construction, since there is no feminine noun at hand to which the feminine pronominal suffix in the word can be referred. In that barren desert, God's flock dwelt for more than a generation, and during all that time His goodness provided for them. The strophe thus gives two aspects of God's manifestation in the wilderness--the majestic and terrible, and the gentle and beneficent. In the psalmist's triumphant retrospect no allusion is made to the dark obverse--Israel's long ingratitude. The same history which supplies other psalmists and prophets with material for penetrating accusations yields to this one only occasion of praise. God's part is pure goodness; man's is shaded with much rebellious murmuring. 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.