The Audacity of Thieves in the Pasture Text: Psalm 83:9-12
Introduction: A Conspiracy Against Reality
We live in an age of profound cosmic theft. Our generation is filled with men who believe they can stride into the house of the Almighty, put their feet up on His furniture, and declare that the place is now under new management. They see the world, which God made and which He owns, and they say, as the psalmist records, "Let us possess for ourselves the pastures of God." This is the essential spirit of rebellion. It is not merely a disagreement over policy; it is a conspiracy to seize the inheritance.
The imprecatory psalms, of which this is a prime example, are a great offense to the modern, sentimental Christian. We have been taught a soft-Jesus-meek-and-mild routine that has no stomach for the raw, covenantal realities of God's justice. We want a God who is endlessly tolerant, which is to say, a God who does not care about righteousness. But the God of the Bible is a holy God, a jealous God, and a God who fiercely defends His own name and His own people. These psalms are not the rantings of some vindictive bronze-age chieftain. They are inspired prayers, given by the Holy Spirit, for the people of God to pray when the enemies of God have thrown down the gauntlet.
And the gauntlet has been thrown. The enemies of God have always been with us, but in our day they have formed a grand coalition, a conspiracy with one accord, to erase the name of Christ from public life, to redefine the family He created, to silence the church He purchased with His blood, and to claim His creation for their own perverse ends. They want to possess the pastures of God. They want to own what is not theirs.
This psalm, therefore, is not a museum piece. It is a field manual. It teaches us how to pray when the battle is joined. It does not teach us to pray for petty, personal revenge. Notice the foundation of the prayer: it is a prayer for God to act as He has acted before. It is a prayer rooted in redemptive history. The psalmist is not asking God to do something novel or out of character. He is asking God to be God, to remember His covenant, and to deal with His enemies in the 21st century just as He dealt with them in the time of the Judges.
The Text
Do to them as to Midian,
As to Sisera, and Jabin at the river of Kishon,
Who were destroyed at En-dor,
Who were as dung for the ground.
Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb
And all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
Who said, "Let us possess for ourselves
The pastures of God."
(Psalm 83:9-12 LSB)
Remembering the Rout (vv. 9-10)
The prayer begins with an appeal to God's resume. The psalmist is not shooting in the dark; he is pointing to specific, historical instances of divine judgment.
"Do to them as to Midian, As to Sisera, and Jabin at the river of Kishon, Who were destroyed at En-dor, Who were as dung for the ground." (Psalm 83:9-10)
This is covenantal praying. It is like a child reminding his father of a past promise or a past deliverance. "Dad, remember what you did for us then? Do it again." The first reference is to Midian. This throws us back to the story of Gideon in Judges chapters 6 through 8. The Midianites were a locust plague, swarming the land, devouring everything. Israel was impoverished and crying out to God. And how did God deliver them? Not with a massive army, but with a ridiculous force of 300 men armed with trumpets, torches, and clay pots. God routed the enemy with psychological warfare and glorious confusion. The prayer, "Do to them as to Midian," is a prayer for God to win a great victory with a small, seemingly inadequate remnant. It is a prayer that acknowledges that the victory belongs to the Lord, and not to our own strength.
The second example is Sisera and Jabin. This is the story of Deborah and Barak from Judges 4 and 5. Jabin was the king of Canaan, and Sisera was his commander, a man who terrified Israel with 900 iron chariots. This was the ancient equivalent of a fleet of tanks. From a human perspective, Israel was hopelessly outmatched. But God intervened. He sent a torrential downpour that turned the Kishon river valley into a swamp, bogging down the mighty chariots and rendering them useless. Sisera, the great general, fled on foot and was dispatched ingloriously by a woman, Jael, with a tent peg through his temple. This prayer, then, is a prayer for God to neutralize the enemy's most fearsome weapons. It is a prayer that recognizes that our enemies may have iron chariots, cultural institutions, and all the megaphones, but our God has the weather. He controls the very ground they stand on.
