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P S A L M S
PSALM LXXXI.
This psalm was penned, as is supposed, not upon occasion of any
particular providence, but for the solemnity of a particular ordinance,
either that of the new-moon in general or that of the feast of trumpets
on the new moon of the seventh month,
When David, by the Spirit, introduced the singing of psalms into the
temple-service this psalm was intended for that day, to excite and
assist the proper devotions of it. All the psalms are profitable; but,
if one psalm be more suitable than another to the day and observances
of it, we should choose that. The two great intentions of our religious
assemblies, and which we ought to have in our eye in our attendance on
them, are answered in this psalm, which are, to give glory to God and
to receive instruction from God, to “behold the beauty of the Lord and
to enquire in his temple;” accordingly by this psalm we are assisted on
our solemn feast days,
I. In praising God for what he is to his people
(ver. 1-3),
and has done for them,
II. In teaching and admonishing one another concerning the obligations
we lie under to God
(ver. 8-10),
the danger of revolting from him
(ver. 11, 12),
and the happiness we should have if we would but keep close to him,
This, though spoken primarily of Israel of old, is written for our
learning, and is therefore to be sung with application.
| An Invitation to Praise. | |
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To the chief musician upon Gittith. A psalm of Asaph.
1 Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise
unto the God of Jacob.
2 Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp
with the psaltery.
3 Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed,
on our solemn feast day.
4 For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God
of Jacob.
5 This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went
out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that
I understood not.
6 I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were
delivered from the pots.
7 Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered
thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters
of Meribah. Selah.
When the people of God were gathered together in the solemn day, the
day of the feast of the Lord, they must be told that they had
business to do, for we do not go to church to sleep nor to be idle; no,
there is that which the duty of every day requires, work of the day,
which is to be done in its day. And here,
I. The worshippers of God are excited to their work, and are taught, by
singing this psalm, to stir up both themselves and one another to it,
Our errand is, to give unto God the glory due unto his name, and in all
our religious assemblies we must mind this as our business.
1. In doing this we must eye God as our strength, and as the
God of Jacob,
v. 1.
He is the strength of Israel, as a people; for he is a God in covenant
with them, who will powerfully protect, support, and deliver them, who
fights their battles and makes them do valiantly and victoriously. He
is the strength of every Israelite; by his grace we are enabled to go
through all our services, sufferings, and conflicts; and to him, as our
strength, we must pray, and we must sing praise to him as the God of
all the wrestling seed of Jacob, with whom we have a spiritual
communion.
2. We must do this by all the expressions of holy joy and triumph. It
was then to be done by musical instruments, the timbrel, harp, and
psaltery; and by blowing the trumpet, some think in
remembrance of the sound of the trumpet on Mount Sinai, which waxed
louder and louder. It was then and is now to be done by singing psalms,
singing aloud, and making a joyful noise. The
pleasantness of the harp and the awfulness of the trumpet intimate to
us that God is to be worshipped with cheerfulness and joy with
reverence and godly fear. Singing aloud and making a noise intimate
that we must be warm and affectionate in praising God, that we must
with a hearty good-will show forth his praise, as those that are not
ashamed to own our dependence on him and obligations to him, and that
we should join many together in this work; the more the better; it is
the more like heaven.
3. This must be done in the time appointed. No time is amiss for
praising God (Seven times a day will I praise thee; nay, at
midnight will I rise and give thanks unto thee); but some are times
appointed, not for God to meet us (he is always ready), but for us to
meet one another, that we may join together in praising Do. The solemn
feast-day must be a day of praise; when we are receiving the gifts of
God’s bounty, and rejoicing in them, then it is proper to sing his
praises.
II. They are here directed in their work.
1. They must look up to the divine institution which it is the
observation of. In all religious worship we must have an eye to the
command
(v. 4):
This was a statute for Israel, for the keeping up of a face of
religion among them; it was a law of the God of Jacob, which all
the seed of Jacob are bound by, and must be subject to. Note, Praising
God is not only a good thing, which we do well to do, but it is our
indispensable duty, which we are obliged to do; it is at our peril if
we neglect it; and in all religious exercises we must have an eye to
the institution as our warrant and rule: “This I do because God has
commanded me; and therefore I hope he will accept me;” then it is done
in faith.
