He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. .. and vex them in His sore displeasure.
First a laugh then a smite
The heathen and the people, the kings and the rulers are answered with contempt, they are laughed at and derided; and if this be not enough to change their spirit and their purpose, they will be spoken to in wrath, and vexed in sore displeasure. It is interesting and instructive to remark how creation first laughs at and derides men who oppose it, and how in the next place it avenges the insults that are offered to its laws. When Canute rebuked the waves the sea laughed at him, and the waves had him in derision; had he remained upon the position he had chosen, laughter and derision would have been changed for vengeance and overthrow. Let a man attempt to put down the wind, and the only possible answer is derision; let him attempt to defy the lightning, and he may perish under its stroke. There is but a short distance between the derision of nature and its penal judgments. So every attempt to revile the power of God is contemned, and every insult offered to His holiness is avenged. A very curious process is indicated by these two verses. The laughter is expressive of an eternal law; things are not so constituted that they can be turned about at the pleasure of the wicked, nor is the purpose of the universe so fickle that the wrath of man can affect its fulfilment; great strength can afford to deride; infinite power can best express its own consciousness of almightiness by smiling upon all the hosts which array themselves against it. But this answer of contemptuous laughter must not be the only reply, for contempt can seldom have any moral issue of a really substantial and blessed kind; there must come a time when law must avenge itself upon those who would insult its majesty or mock its power. First, laughter, as a proof of the utter impossibility of injuriously affecting the standards and purposes of God; after laughter must come the judgment, which shows how dangerous it is to trifle with fire, and how awful a thing it is to defy the wrath of righteousness. It is for every man to consider under what particular phase of the Divine regard he is now living. For a period he may be amused, as it were, at certain phases of the opposition of nature, or the awkwardness of life; but let him not suppose that he sees the whole of the case: such opposition and awkwardness may suddenly be displaced by judgment, and vengeance, and destiny irrevocable. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The laughter of God
They scoff at us. God laughs at them. Severe Cato thought that laughter did not become the gravity of Roman consuls, and is it attributed to the majesty of heaven. .. Pharaoh imagined that by drowning the Israelite males he had found a way to root their name from the earth, but when at the same time his own daughter in his own court gave princely education to Moses, their deliverer, did not God laugh? Is Dagon put up in his place again? God’s smile shall take off his head and his hands and leave him neither wit to guide nor power to subsist He permitted His temple to be sacked and rifled, the holy vessels to be profaned and caroused in; but did not God’s smile make Belshazzar to tremble? Oh, what are His frowns if His smiles be so terrible? (Thomas Adams.)