Attention Now Turns To The King Declaring His Reward and His Success Because He Trusts In YHWH (Psalms 21:8-12).
Your hand will find out all your enemies,
Your right hand will find out those who hate you.
The consequence of his faith is that the king will root out and defeat all his enemies. Neither their subtlety nor their strength will succeed against him. Wherever they hide he will discover them. Whatever their plots he will know of them. Compare Psalms 2.
There is also here the assurance that those who are God's can always be sure that He will watch over them, and that He will know all that there is to know about their enemies.
And finally there is here the guarantee that the King Messiah will finally triumph over all His enemies who will not be able to avoid His searching eye. As the next verse makes clear, they will be brought into fiery judgment before Him.
You will make them as a fiery furnace,
In the time of your anger (or ‘countenance').
YHWH will swallow them up in his wrath,
And the fire will devour them.
For God's anger, His antipathy to sin, is aroused against the enemies of His people, because their very sinfulness is revealed in their desire to attack those who are faithful to Him. That is why He allow their enemies' cities to be burned and the fires to destroy them. For He will enable the king to capture their cities and make them like a blazing furnace, and when the king personally arrives (the time of his countenance) and reveals his anger at their behaviour against God's people, they will be swallowed up before the face of God's anointed, and this will be in accordance with God's will. For God's wrath is revealed, as well as the king's, because He is determined that He will protect His own who obey His covenant and reveal their love for Him and His ways, against all that would come against them. That then is why He will allow the fire to devour their enemies. Fire is often used in Scripture as a metaphor for the wrath of God (see e.g. Exodus 19:18; Hebrews 12:29; Revelation 1:14; and often).
While in our day this may seem ferocious we must remember that the people then lived in dangerous circumstances in dangerous days. Enemies were ever likely to swoop on them in order steal their possessions, rape their wives, burn their cities, destroy their crops and slay their children (especially the males), taking over their land, and either driving them out or exacting penal tribute (See Judges for examples). The only alternative was for their armies to get in first and prevent it.
But as Scripture constantly reveals God does not directly intervene in the details of world affairs. He carries out His will by controlling men's overall activity, leaving the details to men themselves. Thus Nebuchadnezzar could be His servant (Jeremiah 25:9; Jeremiah 27:6) in spite of the terrible things he did. God was not responsible for the terrible things. He did not interfere with the detail. He had final overall direction as to what was or was not accomplished.
‘Their fruit will you destroy from the earth,
And their seed from among the children of men.'
And the result will be that the ‘fruit' of their enemy, their sons and daughters (Lamentations 2:20), will be destroyed from the face of the earth by the king and his armies. Their seed will be destroyed from among the children of men. This would ensure the future, for it was only by rendering the enemy weak that they could be subdued and prevented from being a constant threat.
And the king's success in all this mirrors the success of King Messiah when He comes to judge the world.
‘For they intended evil against you,
They conceived a device which they are not able to perform.'
For, as he points out here, these peoples that have been attacked by the king were not innocent. They had intended evil against them. They were constantly plotting and planning their raids. And the only reason that their plans failed was because the king got in first. That is the reason that they were not able to ‘perform' their ‘devices'. So do we learn that God can deal with all our enemies, whatever their schemes, if we respond to what He asks of us.
‘For you will make them turn their back,
You will make ready with your bowstrings against their face.
Thus the enemy will not be able to stand against them, but will turn their back to them, while their own bowstrings will cause havoc and devastation among the enemy. Their victory will be certain because God is with His anointed.
We are reminded here that God may allow chastening for His people for a little while, but He will not allow them finally to be destroyed. He will guide us in the use of whatever weapons we possess so as to discomfit our enemies.