Psalms 60 KJV
A Prayer After Defeat
About This Psalm
After a military defeat, David asks God to restore the nation. Sometimes God lets you lose so you remember who actually wins your battles.
1 God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; O turn thyself to us again.
2 Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.
3 Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah.
5 That thy beloved may be delivered; save with thy right hand, and hear me.
6 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.
7 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;
8 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia, triumph thou because of me.
9 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?
10 Wilt not thou, O God, which hadst cast us off? and thou, O God, which didst not go out with our armies?
11 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.
12 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.
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Did You Know?
The superscription's reference to fighting Aram-naharaim and Aram-zobah alongside Joab's Edomite victory in the Valley of Salt points to a historical coalition war (likely 2 Samuel 8) in which initial setbacks against Syrian forces preceded the decisive southern campaign, revealing layered military strategy rather than a single battle.
Verses 6-8 preserve a rare divine oracle spoken in the first person, in which Yahweh asserts ownership by casting lots over Shechem and Succoth, claiming Gilead and Manasseh, designating Ephraim as his helmet and Judah his scepter, while reducing Moab to a washbasin and Edom to a sandal-throwing site, thereby mapping cosmic sovereignty onto specific Transjordanian and Canaanite territories.
The psalm's reuse of verses 5-12 (nearly verbatim) as the second half of Psalm 108 creates a deliberate liturgical composite that pairs northern tribal imagery with a thanksgiving motif from Psalm 57, illustrating how post-exilic or Second Temple editors repurposed defeat-oracles into victory hymns.
Despite its communal-lament classification, the sudden shift after the oracle transforms the plea for help against fortified Edom into confident expectation, underscoring a theological pattern in which acknowledged divine rejection (v. 1) becomes the very ground for renewed military trust rather than an indication of permanent abandonment.
The enigmatic phrase 'Moab is my washpot' alongside the command to 'cast out my shoe' over Edom employs domestic and legal metaphors drawn from ancient Near Eastern boundary rituals and servitude customs, subtly asserting Israel's suzerainty while inverting the expected outcome of the reported defeat.