Ammon

And anyone that's been in Manchester or New York or London or Johannesburg or any of the other Paris or any other big cities on a Saturday night, knows what it's like there on you know uh after everybody's had a few doubling after everybody's had a few drinks they're all out in the streets singing songs and putting their arms around each other and so this is the the scene that's being described here that uh jerusalem was like a cosmopolitan city uh full of strangers pagans jews all going to the pub together and like drunkards that you'd find in the wilderness, like low lives in the street.

Rashi says this refers specifically to the Ammonites from Jordan and their neighbors, the Moabites, who were regular visitors to Yerushalayim.

They were close by and they used to go there on their holidays.

And they used to, you know, they used to live it up there and visit all the drinking establishments.

And these were also regular visitors to Yerushalayim from the time of Shlomo HaMelech.

very strong connections to Ethiopia due to his relationship with Malkas Sheva, the queen of Sheba, which is Ethiopia.

And Yehezkel says that despite the fact that these were whoever they're from, and the Sabians from Egypt or Ammonites from Jordan or people from Babylonia, despite the fact that these people were, you know, they were cruel and wicked people.

They were pagans with no real sense of a moral compass.

Together with the daughter

of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, these were all idol worshippers, women who were into idol worshipping.

He fell in love with all these

strange women.

For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians.

Hey, Charlie, this was serious.

And after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

He was now deep into idol worshipping.

The political situation that Asaph describes in Psalm 83 is perfectly consistent with events in his day around 950 BC, and there's no reason to see this psalm as requiring future fulfillment.

The nations that he mentions conspiring together, such as Edom, Moab, Hagrites, Gabal, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia, Tyre, Assyria, and Lot, were all very close neighbors to Israel, mostly in Jordan and Lebanon.

The picture painted by Asaph is a perfect fit with what we know from scripture and history about the political situation of the time.

Bill Salus would disagree with this point, and I will deal with his arguments in the final section of this chapter.

Even the middle kingdom of Assyria, the kingdom in question, was established nearly 400 years prior to Asaph.

In addition, we know of Assyria-Israel relations at least as far back as 871-850 BC because of Assyrian inscriptions that mention King Ahab and Jehu of Israel, which would have been only 75-100 years after Asaph wrote.

When you consider what it was that Assyria was doing as a part of this coalition in Psalm 83, namely helping the Ammonites and Moabites, which probably means supplying soldiers or other types of aid to them, we can be more sure that this fits with what we know of the political situation of the day.

During the reign of David, who wrote many of the Psalms, the Ammonites had procured soldiers from Syria to defend themselves against King David, according to 2 Samuel 10.6, which says, When the people of Ammon saw that they had made themselves repulsive to David, the people of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Beth-rohab and the Syrians of Zobah, 20,000 foot soldiers, and from King Machah 1,000 men, and from Ishtab 12,000 men.