The Gentiles in the Psalms
They have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth. They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead. We are objects of reproach to our neighbors, of scorn and derision to those around us.
Again we read what seems to be a summary of the period of the Judges in Psalm 83: With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you-- the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the descendants of Hagar, Gebal, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them to lend strength to the descendants of Lot.
The Gentiles were the agents for carrying out God's chastisement on Israel during the captivity also. The Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians were used by God to instruct his people and to start the process of creating the fulness of time. The Greeks and Romans, Gentiles also, would be influenced by Almighty God (El-Shaddai) to create the environment for the advent , life and death of our Savior. God's use of the Babylonians is expressed in Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
God definitely meant business when he gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments. We clearly see that the Gentiles were destroyed for not obeying God. Yet God also used the nations to punish Israel who had the Will of God written out clearly in specific terms. The Gentiles were used in God's wonderful plan of salvation.
This salvation was not sent only for the children of Israel, but for the Gentile also. Paul exhorts us in the New Testament not to call unclean what God has created. How can we say that anyone is unclean and not worthy of the Gospel? Especially since we all have sinned. In Psalm 24 we see that we all are utterly worthless.
The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters
Who may ascend the hill of the LORD?
Who may stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to
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