Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.
Who shall not - `Who is there but must fear thee?' Compare Moses' song, Exodus 15:14-16, on the fear which God's judgments strike into the foe.
Thee. So 'Aleph ('), Syriac; but A B C, Vulgate, Cyprian, reject "thee."
All nations shall come. Alluding to Psalms 22:27-31: cf. Isaiah 66:23; Jeremiah 16:19. The conversion of all nations shall be when Christ shall come, and not until then; the first moving cause will be Christ's manifested judgments preparing all hearts for receiving Christ's mercy. He shall effect by His presence what we have in vain tried to effect in His absence. The present preaching of the Gospel is gathering out the elect remnant; meanwhile "the mystery of iniquity" is at work, and will at last come to its crisis: then shall judgment descend on the apostates at the harvestend of the age (Matthew 13:39-40), when the tares shall be cleared out of the earth, which thenceforward becomes Messiah's kingdom. The confederacy of apostates against Christ becomes, when overthrown with fearful judgments, the very means, in God's overruling providence, of preparing the nations not joined in the anti-Christian league to submit themselves to Him.
Judgments - `righteousness.'
Are - `were:' the prophetic past for the immediate future.