From the early Church Fathers to now.
2 Patristic · 1 Jewish · 1 Catholic · 1 Lutheran
“They have not called upon the Lord: there have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear.”
“Such people will never learn from experience what a harsh thing it is to do wrong to the Lord's people, so bitter are they toward us as to wish to treat us like a meal of bread.… Since they are ready to swallow us raw, then, and do not have the Lord before their eyes, fear will overtake them from a quarter where they do not expect it.”
“"They have not called upon the Lord." For he does not really call upon Him, who longs for such things as are displeasing to Him. "There they trembled for fear, where no fear was" [Psalm 14:5]: that is, for the loss of things temporal. For they said, "If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe in Him; and the Romans will come, and take away both our place and nation." [John 11:48] They feared to lose an earthly kingdom, where no fear was; and they lost the kingdom of heaven, which they ought to have feared. And this must be understood of all temporal goods, the loss of which when men fear, they come not to things eternal.”
“There they were in great fear For recompense was paid to Belshazzar king of Babylon [causing him] to be in great fear, as it is stated (in Dan. 5:6): “Then the king’s color changed, his thoughts terrified him, the joints of his loins came loose, and his knees knocked against each other.” But our Sages explained this (Sanh. 104b, Mid. Ps. 14:4) as referring to the heathens: Whoever does not rob Israel does not experience a pleasant taste in his food. Those who devoured my people felt as though they ate bread, for they experienced a pleasant taste. for God is in the generation of a righteous man In the generation of Jeconiah, who were righteous.”
“Where. This expression refers to there, which is in Hebrew, though this last part of the verse is wanting. (Capel.) — It is in Psalm lii. 6, and this renders the former omission (ver. 3.) more credible. (Berthier) — When Cyrus approached to besiege Babylon, Nabonides, the king, met him, and gave him battle; but losing the victory, he, in a panic, retreated to Borsippe, and abandoned the defence of his capital. (Beros. apud Jos. con. Ap. 1.[Josephus, contra Apion i.?]) The citizens were in the utmost consternation, Isaias xiii., and xxi., &c. (Calmet) — But the wicked tremble at the prospect of temporal losses, (Menochius) and at shadows, while they boldly affront the Deity. Unbelievers find difficulties in the Catholic doctrines, which are frequently attributed to their own mistakes. (Haydock) — The pagans would not believe in God, but trembled before idols; which cannot hurt the faithful. (Worthington)”
“When Jahve thus bursts forth in scorn His word, which never fails in its working, smites down these brutish men, who are without knowledge and conscience. The local demonstrative שׁם is used as temporal in this passage just as in Psa 66:6; Hos 2:17; Zep 1:14; Job 23:7; Job 35:12, and is joined with the perfect of certainty, as in Job 36:13, where it has not so much a temporal as a local sense. It does not mean "there = at a future time," as pointing into the indefinite future, but "there = then," when God shall thus speak to them in His anger. Intensity is here given to the verb פּחד by the addition of a substantival object of the same root, just as is frequently the case in the more elevated style, e.g., Hab 3:9; and as is done in other cases by the addition of the adverbial infinitive. Then, when God's long-suffering changes into wrath, terror at His judgement seizes them and they tremble through and through. This judgment of wrath, however, is on the other hand a revelation of love. Jahve avenges and thus delivers those whom He calls עמּי (My people); and who are here called דּור צדּיק, the generation of the righteous, in opposition to the corrupted humanity of the time (Psa 12:8), as being conformed to the will of God and held together by a superior spirit to the prevailing spirit of the age. They are so called inasmuch as דּור passes over from the signification generatio to that of genus hominum here and also elsewhere, when it is not merely a temporal, but a moral notion; cf. Psa 24:6; Psa 83:15; Psa 112:2, where it uniformly denotes the whole of the children of God who are in bondage in the world and longing for deliverance, not Israel collectively in antithesis to the Scythians and the heathen in general (Hitzig).”
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.