This Psalm is still in connection. For as Psalm 74 was the cry of the Remnant over the desolation of Zion, and as Psalm 75 presented Messiah challenging the enemy and taking the kingdom as in answer to that cry, so this Psalm shows Him seated in Zion, no longer therefore a desolation, but saluted as the throne and sanctuary of the Lord, made more excellent than all the mountains of prey, or the preceding kingdoms of the Gentiles. God’s name is “great in Israel” now, as it has previously been brought “near” by His works of judgment. (Psa. 75:1; 76:1.)
Though the Spirit has larger thoughts in it, yet the occasion of this Psalm was, probably, the overthrow of Sennacherib’s army. For this signal deliverance was achieved eminently on behalf of Zion. (See 2 Kings 19:20-35.) So that it was said to the King of Assyria, “The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn.” As here, the Psalmist says, that in Zion God broke the arrows of the bow, the shield, the sword, and the battle. Verse 7 may remind us of Psalm 2:12.
In a fine strain the people publish this mighty achievement. And at the close, the Prophet of God, who had been anticipating all this, draws the moral, that the Lord acquires glory out of the violence and iniquity of man, (Ex 9:14,16,29); then overrules it all, and finally spreads around Himself a happy and a worshipping people, keeping the whole earth in godly subjection to His scepter as King of kings.
The Gentile kingdoms are fitly called “mountains of prey.” Daniel says, speaking of them, “these great beasts” (Dan. 7:17). They were in God’s esteem the haunts of wild beasts.
We may more particularly observe, that Psalm 76:10 reveals a very glorious truth. It intimates that all things, even the most unpromising—such as “the wrath of man”—shall end in God’s praise; and all that cannot aid that happy result shall be cleared off the scene, forestalled, as it were, by the divine sovereign power. How truly should our souls triumph in this thought! Things may appear evil and confused, but there is not a circumstance in the “mighty maze” that shall not swell the hallelujah around the throne and in the presence of the Lord, and aid in giving them their harmony and power forever and ever.