Ps. 83.1 (the gathering storm)

O God / do not rest
do not be silent / or still / O God. 

It is perhaps significant that the psalm opens in the negative. Rather than petitioning God to act, speak or move, the psalmist implores God to “not rest”, “not be silent” and “not be still”. One feels in this opening verse not the sense that God is currently at bay, but that the action the psalmist is calling for is one of a more profound nature than what has perhaps existed in the past. In other words, because of the nature of the threat that will be unveiled later in the psalm, this call to “not..” originates not from a sense of God’s absence but from a sense that a particular, and profound, action is necessary. It is with that in mind that we should hear the repetition. The psalmist does not merely ask God “not to rest” but emphasizes the point three times in three different ways (resting, speaking and movement). (It is interesting to note that God’s act of ‘speaking’ is portrayed here as a form of his movement. What God speaks is not referential (it is not referring to a reality) but sacramental (it is the reality it speaks; as in Genesis where for God to speak is for him to create; here, for God to speak is for him to judge/redeem).) In the repetition there is the sense of a ‘gathering storm’ of action, of an ever-increasing tidal wave of movement against the enemy. As we will see, this ‘gathering storm’ is thematic as the threat itself is a ‘gathering into one’ of many nations. Just as the nations will unite to destroy Israel, so is the psalmist imploring God to ‘unite’ all his energies against them. It is along these lines that we should see this verse in relationship to verses 13-15, where we find the ‘positive’ side of this petition. There, the psalmist implores God not simply into ‘action’ but into a profound and utterly massive display of destruction.