“All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you,
O Lord, and shall glorify your name.”
The Psalms declare that God made the
nations.
By “nations”, the Psalmist means the
natural ethnic divisions of our world; the families, clans and specific
language groups that exist almost from pole to pole. The Hebrew term for these
divisions is gowy; the word goyim is thought to be related.
David’s not speaking here of states or republics
or empires or flags or unions — those grand expressions of the will of
exceptional and powerful men, held together by law and force of arms, that
spread across whole continents only to disappear into the history books when an
even greater will or a bigger army rises up against them.
No, he’s talking about something smaller,
more fundamental, more instinctual and longer-lasting.