2. They must look back upon those operations of divine Providence
which it is the memorial of. This solemn service was ordained for a
testimony
(v. 5),
a standing traditional evidence, for the attesting of the matters of
fact. It was a testimony to Israel, that they might know and remember
what God had done for their fathers, and would be a testimony against
them if they should be ignorant of them and forget them.
(1.) The psalmist, in the people’s name, puts himself in mind of the
general work of God on Israel’s behalf, which was kept in remembrance
by this and other solemnities,
v. 5.
When God went out against the land of Egypt, to lay it waste, that he
might force Pharaoh to let Israel go, then he ordained solemn
feast-days to be observed by a statute for ever in their generations,
as a memorial of it, particularly the passover, which perhaps is meant
by the solemn feast-day
(v. 3);
that was appointed just then when God went out through the land of
Egypt to destroy the first-born, and passed over the houses of the
Israelites,
By it that work of wonder was to be kept in perpetual remembrance, that
all ages might in it behold the goodness and severity of God. The
psalmist, speaking for his people, takes notice of this aggravating
circumstance of their slavery in Egypt that there they heard a language
that they understood not; there they were strangers in a strange land.
The Egyptians and the Hebrews understood not one another’s language;
for Joseph spoke to his brethren by an interpreter
and the Egyptians are said to be to the house of Jacob a people of a
strange language,
Ps. cxiv. 1.
To make a deliverance appear the more gracious, the more glorious, it
is good to observe every thing that makes the trouble we are delivered
from appear the more grievous.
(2.) The psalmist, in God’s name, puts the people in mind of some of
the particulars of their deliverance. Here he changes the person,
v. 6.
God speaks by him, saying, I removed the shoulder from the
burden. Let him remember this on the feast-day,
[1.] That God had brought them out of the house of bondage, had removed
their shoulder from the burden of oppression under which they were
ready to sink, had delivered their hands from the pots, or
panniers, or baskets, in which they carried clay or bricks. Deliverance
out of slavery is a very sensible mercy and one which ought to be had
in everlasting remembrance. But this was not all.
[2.] God had delivered them at the Red Sea; then they called in
trouble, and he rescued them and disappointed the designs of their
enemies against them,
Then he answered them with a real answer, out of the secret place of
thunder; that is, out of the pillar of fire, through which God
looked upon the host of the Egyptians and troubled it,
Or it may be meant of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, which was
the secret place, for it was death to gaze
and it was in thunder that God then spoke. Even the terrors of Sinai
were favours to Israel,
[3.] God had borne their manners in the wilderness: “I proved thee
at the waters of Meribah; thou didst there show thy temper, what an
unbelieving murmuring people thou wast, and yet I continued my favour
to thee.” Selah–Mark that; compare God’s goodness and man’s
badness, and they will serve as foils to each other. Now if they, on
their solemn feast-days, were thus to call to mind their redemption out
of Egypt, much more ought we, on the Christian sabbath, to call to mind
a more glorious redemption wrought out for us by Jesus Christ from
worse than Egyptian bondage, and the many gracious answers he has given
to us, notwithstanding our manifold provocations.
| Expostulation with Israel. | |
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8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if
thou wilt hearken unto me;
9 There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou
worship any strange god.
10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land
of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11 But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel
would none of me.
12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they
walked in their own counsels.
13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had
walked in my ways!
14 I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand
against their adversaries.
15 The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto
him: but their time should have endured for ever.
16 He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat:
and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.
God, by the psalmist, here speaks to Israel, and in them to us, on whom
the ends of the world are come.
I. He demands their diligent and serious attention to what he was about
to say
(v. 8):
“Hear, O my people! and who should hear me if my people will
not? I have heard and answered thee; now wilt thou hear me? Hear what
is said with the greatest solemnity and the most unquestionable
certainty, for it is what I will testify unto thee. Do not only
give me the hearing, but hearken unto me, that is, be advised by
me, be ruled by me.” Nothing could be more reasonably nor more justly
expected, and yet God puts an if upon it: “If thou wilt
hearken unto me. It is thy interest to do so, and yet it is
questionable whether thou wilt or no; for thy neck is an iron
sinew.”
