It is a Complaint, and Prayer against the falsness, fraud, and impious Designs, rather than the force, of inhumane Adversaries: Because their Strength and Power may (at least for a Time) be from God's Will and Permission; but Deceit and Perfidious∣ness owe their Birth to Men's Prevarications, and the subtil Temptations of the Evil One: And therefore ought the rather to be deprecated.
The Author of this Psalm is not known, but supposed to be David, and made by him upon the like occasion that the 7th, the 34th, and the 52d were Composed, when he fled to Gath, ob Aethiopem Jeminiensem, (as* 1.1 Castalio phraseth it) or upon the implacable Fury of Saul; truly and civilly, as well as elegantly stiled, A melan∣choly terrible Man: Or else upon the malicious Information of a Cushite or Edomite against an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile; which seems very probable from his Description of the Parties, who were after the way of Mesech (as the Aethiopians Cushites were) and allied to the sordid Tents of Kedar, or Arabia; of which Country Doeg was a Native.
This Psalm likewise looks Prophetically at the sworn Enemies of Jerusalem's Peace; such as were the confederate Arabians and Asiaticks at the building the Temple, and afterwards with Antiochus, at the defacing of the same: All which cruel and cunning Foes are expressed by* 1.2 God and Magog.