PSALM 68, A GREAT HOST OF WOMEN, AND PROPHETIC ECHOES IN SCRIPTURE OF SKULL-CRUSHING SEED
Psalm 68 is a magnificent song of David about the ultimate triumph of God over his enemies. While powerful enough for a surface-level reading, (fiery lines like, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation”[1] come to mind), a subtle theme recounting the stories of women skull-crushers and the victorious King that they foreshadow adds considerable depth and color to our understanding of the Psalm, and encourage us to join in the great host of women who will declare the final victory over our ancient serpent-enemy.
Psalm 68 opens with battle lines drawn: “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee before Him,” and it closes with a majestic description of the kingdoms of the earth worshiping: “Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth; sing praises to the Lord.”
An ultimately eschatological scene, the Psalm is a prophetic description of “Day of the LORD” events: the judgment of the wicked, the joy of the righteous, the righting of systemic evil (Father of the fatherless, protector of widows, settler of the solitary, freer of the prisoners, restorer of inheritances, etc.[2]), and the scattering of God’s enemies, that ends in a command for the nations of the earth to praise the God of Israel, who has chosen Mount Zion for his holy habitation.[3] The turning point in the Psalm from open defiance to total international submission is in verse 11: “The Lord gives the command; the women who proclaim the good tidings are a great host: Kings of armies flee, they flee” As a result, God “scattered the peoples who delight in war.”[4]
It was this “great host of women” that first caught my attention. Who are they? What part do they play in this final victory of God? Why do they divide the spoil, but the men lie in sheepfolds? The answers to what will happen in the future described in this Psalm, like so many things, lies in the past.
An Enemy is Made
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.[5]
The fall narrative of Genesis 3 is the context for the first Gospel declaration in Scripture: that though mankind had sinned and rejected God’s leadership, God had a redemptive plan to reverse the curse of their disobedience in the form of the woman’s offspring.[6] The enmity between the woman and the serpent comes to a head (no pun intended) when the seed of the woman crushes the skull of the serpent, setting up a type that will be echoed throughout subsequent history.
This prophecy of the promised seed who strikes mankind’s ultimate enemy’s skull is referenced in Psalm 68:21: “But God will strike the heads of His enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.” However, instead of a seed, it is God who is striking the head of His enemies. Could the Messianic seed and God Himself—the One called YHWH—perhaps be one and the same? It seems that King David thought so, and he continues to expand on this theme of crushing the skulls of the wicked by obliquely referencing two other stories from the time of Israel’s judges.
Tent Peg of Justice and Men in Sheepfolds
But Jael...took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.[7]
The Israelites were in dire straits during Deborah's judgeship over Israel, as the Lord had given them over to the rulership of a cruel Canaanite king named Jabin for twenty years because of the evil they had done in His sight. However, when the people of Israel called on the Lord for relief, He had mercy on them and raised up leaders to free them from their oppression. Deborah summoned a warrior named Barak and reminded him that God had commanded him to gather 10,000 men of Israel and attack King Jabin’s general named Sisera and his troops. Barak says he will obey the word of the Lord, but only if Deborah will go with him. Deborah agrees to go with him, but lets him know he will not receive full battle-glory because the Lord is going to “sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”
God used Barak and the 10,000 men of Israel to completely rout Sisera and his troops at the foot of Mount Tabor. As his army was being slaughtered to the man, Sisera fled from the battlefield to what he believed to be a nearby ally—the tent of Jael, wife of Herber the Kenite, who was at peace with the Canaanite king.
Jael met Sisera on the road, invited him into her tent, tucked him in, and gave him milk to drink. Battle-weary and feeling safe, Sisera falls asleep. After her tender ministrations to her guest, however, Jael does something surprising that goes against the laws of hospitality and the local political alliances: she grabbed a tent peg and a hammer and drove the peg through his temple while he lay sleeping.
Barak had been pursuing Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him to show him where his enemy had fallen, fullfilling the prophetic word of Deborah of the selling of Sisera into a woman’s hand.[8] In response to the bloody death of their oppressor that ultimately lead to the overthrow of King Jabin himself, Deborah and Barak sing a victory song that fully credits the Lord for their success, which is echoed in several places in Psalm 68.[9]
In Judges 5:4-4 and in Psalm 68:7-8, the earth and the mountains quaked at the marching of the LORD. In Judges 5:16 and in Psalm 68:13, the shame of the menfolk of the tribes who avoided battle contrary to the summons of the LORD is exposed, saying that they preferred to remain with their livestock in sheepfolds than obey their summons to war. In Judges 5:30 and Psalm 68:12, women discuss and speculate on the division of spoils. Such close parallels between these two passages indicate that the Psalmist is very intentional in his language, deliberately mirroring his song with the song of Deborah and Barak, tying back to the theme of the God who crushes His enemy. If the point needed further reinforcement, the Psalm has yet one more skull-crusher allusion for us in the mention of a mountain.