II. He puts them in mind of their obligation to him as the Lord their
God and Redeemer
(v. 10):
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of
Egypt; this is the preface to the ten commandments, and a powerful
reason for the keeping of them, showing that we are bound to it in
duty, interest, and gratitude, all which bonds we break asunder if we
be disobedient.
III. He gives them an abstract both of the precepts and of the promises
which he gave them, as the Lord and their God, upon their coming out of
Egypt.
1. The great command was that they should have no other gods before him
(v. 9):
There shall no strange god be in thee, none besides thy own God.
Other gods might well be called strange gods, for it was very strange
that ever any people who had the true and living God for their God
should hanker after any other. God is jealous in this matter, for he
will not suffer his glory to be given to another; and therefore in this
matter they must be circumspect,
2. The great promise was that God himself, as a God all-sufficient,
would be nigh unto them in all that which they called upon him for
(Deut. iv. 7),
that, if they would adhere to him as their powerful protector and
ruler, they should always find him their bountiful benefactor: “Open
thy mouth wide and I will fill it, as the young ravens that cry
open their mouths wide and the old ones fill them.” See here,
(1.) What is our duty–to raise our expectations from God and enlarge
our desires towards him. We cannot look for too little from the
creature nor too much from the Creator. We are not straitened in him;
why therefore should we be straitened in our own bosoms?
(2.) What is God’s promise. I will fill thy mouth with good things,
There is enough in God to fill our treasures
to replenish every hungry soul
to supply all our wants, to answer all our desires, and to make us
completely happy. The pleasures of sense will surfeit and never satisfy
(Isa. lv. 2);
divine pleasures will satisfy and never surfeit. And we may have enough
from God if we pray for it in faith. Ask, and it shall be given
you. He gives liberally, and upbraids not. God assured his
people Israel that it would be their own fault if he did not do as
great and kind things for them as he had done for their fathers.
Nothing should be thought too good, too much, to give them, if they
would but keep close to God. He would moreover have given them such
and such things,
2 Sam. xii. 8.
IV. He charges them with a high contempt of his authority as their
lawgiver and his grace and favour as their benefactor,
He had done much for them, and designed to do more; but all in vain:
“My people would not hearken to my voice, but turned a deaf ear
to all I said.” Two things he complains of:–
1. Their disobedience to his commands. They did hear his voice, so as
never any people did; but they would not hearken to it, they would not
be ruled by it, neither by the law nor by the reason of it.
2. Their dislike of his covenant-relation to them: They would none
of me. They acquiesced not in my word (so the Chaldee); God was
willing to be to them a God, but they were not willing to be to him a
people; they did not like his terms. “I would have gathered them, but
they would not.” They had none of him; and why had they not? It was not
because they might not; they were fairly invited into covenant with
God. It was not because they could not; for the word was nigh them,
even in their mouth and in their heart. But it was purely because they
would not. God calls them hi people, for they were bought by him, bound
to him, his by a thousand ties, and yet even they had not hearkened,
had not obeyed. “Israel, the seed of Jacob my friend, set me at nought,
and would have none of me.” Note, All the wickedness of
the wicked world is owing to the wilfulness of the wicked will. The
reason why people are not religious is because they will not be so.
V. He justifies himself with this in the spiritual judgments he had
brought upon them
(v. 12):
So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lusts, which would be
more dangerous enemies and more mischievous oppressors to them than any
of the neighbouring nations ever were. God withdrew his Spirit from
them, took off the bridle of restraining grace, left them to
themselves, and justly; they will do as they will, and therefore let
them do as they will. Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.
It is a righteous thing with God to give those up to their own hearts’
lusts that indulge them, and give up themselves to be led by them; for
why should his Spirit always strive? His grace is his own, and he is
debtor to no man, and yet, as he never gave his grace to any that could
say they deserved it, so he never took it away from any but such as had
first forfeited it: They would none of me, so I gave them up;
let them take their course. And see what follows: They walked in
their own counsels, in the way of their heart and in the sight of
their eye, both in their worships and in their conversations. “I left
them to do as they would, and then they did all that was ill;” they
walked in their own counsels, and not according to the counsels of God
and his advice. God therefore was not the author of their sin; he left
them to the lusts of their own hearts and the counsels of their own
heads; if they do not well, the blame must lie upon their own hearts
and the blood upon their own heads.
