Psalms 68:5,6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

A father of the fatherless He now proceeds to mention some of the reasons for which God is to be praised. Of these this is one, that he is the patron of such as are injured and oppressed, and have not power to help themselves; is God in his holy habitation In his tabernacle, or rather, in heaven. Though he is in a peculiar manner present and dwells there, yet the eyes of his fatherly providence and care run to and fro through the earth, to observe and help his people when they are in distress. God setteth the solitary Hebrew, יחדים, jechidim, such as are left single and alone, and are destitute of help; in families Hebrew, he causeth them to sit down in houses: he blesseth them with partners in life, and a posterity, and with the safe and comfortable enjoyment of the social blessings attending it. He bringeth out those which were bound, &c. He setteth captives and prisoners at liberty, as he did the Israelites. But the rebellious Those that rebel against God, as the Egyptians did; dwell in a dry land Are deprived of all true comfort, and plagued with manifold calamities. This part of the Psalm, from Psa 68:1 to Psalms 68:6, inclusive, Dr. Chandler supposes to have been sung just as the Levites took up the ark on their shoulders: and certainly it was a proper exordium to this great solemnity: containing “a solemn acknowledgment of God, a devout prayer for the dispersion of his enemies, and an exhortation to his people to rejoice before him, and to celebrate his praises, who guided their forefathers in the desert; when he redeemed them from Egyptian bondage, avenged them of their enemies, enlarged them into families, enriched them with the spoils of Egypt, and condemned their oppressors to poverty, disgrace, and misery.”