the glory to him whose presence gives the victory. If we have here the exultings of our conquering Captain, let us make the triumphs of the Redeemer the triumphs of the redeemed, and rejoice with him at the total discomfiture of all his foes.