VI. He testifies his good-will to them in wishing they had done well
for themselves. He saw how sad their case was, and how sure their ruin,
when they were delivered up to their own lusts; that is worse than
being given up to Satan, which may be in order to reformation
and to salvation
(1 Cor. v. 5);
but to be delivered up to their own hearts’ lusts is to be sealed under
condemnation. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. What
fatal precipices will not these hurry a man to! Now here God looks
upon them with pity, and shows that it was with reluctance that he thus
abandoned them to their folly and fate. How shall I give thee up,
Ephraim?
Hos. xi. 8, 9.
So here, O that my people had hearkened! See
Thus Christ lamented the obstinacy of Jerusalem. If thou hadst
known,
Luke xix. 42.
The expressions here are very affecting
(v. 13-16),
designed to show how unwilling God is that any should perish and
desirous that all should come to repentance (he delights not in the
ruin of sinful persons or nations), and also what enemies sinners are
to themselves and what an aggravation it will be of their misery that
they might have been happy upon such easy terms. Observe here,
1. The great mercy God had in store for his people, and which he would
have wrought for them if they had been obedient.
(1.) He would have given them victory over their enemies and would soon
have completed the reduction of them. They should not only have kept
their ground, but have gained their point, against the remaining
Canaanites, and their encroaching vexatious neighbours
(v. 14):
I should have subdued their enemies; and it is God only that is
to be depended on for the subduing of our enemies. Not would had have
put them to the expense and fatigue of a tedious war: he would
soon have done it; for he would have turned his hand against
their adversaries, and then they would not have been able to stand
before them. It intimates how easily he would have done it and without
any difficulty. With the turn of a hand, nay, with the breath of his
mouth, shall he slay the wicked,
Isa. xi. 4.
If he but turn his hand, the haters of the Lord will submit
themselves to him
(v. 15);
and, though they are not brought to love him, yet they shall be made to
fear him and to confess that he is too hard for them and that it is in
vain to contend with him. God is honoured, and so is his Israel, by the
submission of those that have been in rebellion against them, though it
be but a forced and feigned submission.
(2.) He would have confirmed and perpetuated their posterity, and
established it upon sure and lasting foundations. In spite of all the
attempts of their enemies against them, their time should have
endured for ever, and they should never have been disturbed in the
possession of the good land God had given them, much less evicted and
turned out of possession.
(3.) He would have given them great plenty of all good things
(v. 16):
He should have fed them with the finest of the wheat, with the
best grain and the best of the kind. Wheat was the staple commodity of
Canaan, and they exported a great deal of it,
He would not only have provided for them the best sort of bread, but
with honey out of the rock would he have satisfied them. Besides
the precious products of the fruitful soil, that there might not be a
barren spot in all their land, even the clefts of the rock should serve
for bee-hives and in them they should find honey in abundance. See
In short, God designed to make them every way easy and happy.
2. The duty God required from them as the condition of all this mercy.
He expected no more than that they should hearken to him, as a
scholar to his teacher, to receive his instructions–as a servant to his
master, to receive his commands; and that they should walk in his
ways, those ways of the Lord which are right and pleasant, that
they should observe the institutions of his ordinances and attend the
intimations of his providence. There was nothing unreasonable in
this.
3. Observe how the reason of the withholding of the mercy is laid in
their neglect of the duty: If they had hearkened to me, I would soon
have subdued their enemies. National sin or disobedience is the
great and only thing that retards and obstructs national deliverance.
When I would have healed Israel, and set every thing to-rights
among them, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and so
a stop was put to the cure,
We are apt to say, “If such a method had been taken, such an instrument
employed, we should soon have subdued our enemies:” but we mistake; if
we had hearkened to God, and kept to our duty, the thing would have
been done, but it is sin that makes our troubles long and salvation
slow. And this is that which God himself complains of, and wishes it
had been otherwise. Note, Therefore God would have us do our
duty to him, that we may be qualified to receive favour from him. He
delights in our serving him, not because he is the better for it, but
because we shall be.
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