Psalms 9:6

(6) O thou enemy . . .—This vocative gives no intelligible meaning. Translate, As for the enemy, they are made an utter wreck and perpetual ruin.

Destructions.—Properly, desolations, ruins, from a word meaning “to be dried up.”

Come to a perpetual end.—Properly, are completed for ever.

Thou hast destroyed.—Some understand the relative: “the cities which thou hast destroyed.”

Their memorial.—Better, their very memory is perished; literally, their memory, theirs. (Comp. “He cannot flatter, he”—Shakespeare, King Lear). The LXX. and Vulg. read, “with a sound,” referring to the crash of falling cities. Some would substitute enemies for cities, but they lose the emphasis of the passage, which points to the utter evanishment from history of great cities as a consequence and sign of Divine judgment. Probably the poet thinks of Sodom and Gomorrha, whose overthrow left such a signal mark on the thought of Israel. We think of the mounds of earth which alone represent Nineveh and Babylon.

“’Mid far sands,

The palm-tree cinctured city stands,Bright white beneath, as heaven, bright blue,Leans over it, while the years pursueTheir course, unable to abateIts paradisal laugh at fate.One morn the Arab staggers blindO’er a new tract of earth calcinedTo ashes, silence, nothingness,And strives, with dizzy wits, to guessWhence fell the blow.”—R. BROWNING: Easter Day.