Mount Zalmon, Scorched Earth, and Millstones
And a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech's head and crushed his skull.[10]
In Psalm 68:14, David sings, “When the Almighty scattered the kings there, it was snowing in Zalmon.” Where is Zalmon, and what happened there? The mysterious mountain only has one other mention in the Scriptures. In Judges 9, Abimelech, the son of Gideon through one of his concubines, made Zalmon infamous. This evil character conspired with the inhabitants of Shechem[11]—his hometown—against his deceased father’s seventy legitimate sons and killed them in order to become the ruler. Eventually, a dispute arose between him and the people of Shechem.[12]
Abimelech, along with his troops, besieged the city, defeated its army, and murdered most of its inhabitants.[13] However, a thousand men and women escaped and fled to a fortified tower. In response to this, Abimelech climbed the nearby Mount Zalmon and led his army in cutting branches and gathering wood. Once they had enough firewood, they transported it to the lower chamber of the tower, transforming it from a place of refuge to a horrific pyre that burnt the thousand trapped inside.[14]
Continuing his campaign of terror, Abimelech went to Thebez, a nearby town, and captured it. In a replay of the events of the last battle, citizens of the city fled and also took refuge in a tower. As burning the tower in Shechem had ended the battle neatly and decisively, Abimelech stuck to his strategy and decided to burn the remnant of Thebez alive in their tower as well. However, as Abimelech approached the tower, a woman threw a millstone that landed on his head, “crushing his skull”[15]. As he lay dying, Abimelech was more distressed by the fact that a woman had brought him down than he was concerned about his impending death. He commanded his armor-bearer to, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest it be said of me: ‘A woman slew him.’”[16]
The promised Seed that would crush the skull of the serpent and the story of Jael smashing Sisera’s temple with a tent peg harmonize perfectly with this story of an unnamed woman heaving a millstone and saving her family, friends, and neighbors from certain death at the hands of a wicked enemy. King David skillfully recalled the entire account with just one reference to Mount Zalmon. But how does weaving all these threads into this Psalm give us insight on the great host of women prophetically portrayed as proclaiming God’s final and ultimate victory in verses 11 and 12?
The Sisterhood of the Serpent-Crushers
This is the subtext that I think can be reasonably inferred from the themes we have traced in Psalm 68: though our mother Eve was deceived by that ancient serpent and subsequently under the curse of sin and death,[17] our kind Savior, our promised Messiah-seed, reversed not only her state of cursedness but also her shame by involving her and her daughters in His rescue mission, giving them a glorious and central role. To be clear: there is nothing we can do, men or women, to merit our salvation or aid an Almighty God. However, though we are dust, our God dignifies us by allowing us to partner with Him and participate in His victory. Jael with her tent peg and the Thebezian woman with her millstone, Mariam with her tambourine[18] and Hannah with her song,[19] Sarah with her laughter[20] and Manoah’s wife with her visitation,[21] Anna with her prayers[22] and the Samaritan woman with her living water,[23] Deborah with her battle-victory[24] and Mary with her first born Son[25]—all of these and more are a great host of faithful women who proclaim in word and deed that the wicked kings of this world must flee before the great host of heaven and their all-powerful Commander. This cloud of witnesses will join their voices with another host of women, who, in the midst of the final battle, declare the rout of the rulers foolish enough to battle the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.[26] This Prince of Peace, our promised Seed of the woman, will crush Satan underneath His heel and our feet.[27]
What a high calling for the daughters of Eve bought by Messiah’s blood, and we should accept nothing less: that we would be a part of the battle choir singing of His glorious victory in real-time and joining with the nations in proclaiming: “Awesome is God from His sanctuary; the God of Israel—He is the one who gives power and strength to His people.”[28]
Across generations and nations, we are the sisterhood of the serpent-crushers, in the thick of the war roaring His triumph.
May we see the scattering of God’s enemies speedily and in our days. Amen and Maranatha.
Devon Phillips is just a pilgrim longing for the Day of the revealing of the sons of God and the redemption of our bodies. Meanwhile, she is privileged to serve in the Middle East with Frontier Alliance International and contributes regularly to THE WIRE. She can be reached at devon@faimission.org.
[1] Psalm 68:5
[2] Psalm 68:6
[3] Psalm 132:13
[4] Psalm 68:14
[5] Genesis 3:15
[6] The ESV and many other English translations render the Hebrew word “zera” (זרע) in Genesis 3:15 as “offspring.” Other versions, such as the NASB, the KJV, and the JPS Tanakh, translate the word as “seed”
[7] Judges 4:21
[8} This is a recounting of the events of Judges 4
[9] The song of Deborah and Barak is recounted in Judges 5
[10] Judges 9:53
[11] Shechem is traditionally thought to be on or near the site of modern-day Nablus, in the West Bank Palestinian Territory
[12] Judges 8:32-9:6
[13] Judges 9:43-45
[14] Judges 9:49
[15] Judges 9:53
[16] Judges 9:54
[17] Romans 5:12
[18] Exodus 15:20-21
[19] 1 Samuel 2:1-10
[20] Genesis 21:6
[21] Judges 13
[22] Luke 2:36-38
[23] John 4:7-41
[24] Judges 5
[25] Luke 1:46-55
[26] Revelation 13:8
[27] Romans 16:20
[28] Psalm 68:35
