Psalm 68:16-18

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

¹⁶Why do you look with grudging and envy, you many-peaked mountains, at the mountain [of the city called Zion] which God has desired for His dwelling place? Yes, the Lord will dwell in it forever.

¹⁷The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands upon thousands. The Lord is among them as He was in Sinai, [so also] in the Holy Place (the sanctuary in Jerusalem).

¹⁸^[a]You have ascended on high. You have led away captive a train of vanquished foes; You have received gifts of men, yes, of the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell there with them.^(A)

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Footnotes

Psalm 68:18 David sang of the ark of the covenant, which after a great victory was transferred or brought back to Zion. In this fact he sees the principle of the history of the kingdom of God appearing in ever-widening circles and nobler manner. The earthly celebration of victory in battle, with the processional bearing of the ark into the temple, is to him a type of the method and course of the Messiah’s kingdom, i.e., the certain triumph of God’s kingdom and Christ’s ascension to His place of enthronement. So the apostle Paul (in Eph. 4:8) is perfectly justified in finding the psalmist’s eye directed toward Christ, and so interpreting it. The “on high” in the psalm is first of all Mount Zion, but this is a type of heaven, as Paul makes clear (J.P. Lange, A Commentary).