Psalms 50:3,4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Our God shall come, &c. God will undoubtedly come and call us to judgment; though now he seems to take no notice of our conduct. The prophet speaks this in the person of one of God's worshippers. As if he had said, Though he be our God, yet he will execute judgment upon us. And shall not keep silence He will no longer connive at, or bear with, the hypocrisy and profaneness of the professors of the true religion, but will now speak unto them in his wrath, and will effectually reprove and chastise them. Or, he will not cease, that is, neglect or delay to come, as אל יחרשׁ, al jecheresh, may be interpreted. A fire shall devour before him, &c. “He will not come like earthly princes, before whom marches an armed multitude; but in a far more terrible and irresistible manner, which shall make you as sensible of his dreadful presence, as your ancestors were at mount Sinai, when the devouring flames, and thunder, and lightning, which attended him, made the very mountain quake and tremble.” He shall call to the heavens, &c. “He shall call heaven and earth (angels and men) to be witnesses of the equity of his proceedings, Isaiah 1:2; and you may as soon move them out of their place, as avoid appearing before his tribunal.” Bishop Patrick. This is evidently a prediction of the terrible manner of God's coming to execute judgment on the apostate Jews and Israelites, partly by the kings of Assyria and Babylon, who laid waste their country, destroyed their cities, and carried multitudes of them into captivity; and more especially in their last destruction by the Romans, when a signal vengeance was taken on them, as for their hypocrisy, abuse of their privileges, and all their other sins, so in particular for crucifying their own Messiah. This most terrible execution of divine wrath upon them was frequently foretold by the prophets: see Malachi 3:2; and Malachi 4:1; Isaiah 66:15; Isaiah 66:17; and is often represented in the Scriptures as the coming of the kingdom of God, of the Son of man, or of Christ, the Father having committed all judgment to him. Now this prediction in this Psalm seems especially to respect this event. And it has accordingly been so interpreted by the best Christian expositors, as Poole has shown in his Synopsis Criticorum; where he likewise tells us that the Jewish rabbis affirm the subject of the Psalm to be, “that judgment, which will be executed in the days of the Messiah;” “ignorant, alas!” says Dr. Horne, “that they themselves, and their people are now become the unhappy objects of that judgment.”