Psalm 92:7
‘When the wicked spring up like grass…, it is so that they shall be destroyed for ever!… But You, Lord, are most high for evermore…. Lo, Your enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered!’ Psalm 92:7-9.
Calvin comments: “He points out and exposes…the folly of imagining that the wicked obtain a triumph over God when He does not…immediately bring them under restraint…. He grants that they spring up and flourish. But adds immediately…that they flourish, like the grass, only for a moment — their prosperity being brief and evanescent….
“It would be ridiculous to envy the happiness of men who are doomed to be speedily destroyed — that today…flourish, and tomorrow…are cut down and wither (Psalm 129:6)…. The herbs to which the wicked are compared, are such as grow on the roofs of houses — which want depth of soil, and die of themselves from lack of nourishment…. The prosperity of the wicked draws after it the speedier destruction — like the grass, when it is full grown, is ready for the scythe.
“There is an antithesis drawn too, between the shortness of their continuance and the everlasting destruction which awaits them. For they are not said to be cut down, so that they may flourish again like withered plants (which) will recover their vigour — but to be condemned to eternal perdition.
“Where he says of God that He sits ‘exalted for evermore’ — some understand him to mean that God holds the power and office of governing the world and that we may be certain nothing can happen by chance, when such a righteous Governor and Judge administers the affairs of the world…. It seems to me that the Psalmist compares the stability of God’s throne with the fluctuating and changeable character of this world…. We must not judge of Him by what we see in the world where there is nothing of a fixed and enduring nature. God looks down undisturbed from the altitude of Heaven upon all the changes of this earthly scene which neither affect nor have any relation to Him….
This the Psalmist brings forward with another view, than simply to teach us to distinguish God from His creature and put due honour upon His majesty. He would have us learn in our contemplations upon the wonderful and mysterious providence of God, to lift our conceptions about ourselves and this world….
“The Psalmist…would remind us that He does not work according to our ideas, but in a manner corresponding to His Own Eternal Being…. We are taught here to lift our eyes unto that eternal and unchangeable throne on which God sits, and in wisdom defers the execution of His judgments….
“The Psalmist concludes it to be impossible that God should not overthrow His enemies…. The Psalmist…declares the destruction of God’s enemies to be as certain as if it had already taken place…. His enemies cannot long continue to triumph…. The Lord…can no more fail to punish them, than deny Himself!” Thus the wicked shall be destroyed for ever! And you?
