(12) Houses.--Rather, pastures. (See Psalm 79:7.)

Verse 12. - Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession; rather, the homesteads of God; or "the pastures of God" (Psalm 23:2), i.e. of God's people, Israel.

83:9-18 All who oppose the kingdom of Christ may here read their doom. God is the same still that ever he was; the same to his people, and the same against his and their enemies. God would make their enemies like a wheel; unsettled in all their counsels and resolves. Not only let them be driven away as stubble, but burnt as stubble. And this will be the end of wicked men. Let them be made to fear thy name, and perhaps that will bring them to seek thy name. We should desire no confusion to our enemies and persecutors but what may forward their conversion. The stormy tempest of Divine vengeance will overtake them, unless they repent and seek the pardoning mercy of their offended Lord. God's triumphs over his enemies, clearly prove that he is, according to his name JEHOVAH, an almighty Being, who has all power and perfection in himself. May we fear his wrath, and yield ourselves to be his willing servants. And let us seek deliverance by the destruction of our fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.Who said,.... Not the kings and princes of Midian just mentioned, but the confederate enemies of Israel, named Psalm 83:6, to whom the like things are wished as to the Midianites and others, because they said what follows:

let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession; not only the temple, which was eminently the house of God, but all the habitations of the Israelites in Jerusalem, and other places, where the Lord vouchsafed to dwell; unless this should be ironically spoken by their enemies calling them so, because they pretended, as they reckoned it, to have and to hold them by the gift of God; whereas, of right, they belonged to them, at least some of them: such a claim was made by the Ammonites in the times of Jephthah, Judges 11:13, and to dispossess the Israelites was the intention of the Ammonites and Moabites in the times of Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles 20:10.