Ps. 83.13-14 (dust and flames)

O my God / treat them / as whirling dust
as chaff / before the wind
as a fire / which burns a forest
as flames / which set mountains ablaze. 

It is something we have seen often—when God’s judgment arrives it a complex event that responds, usually in a very precise manner, to the sin and thereby works a great reversal. For example, when those who attempt to act wickedly in secret are met with judgment, they are exposed. When those who attempt to trap the righteous are met with judgment, they fall into their own trap. And, when those who speak in silent against other are revealed, they are publicly castigated. Here, the same principle can be detected. First, we must recall that these enemies are utterly massive. Were this psalm to be written in an apocalyptic fashion, they would be a single ten-headed beast. Their unity (their integrity) is the ‘covenant of hate’ that they have entered into against Yhwh and his people. As such, their ‘tremendum’ comes about because their sum is greater than their parts. Unified they are horrendous. Here, though, when God’s judgment falls they are turned into the most unsubstantial objects the psalmist could find: dust and chaff. Both can be removed, absolutely, by the smallest breathe of wind. Importantly, in this image, the nations are of no threat whatsoever to God’s mastery. While this image is a stock image, it plays a key and specific role here, utterly reversing the power of the nations. 

Second: The immediately preceding verse described the enemies’ attack of Israel as rooted in an attempted ‘land-grab’; they want their land. In these verses, they will, in a sense, be given the land: they will become forests and mountains. Except now they will be fuel for the flame of God’s wrath. This is important, and relates to the above judgment: in a very real sense God’s judgment fashions itself from the material of their wickedness. It is as if their evil becomes, in God’s presence, burning incense that is hurled back upon them—but it is their incense. The judgment is not emerging from some hidden depth of God; it is, almost entirely, the (just) response to their (wicked) call. In a way, God is ‘activating’ their evil. Further, in contrast to the first image, the one here is not of ‘effortless removal’ but violent and total destruction. They are not going to be merely ‘blown away’ but consumed by flames.