Come, behold the works of Jehovah, what desolations he hath made in the earth
The last part of the psalm calls the reader to stop and look at what God has done. Commentators hear the voice of God's people here, after His hand has fallen on the nations. Why does faith stop to look at ruin, and how can such wreckage end in peace?
The verse is a call to inspect finished work. One writer places it after the judgments have finished:
Now that His judgments are complete, we are invited to look at the results.
Another notes that this is not a request for blind trust but for evidence:
He has intervened for them, and they appeal to the manifest proofs of it. (v. 8.)
Armies and accidents did not cause this ruin. The Lord Himself did. One translation reads: Jehovah "who has set desolations in the earth" (William Kelly). The same God who shelters His people acts against those who oppose Him:
If the LORD is with His people, He is against the wicked. When He judges the nations in righteousness, He will bring them to desolation.
Writers place this verse at one moment in history. It comes after a time of unequalled trouble for Israel, just as Christ's reign begins. One writer says the song belongs first to another people:
This psalm cannot be applied literally to ourselves. Like many other psalms, it gives us precious lessons of spiritual instruction. But it pictures a people on the earth who know that Jehovah has shaken the earth, made it desolate, and then brought a time of peace and blessing into it. These faithful ones are on the earth. They know that judgments brought in this peace and blessing, and they are sure that Jehovah of hosts is present with them. The people here are the faithful remnant of the Jews, brought through the time of Jacob's trouble and celebrating their glorious deliverance.
Read this way, the shocking scenes described belong to the return of Christ:
Verse 8 gives us the result of that intervention from man's standpoint. The coming of Christ at the end of the great tribulation will be the signal for the most awful happenings. The most terrible earthquakes will take place. Cities will fall to the ground.
The desolations are not the last word — they clear the ground. Faith reads God's purpose through the wreckage:
The godly keep the purpose of God before their souls. So they see that God is working through the desolations of the earth to fulfil His counsel, and that in due time He will make wars cease. If God makes desolation, He also makes peace.
The change reaches down to what people want. After the final crisis, appetite for weapons dies:
War has not ended yet, as the sorrowful events of our own day bear witness. But the last great crisis will come and go, with all its unequalled horrors and bloodshed. After it, men will delight in weapons of destruction no more.
The works are God's. So the verse cuts against every human plan to build world peace by agreement. One writer puts it plainly:
The slow, gradual spread of peaceful principles does not put an end to the strife and wars that have laid the earth waste for so many ages. God's solemn intervention in judgment at the coming of the Lord does. That is what brings in the time of universal peace.
Another gives the reason such plans fail: there can be no peace unless it rests on righteousness (A. J. Pollock).
The psalm's scale is worldwide, yet writers turn it toward the single believer:
What can happen to a whole people in such unequalled circumstances can happen to one person in his small circumstances. The God who is enough for the whole universe can care for a sparrow, and the God of Psalm 46 is enough for you and for me.
- Come — the verse invites us to inspect finished work. God's judgments are complete, so faith looks at the results.
- Behold — the sight is ruin. That ruin is God's own righteous judgment on the nations, not a disaster He failed to stop.
- Desolations — writers place them at Christ's coming, after the time of unequalled trouble. Cities fall and the earth shakes.
- Peace — the same hand that makes desolation makes peace. God ends war by destroying its weapons, not by talking nations into agreement.
- Enough — the God who does all this on a world scale is the refuge of His people, and He is enough for one person's small troubles.
He hath made wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariots in the fire.
Psalm 46 has just described a world in chaos: roaring waters, raging nations, shaking kingdoms. Then the fighting stops everywhere, and this verse tells us who ended it and how.
Every act in the verse belongs to God: the stopping, the breaking, the burning. One writer draws a firm line between that and any human effort:
The end of wars does not come by the slow, gradual spread of peaceful principles. It comes when God steps in with judgment at the coming of the Lord. That is what ends the strife and wars which have laid the earth waste for so many ages, and brings in the period of universal peace. And what is the moral the Holy Spirit draws from all this? Is it, "Push yourselves — use all your energy — work with all your might to fill society with principles that will bring in the golden age of universal harmony and peace"? No, it is this: "Be still, and know that I am God." God works these wonders by His power, not by human energy; for His glory, not to lift up proud, boasting man.
Peace does not arrive by another road. It comes through God's judgment:
If peace is to come, it must come through judgment, and the Lord Jesus alone will have power to put an end to wars (v. 9). Today many people organize to demand that governments refuse war, but their methods are completely futile. It is like ordering the waves of the sea to cease their tumult! Only One could do this, as the Lord Jesus did in Mark 4:38-39. That is a picture of Him one day speaking peace to a world of tumult. All the tools of war, the bow, the spear, the chariot, He will render useless, whether by cutting or by fire.
Plans for world peace keep failing, and one writer names the flaw in them:
The righteous judgment of God will lead to universal peace among men. As the prophet says, "The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever" (Isa. 32:17). Men talk of a new order, by which they hope to end war and bring about a universal peace. But the peace of which men dream ignores both the holiness of God and the wickedness of men. It is a peace without righteousness. All the efforts of men will be in vain. It is the LORD who "makes wars cease." His peace will be universal, for wars will cease "to the end of the earth."
If God alone can stop war, why has He not? One writer traces the delay to the world's treatment of Christ:
The world rejected the only One who could make wars cease (Ps. 46:9). That rejection drove the possibility of peace from the earth. Peace waits for the appointed time when He steps in with power. Then He will "scatter the peoples who delight in war" (Ps. 68:30), and bring in a reign of peace.
The change will go deeper than broken weapons. Men themselves will stop wanting them:
War is not yet at an end, as the sorrowful events of the present time bear witness. But the last great crisis will come and go, with all its unmatched horrors and bloodshed. After that, men will delight in instruments of destruction no more. Under the good reign of the great King "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isa. 2:4). Happy time for this poor troubled scene!
One writer warns that this scene is not a picture of our own situation:
It is impossible to apply this psalm literally to ourselves. No doubt, like many other psalms, it gives us precious lessons of spiritual instruction. But it has in view a people on the earth who know that the LORD has shaken the earth, worked desolations in it, and brought a time of peace and blessing into it. He has made wars cease to the end of the earth, broken the bow and spear, and burned the chariot in the fire. The faithful here are on the earth. They know that judgments brought about this time of peace and blessing, and they are conscious that the LORD of hosts is present with them.
- He — every verb in the verse has one subject. Ending war is God's act, not man's achievement.
- Judgment — desolation comes before disarming. Peace is the fruit of righteousness, and any peace that ignores God's holiness and man's wickedness is a dream.
- Rejected — the world turned away the one Person who could make wars cease. So peace waits until He comes in power.
- Total — bow broken, spear cut, chariot burned: not weapons stored away, but a world that will not want them again.
- Still — the response the psalm asks for is not campaigning but confidence: be still, and know that He is God.