Psalms 97:3-5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

A fire goeth before him, &c. “The judgments of God, and their effects upon the world, are here set forth, under the usual similitude of lightning and fire from heaven, causing the earth to tremble, and the mountains to melt and dissolve away.” And by these terrible appearances in the natural world are especially signified those dreadful judgments of God, which were to be inflicted upon the Jews and others for their contempt and rejection of the Messiah, which was foretold in the Old Testament, and accomplished in the New. His lightnings enlightened the world This phrase signifies, not so much illumination as terror and judgments, as appears, both from the following words, and from the constant use of the phrase in that sense. The hills melted The strongest and loftiest parts of the earth, by which he may intend the great potentates of the world, who set themselves against the Messiah; at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth Whose dominion shall not then be confined in Canaan, as now, in a manner, it is, but shall be enlarged over the whole earth. “The exaltation of Christ to the throne of his kingdom was followed by a dreadful display of that vengeance which broke in pieces the Jewish nation, and brought their civil and religious polity to an utter dissolution. In the history of their destruction the world of the ungodly may view a striking picture of the great and terrible day when the Lord Jesus shall render a recompense to all his enemies. He is then to descend in flaming fire; lightnings shall be his harbingers; the earth shall tremble, and the hills shall literally melt like wax at the presence of Jehovah.” Horne.