When Israel fears God, the nations fear Israel. When Israel abandons its fear of God, the nations attack — and the enemy pursuing them is not a military power. It is the consequence of their own abandonment. "Israel has rejected what is good; an enemy will pursue him" (Hosea 8:3). The rabbis understood this as a spiritual law, not just a political one.
David's psalm makes the point in the first person: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1). This isn't bravado. David has been hunted, exiled, betrayed. He's writing from experience. The claim that God's presence eliminates fear is not theoretical — it is the conclusion a man reaches after surviving Saul's court, the caves of En-Gedi, and everything that followed.
Aggadat Bereshit uses David's psalm to frame Israel's relationship with the nations. The nations do not have independent power over Israel. They have derivative power — power granted them when Israel's own faithfulness lapses. This is an uncomfortable theology because it refuses the comfort of blaming outside forces. But it is also a theology of agency: if the nations' power over Israel is conditional, then Israel's choices genuinely matter. Every return to God is also a reversal of geopolitical fortune. The rabbis were not naive about exile — but they were absolutely certain about what caused it and what ended it.