Psalms 68:21–23

Psalms 68:21 — "But God will strike through the head of his enemies"

The Hebrew verb מָחַץ (makhats) — "to shatter" or "to strike through" — is forceful and decisive, conveying a blow that is total rather than merely wounding. "The head" (qodqod, literally the crown of the skull) intensifies this: to strike the head is to destroy the source of power and will, not just to wound a limb. The imagery echoes the ancient Near Eastern motif of the divine warrior king who subdues chaos by crushing the head of the adversary — a motif already charged with theological weight from Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelium, where God promises to put enmity between the woman's seed and the serpent. The juxtaposition with verse 20's preceding assurance — "our God is a God of salvation" — is deliberate. Salvation and judgment are two sides of the same divine act: rescue for the faithful is simultaneously doom for the rebel. The "hairy scalp" in some translations (se'ar) may denote the wild, unkempt enemy, one who lives outside covenant order.

Psalms 68:22 — "The Lord said, 'I will bring you again from Bashan'"

This verse is a divine oracle embedded within the psalm, and its geographical specificity is theologically rich. Bashan was the region east of the Jordan, famously associated with Og, one of the last of the Rephaim (the giant warrior-kings), whose defeat was understood as a paradigm of God overthrowing seemingly invincible powers (Deuteronomy 3:1–11). To say God will bring His people "back from Bashan" is to invoke that memory: no fortress, no distant wasteland, no stronghold of the ancient enemy is beyond God's reach. "I will bring you back from the depths of the sea" extends this spatially — above (the heights of Bashan) and below (the sea) are both under divine command. The sea in biblical cosmology represents the realm of chaos and death; together, the two poles form a merism: nowhere in creation is beyond God's salvific reach. This is not merely military rhetoric but a theological claim about divine omnipotence over all realms — geographic, cosmic, and spiritual.

Psalms 68:23 — "That you may crush them, dipping your foot in blood"

The imagery is stark and deliberately visceral. "Dipping your foot in blood" belongs to the ancient literature of holy war and victory celebrations; parallels appear in Deborah's Song (Judges 5) and elsewhere. The purpose clause ("that you may") ties Israel's participation in victory directly to God's prior act of deliverance — they do not win by their own power but are brought into a triumph that God has already secured. The "tongue of your dogs" sharing in the blood reinforces total, comprehensive victory — even the most marginal participants inherit the spoil. Patristically, this language is jarring to modern ears and requires the typological key the Fathers consistently applied: the "enemies" are identified not with ethnic or political opponents but with the spiritual powers, the flesh, and death itself. Theodoret of Cyrrhus reads the blood as the blood of Christ's enemies — the hostile powers — overcome at Calvary. The foot that treads is Christ's own authority, and the Church participates in that victory through union with Him.

Catholic tradition, drawing on both the literal-historical and the spiritual senses of Scripture (CCC 115–119), illuminates these verses in a way that resolves their apparent brutality by reading them within the full arc of divine revelation. The sensus plenior — the fuller sense intended by God even beyond the human author's immediate horizon — points unmistakably to the Paschal Mystery.

St. Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, identifies the "enemy" who is struck on the head as the devil and death, whose dominion is shattered by Christ's descent into hell and resurrection. The Church Fathers unanimously read Psalm 68 as a psalm of the Ascension (cf. verse 18, cited in Ephesians 4:8), and this cluster of verses (21–23) belongs to that ascension-victory context: Christ ascends precisely as the one who has crushed the head of the ancient Adversary (Genesis 3:15), retrieved the captives from Bashan (the realm of the dead), and made His people participants in that triumph.

The Catechism teaches that Christ's victory over sin and death is real but not yet fully manifested — we live in the "already and not yet" (CCC 671–672). Psalm 68:21–23, therefore, also functions as eschatological promise: the full crushing of every enemy is certain, even if its complete manifestation awaits the Parousia (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). The Church, as the Body of Christ, participates in this victory through baptism (dying and rising with Christ, Romans 6:4) and through perseverance in spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10–18). Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§ 42), specifically addresses the "dark" psalms, urging that they be read christologically rather than excised — their violence is ultimately borne by Christ, not directed by the Church against human enemies.

Contemporary Catholics often struggle with imprecatory psalms — verses that seem to celebrate violence feel incompatible with the Gospel of mercy. Yet the Church's interpretive tradition offers a liberating key: the enemies to be crushed are, first and foremost, the interior enemies of the soul. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the spiritual life is genuinely a warfare, and that tepidity — the failure to take the battle seriously — is itself a spiritual danger.

Praying Psalm 68:21–23 as a Catholic today means naming concretely what opposes God's reign in one's own life: addiction, despair, the habit of sin, the spiritual "Bashans" — the entrenched strongholds — that feel too distant or too deep to reach. The promise is that God will go there. He retrieved His people from depths of the sea and heights of Bashan; He descends into every hell of human experience to bring the captive out. For the person in chronic sin, suffering, or spiritual desolation, these verses are not a call to violence but a bold claim on God's power to go exactly where you are and bring you back. The practical discipline is to pray these verses not with hatred toward persons but with fierce and confident hatred toward what destroys: pray them against your besetting sin, against the despair that whispers "it's too far gone," against every power that tells you God cannot reach you there.