Then comes the gritty result in verse 10. They "were destroyed at En-dor, Who were as dung for the ground." This is not polite language, but it is the language of ultimate humiliation. The proud warriors who defied the living God became fertilizer. Their bodies rotted in the field, becoming nourishment for the soil they sought to conquer. This is a graphic depiction of the futility of rebellion. When you fight God, you do not simply lose. You are unmade. Your glory, your strength, your very identity is reduced to nothing. This is what the fear of the Lord is all about. It is understanding the final end of the ungodly. This is not a prayer of personal hatred; it is a prayer for the public, undeniable vindication of God's holiness against those who hold it in contempt.
A Fitting End for Princes (v. 11)
The prayer continues, moving from the armies to their leaders. God's judgment is not indiscriminate; it is precise and fitting.
"Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb And all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna," (Psalm 83:11 LSB)
These are the names of the Midianite princes and kings whom Gideon's army pursued and executed. Oreb means "raven" and Zeeb means "wolf." These were men who lived by predation, and they were cut down. Zebah and Zalmunna were the high kings who had murdered Gideon's brothers. Gideon hunted them down and brought them to justice. The prayer is specific: let the leaders of this new conspiracy share the fate of those ancient tyrants.
This is a crucial principle. God holds leaders to a higher account. The men who devise the wicked schemes, who lead the rebellion, who speak the proud words against heaven, will face a judgment that is fitting for their station. This is not about class warfare; it is about covenantal responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. Those who use their positions of power and influence to lead others into rebellion against God are inviting a swift and terrible reckoning. We should pray this way for the arrogant and godless leaders of our own day, that God would either convert them dramatically or remove them publicly, so that all may see that there is a God in heaven who judges the earth.
The Heart of the Rebellion (v. 12)
Finally, the psalmist reveals the motive, the driving lust behind the conspiracy. Why do they rage? Why do they plot?
"Who said, 'Let us possess for ourselves The pastures of God.'" (Genesis 83:12 LSB)
Here is the root of the sin. It is covetousness on a cosmic scale. The "pastures of God" refers to God's inheritance, His chosen people, the land He promised them, and the place of His dwelling. It is everything that God has marked out as His own. The enemies of God look at His flock, His green pastures, and they want it for themselves. This is the sin of Satan in the beginning. He saw God's authority and said, "I will be like the Most High." It is the sin of Ahab coveting Naboth's vineyard. It is the sin of every tyrant, every revolutionary, every godless ideologue who seeks to build a humanistic utopia on God's earth without reference to God.
They want the fruit of Christendom without the root of Christ. They want the blessings of liberty without the Lord who gives liberty. They want to graze their own flocks in pastures that belong to another. They want to be God. This is why their rebellion is so profoundly offensive to Heaven. They are not just breaking the rules; they are trying to seize the throne. They are attempting to evict the landlord and claim the property as their own.
Conclusion: Praying for the Landlord's Return
So how do we, as New Covenant believers, pray such a prayer? We must first understand that the "pastures of God" today are, in the highest sense, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and the world that was given to Him as His inheritance. "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession" (Psalm 2:8). The entire world is Christ's pastureland.
The enemies of God are still saying, "Let us possess it for ourselves." They are hard at work, trying to seize the institutions, the schools, the courts, the culture. They want to take possession of the minds of our children. And so we must pray this psalm. We pray it corporately, as the people of God. We pray for God to do to the new pagans what He did to the old. We pray that He would confound their technologies, just as He confounded the iron chariots. We pray that He would turn their own strength against them, as He did to the Midianites. We pray that their proud leaders would be brought low, and that their arrogant rebellion would be turned into dung for the ground.
Does this contradict the command to love our enemies? Not at all. We are to love our personal enemies, to bless those who curse us. But we are also to hate God's enemies in their official capacity as rebels. We hate the rebellion, we hate the blasphemy, we hate the wickedness. And our prayer for their destruction can be answered in one of two ways. God can destroy an enemy by turning him into a friend, as He did with Saul of Tarsus. A prayer for Oreb and Zeeb to be dealt with could be answered by their conversion. What a glorious defeat for the kingdom of darkness that would be. Or, God can destroy an enemy by breaking him in pieces with a rod of iron, as He did with Pharaoh. Both are acts of judgment, and both bring glory to God.
We are not to be vindictive. We are to be zealous for the glory of God's name. We pray these prayers because we long to see the pastures of God cleared of wolves and predators. We pray them because we long for the day when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. We are praying for the Landlord to vindicate His own property rights. And He will.