Psalms 68:17 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The chariots of God are twenty thousand, &c.— The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of thousands; the Lord is among them, O Sinai, in the sanctuary. See Deuteronomy 33:2. The chariots of God here must mean, those invisible and heavenly chariots, that attendance of angels, which in scripture is ascribed to God. See Isaiah 66:15. 2 Kings 6:17. These chariots are here said to be twenty thousand; a certain number put for an uncertain, denoting a large multitude. The sense of the whole verse seems to be this: "Sinai may boast of the honour of the appearance of God, and the attendance of ten thousand of his saints, when he gave the law from thence: But now there are twenty thousand, even thousands of thousands of the angels and chariots of God attending the ark of his presence. The same God who was formerly encompassed with his angels on thee, O Sinai, is now among them here; and his future residence will be with them in his sanctuary on mount Sion." There is somewhat peculiarly pleasing and poetical in this part of the psalm. Bashan was a high hill, and situated in the territories of the Hebrews; and if the loftiness of its summits could have given it any claim to the preference, Sion must have lost the honour of being the residence of the ark of God's presence. But the interrogation, if that rendering be allowed, expresses a contempt for Bashan, and comes with peculiar propriety, if, as we suppose, this part of the hymn was sung just when the procession came within view of Sion. The representation of the hills, as leaping with a kind of eagerness to be chosen for God's residence; or rather, as envying mount Sion for the choice that God had made of it, is in the true spirit of poetry, which can make mountains speak and move, rejoice and grieve, when necessary to enliven the scene, and adorn the subject. The introducing the angels of God as descending on the hills, and his chariots as attending and guarding the ark into its habitation, in much larger numbers than they were on mount Sinai, is finely and sublimely imagined; to create in the people a firm belief, that Jerusalem should be under the special care of God, and that the army of heaven should be stationed there for the protection and safety of the ark and city; and nothing could have been more elegantly conceived, or better adapted to the occasion. When the ark had ascended mount Sion, and was deposited in the place assigned for it, the singers proceeded, Psalms 68:18-24.