The next strophe (vv. 11-14) is abrupt and disconnected, as if echoing the hurry of battle and the tumult of many voices on the field. The general drift is unmistakable, but the meaning of part is the despair of commentators. The whole scene of the conflict, flight, and division of the spoil is flashed before us in brief clauses, panting with excitement and blazing with the glow of victory. "The Lord giveth the word." That "word" may be the news which the women immediately repeat. But it is far more vivid and truer to the spirit of the psalm, which sees God as the only actor in Israel's history, to regard it as the self-fulfilling decree which scatters the enemy. This battle is the Lord's. There is no description of conflict. But one mighty word is hurled from heaven, like a thunder-clap (the phrase resembles that employed so often, "the Lord gave His voice," which frequently means thunder-peals), and the enemies' ranks are broken in panic. Israel does not need to fight. God speaks, and the next sound we hear is the clash of timbrels and the clear notes of the maidens chanting victory. This picture of a battle, with the battle left out, tells best Who fought, and how He fought it. "He spake, and it was done." What scornful picture of the flight is given by the reduplication "they flee, they flee"! It is like Deborah's fierce gloating over the dead Sisera: "He bowed, he fell, he lay: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell." What confidence in the power of weakness, when God is on its side, in the antithesis between the mighty kings scattered in a general _sauve qui peut_, and the matrons who had "tarried at home" and now divide the spoil! Sisera's mother was pictured in Deborah's song as looking long through her lattice for her son's return, and solacing herself with the thought that he delayed to part the plunder and would come back laden with it. What she vainly hoped for Israel's matrons enjoy.
Vv. 13, 14, are among the hardest in the Psalter. The separate clauses offer no great difficulties, but the connection is enigmatical indeed. "Will (lit. _if_) ye lie among the sheepfolds?" comes from Deborah's song (Judg. v. 16), and is there a reproach flung at Reuben for preferring pastoral ease to warlike effort. Is it meant as reproach here? It is very unlikely that a song of triumph like this should have for its only mention of Israel's warriors a taunt. The lovely picture of the dove with iridescent wings is as a picture perfect. But what does it mean here? Herder, whom Hupfeld follows, supposes that the whole verse is rebuke to recreants, who preferred lying stretched at ease among their flocks, and bidding each other admire the glancing plumage of the doves that flitted round them. But this is surely violent, and smacks of modern æstheticism. Others suppose that the first clause is a summons to be up and pursue the flying foe, and the second and third a description of the splendour with which the conquerors (or their households) should be clothed by the spoil. This meaning would require the insertion of some such phrase as "ye shall be" before the second clause. Delitzsch regards the whole as a connected description of the blessings of peace following on victory, and sees a reference to Israel as God's dove. "The new condition of prosperity is compared with the play of colours of a dove basking in the rays of the sun." All these interpretations assume that Israel is addressed in the first clause. But is this assumption warranted? Is it not more natural to refer the "ye" to the "kings" just mentioned, especially as the psalmist recurs to them in the next verse? The question will then retain the taunting force which it has in Deborah's song, while it pictures a very different kind of couching among the sheepfolds--namely, the hiding there from pursuit. The kings are first seen in full flight. Then the triumphant psalmist flings after them the taunt, "Will ye hide among the cattle?" If the initial particle retains its literal force, the first clause is hypothetical, and the suppression of the conclusion speaks more eloquently than its expression would have done: "If ye couch----" The second and third clauses are then parallel with the second of ver. 12, and carry on the description of the home-keeping matron, "the dove," adorned with rich spoils and glorious in her apparel. We thus have a complete parallelism between the two verses, which both lay side by side the contrasted pictures of the defeated kings and the women; and we further establish continuity between the three verses (13-15), in so far as the "kings" are dealt with in them all.