The God Who Crushes Heads Text: Psalm 68:19-23
Introduction: A Full-Orbed Salvation
We live in an age of sentimental, boutique Christianity. For many modern evangelicals, Jesus is a gentle therapist, God is a cosmic affirmation machine, and salvation is a quiet, internal transaction that should never, ever make a mess in the public square. We have domesticated the Lion of Judah and tried to turn Him into a housecat. We want a God who bears our burdens but is squeamish about breaking things. We want a Savior who offers escapes from death but would never dream of crushing a skull.
But the God of the Bible is not a God of our delicate sensibilities. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the Lord of Armies. His salvation is not a flimsy, ethereal concept; it is a bloody, world-altering, history-shaping conquest. The gospel is good news, but it is good news that comes with the sound of shattering thrones and the crash of falling empires. The comfort of the saints and the confusion of the wicked are two sides of the very same coin. You cannot have one without the other.
This is the great offense of a psalm like this one. It moves seamlessly from the tender care of a burden-bearing Father to the violent triumph of a warrior King. It presents us with a salvation that is both personal and cosmic, both gentle and graphic. This is a salvation that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Our modern, therapeutic age wants to take a pair of scissors to the text, cutting out the parts that offend our refined tastes. We want the God of verse 19 but not the God of verse 21. We want the salvation but not the slaughter.
But the Holy Spirit has given us the whole psalm, and we are required to sing the whole psalm. We must learn to praise the God who daily bears our burdens precisely because He is the God who will surely crush the head of His enemies. These are not contradictory truths; they are complementary. His tender care for His people is funded by His righteous wrath against those who oppose His kingdom. To reject the imprecatory portions of Scripture is to reject the very foundation of our comfort and security. It is to desire a shepherd who is kind to the sheep but unwilling to fight the wolves. Such a shepherd is no shepherd at all.
The Text
Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, The God who is our salvation. Selah.
God is to us a God of salvation; And to Yahweh the Lord belong escapes from death.
Surely God will crush the head of His enemies, The hairy skull of him who goes on in his guilty deeds.
The Lord said, “I will bring them back from Bashan. I will bring them back from the depths of the sea;
That your foot may crush them in blood, The tongue of your dogs may have its portion from your enemies.”
(Psalm 68:19-23 LSB)
Our Daily Deliverer (v. 19-20)
We begin with the foundation of our praise, God's constant and saving help.
"Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, The God who is our salvation. Selah. God is to us a God of salvation; And to Yahweh the Lord belong escapes from death." (Psalm 68:19-20)
The praise here is immediate and personal. "Blessed be the Lord." This is not a detached theological observation; it is the heartfelt cry of a man who knows he is utterly dependent. And what is the reason for this blessing? It is because God "daily bears our burden." The verb here means to load up. Some translations render it "daily loads us with benefits," which is certainly true. But the idea of bearing our burden gets to the heart of our condition. We are frail creatures, laden with sin, anxiety, and the pressures of a hostile world. We are constantly buckling at the knees. And God, in His condescending grace, comes alongside us every single day, not just on Sundays, and He lifts the load. He takes the weight.
This is a profound picture of sanctification and providence. Every morning brings new temptations, new fears, new challenges. And every morning, God's mercy is new. He doesn't just give you a lump sum of grace at conversion and tell you to manage it well. He provides a daily supply, a constant stream. He is not a distant landlord; He is a present Father who involves Himself in the gritty details of our lives.
This burden-bearing is then defined as salvation. He is "The God who is our salvation." The name of Jesus, Yeshua, means "Yahweh saves." This is who He is. It is His nature. And this salvation is comprehensive. Verse 20 expands on it: "to Yahweh the Lord belong escapes from death." The Hebrew is striking, it literally says "exits from death." This is not just about being saved from hell in the sweet by-and-by. It is about deliverance from death in all its forms, right here, right now. It is deliverance from the death of despair, the death of meaninglessness, the death of sickness, and the death of tyranny. God is in the business of orchestrating jailbreaks from death's domain. The ultimate expression of this, of course, is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who kicked the doors off the tomb and walked out, securing for all His people the ultimate "escape from death."
So, the psalmist establishes the character of our God. He is a God who is for us. He is on our side. He is our constant help, our deliverer, our rescuer. This is the bedrock. But we must not stop here. Because the psalmist immediately tells us how this saving character is demonstrated in a world that is in rebellion against Him.
The Divine Head-Crusher (v. 21)
From the comfort of God's care, the psalm pivots to the violence of God's justice.
"Surely God will crush the head of His enemies, The hairy skull of him who goes on in his guilty deeds." (Psalm 68:21)
The word "surely" or "but" provides the pivot. God is a God of salvation for us, BUT He is a God of judgment for them. And notice the specificity of the judgment. It is a head wound. This should immediately rocket us back to the first promise of the gospel in the entire Bible, the protoevangelion of Genesis 3:15. There, God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. This is the central conflict of all history: the seed of the woman, Christ and His people, at war with the seed of the serpent.
