Psalms 9:6

This is a sudden apostrophe to the enemies of God's people, Philistines, Amorites, or other nations, who had formerly made great havoc and waste among them. Destructions are come to a perpetual end; thou hast destroyed the Israelitish nation utterly and irrecoverably, and, as it follows, their defenced cities, and their very name and memory, according to thy own desire. So it is a sarcasm or irony, a usual figure in Scripture and all authors, whereby the quite contrary is signified, to wit, that they were not only frustrated of their desires and hopes of destroying the Israelites, but were also subdued, and in a great part destroyed by them. Or this verse may be understood of the great waste and ruin which God's enemies had brought upon Israel before this time; which is here remembered, to make the Israelites more thankful for their later or present deliverances. Or it may be taken as a prophecy of the future calamities which the enemies should by God's permission bring upon Israel, of which he speaks as of a thing past and done, after the manner of the prophets. But this place is otherwise rendered in the margin of our Bibles, and by divers others, the destructions of the enemy which may be understood either,

1. Actively, which they caused; or,

2. Passively, which they felt are come to a perpetual end, or, are fully and finally completed. Thou hast destroyed cities; either,

1. Thou, O God, who is oft understood and couched in a pronoun in this manner, thou hast destroyed their cities. Or rather,

2. Thou, O enemy; as may be gathered both from the foregoing clause, where it is so expressed; and from the next verse, where it follows by way of opposition to this, But the Lord, &c. Their memorial is perished with them; the places and people are utterly extinct.