This verse is a promise that God will bring that ancient prophecy to its bloody fulfillment. The language is graphic and visceral: "the hairy skull." This is not abstract. It refers to a warrior, perhaps one who wore his hair long as a sign of his prowess or his vows, who struts about in his rebellion. He "goes on in his guilty deeds," meaning he is unrepentant, defiant, and proud in his sin. He is the epitome of the arrogant sinner who shakes his fist at heaven.
And God's response is not a polite request to cease and desist. He will crush his head. This is the language of total, decisive, and humiliating defeat. In ancient warfare, to crush the head of the enemy king was to end the war. This is what Jael did to Sisera. It is what David did to Goliath. It is what Christ did to Satan on the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame (Colossians 2:15). The resurrection was the public announcement that the serpent's head had been fatally crushed.
We must understand that this is not just about some future, eschatological battle. It is about how God operates in history. As the gospel advances, Christ, through His church, is progressively putting all His enemies under His feet. Every idol that is toppled, every lie that is exposed, every unjust law that is overturned is another outworking of this divine head-crushing. Our salvation is secured by the destruction of our enemies. God bears our burdens by breaking their backs.
The Great Reversal (v. 22)
God then declares His sovereign power to retrieve His enemies from wherever they might hide.
"The Lord said, 'I will bring them back from Bashan. I will bring them back from the depths of the sea;'" (Genesis 68:22)
This is a declaration of God's inescapable sovereignty. Bashan was a region east of the Jordan known for its high mountains, its fertile pastures, and its pagan strongholds. It was the kingdom of Og, a giant whom Israel defeated. It represented a place of earthly power, a high and mighty fortress. The "depths of the sea" represents the opposite extreme, a place of chaos, concealment, and death. Think of Pharaoh's army drowned in the Red Sea, or Jonah fleeing in the belly of the fish.
The point is this: there is no place for the enemies of God to hide. They can ascend to the heights of human power and arrogance in Bashan, or they can descend to the depths of chaos and despair in the sea. It does not matter. God's reach is absolute. He will drag them from their mountain fortresses and dredge them up from the bottom of the ocean. No height of pride can protect them, and no depth of obscurity can conceal them.
There is a double meaning here as well. While this is primarily about God bringing His enemies to judgment, it can also be seen as a promise to rescue His own people from these same places. He can rescue His saints from the heights of pagan oppression and from the depths of their own despair. But in the context of this martial psalm, the primary thrust is judgment. God is mustering His enemies for their final defeat. He is gathering them all into one place, the valley of decision, so that His victory might be total and manifest before all.
The Vindication of the Saints (v. 23)
Finally, the purpose of this great roundup is revealed. It is for the public vindication of God's people.
"That your foot may crush them in blood, The tongue of your dogs may have its portion from your enemies." (Genesis 68:23)
This is where our modern sensibilities really begin to scream. But we must read this with biblical eyes. This is the language of covenantal justice. God does not just defeat His enemies in a private, unseen way. He does it publicly, and He involves His people in the victory. "That your foot may crush them in blood." This imagery is taken from the ancient practice of conquerors placing their feet on the necks of defeated kings (Joshua 10:24). It is a symbol of total subjugation.
But here, it is not just the king, but the people, who participate in the triumph. This is a promise that the saints will rule with Christ. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet (Romans 16:20). We are not passive spectators in this war; we are soldiers. Through our faithfulness, our prayers, our gospel proclamation, and our cultural obedience, we are participating in the subjugation of Christ's enemies. The victory is His, but He has graciously granted us a share in the spoils and in the triumph.
The image of the dogs is equally stark. In the ancient world, dogs were scavengers that would clean up the carrion after a battle. The picture is one of such a complete and overwhelming victory that the bodies of the enemies are left on the field for the dogs to consume. This is what happened to Jezebel. It is a picture of ultimate disgrace and dishonor. It signifies that the cause of the wicked has been so thoroughly discredited and defeated that they are not even worthy of a proper burial.
This is not about personal bloodlust. It is about a holy zeal for the glory of God and the justice of His cause. It is a desire to see righteousness vindicated and evil put down. To pray this way is to align our desires with God's revealed will. It is to say, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." And the coming of that kingdom necessarily means the displacement of all rival kingdoms. The establishment of righteousness requires the destruction of wickedness.
Conclusion: Our Gentle, Skull-Crushing Savior
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a robust, muscular, and deeply comforting doctrine of salvation. Our God is not a celestial bystander. He is an active warrior on our behalf.
The same Jesus who said "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," is the same Jesus who will rule the nations with a rod of iron. He bears our burdens, and He does so by crushing the heads of those who would burden us. He offers us escape from death by inflicting death on Death itself, and on all of Death's allies.
This is why we can have true peace and security. Our peace is not based on a flimsy hope that the wolves will decide to become vegetarians. Our peace is based on the sure knowledge that our Shepherd has promised to break their teeth. The comfort of the gospel and the violence of the imprecations are not at odds. The violence is the foundation of the comfort.
Therefore, let us not be ashamed of the whole counsel of God. Let us bless the Lord who daily bears our burdens. And let us praise Him as the God of our salvation, the one who crushes the hairy skulls of the unrepentant, who drags His enemies from their hiding places, and who invites us to place our feet on their necks. For our salvation is not a retreat from the world, but the conquest of it. And the God who saves us is the God who fights for us, until every enemy is made His footstool, and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.