Psalms 67

1. God be merciful unto us, and bless us, And cause his face to shine upon us; [Selah 2 That thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health [salvation] among all nations. 3 Let the peoples praise thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise thee. 4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: For thou shalt judge the peoples with equity,

And govern [lead] the nations upon earth. [Selah

5. Let the peoples praise thee, O God; Let all the peoples praise thee. 6 The earth hath yielded her increase: God, even our own God, shall bless us. 7 God shall bless us; And all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

THIS Psalm, like the sixty-fifth, seems to have special reference to the manifestation of God’s goodness in the gift of fruitful seasons and abundant harvests. But from this the Psalmist, or the Church, of which he is the spokesman, takes occasion to anticipate the extension of God’s covenanted gifts, both temporal and spiritual, to all the nations of the earth. This expectation is indeed the burden of the Psalm. A.

This Psalm is the joyful outpouring of a heart that longs to see the God and King of Israel acknowledged and worshipped as the God and King of the world. The Psalm, which may have been written at the time of the gathering in of the harvest (see v. 6), opens with words borrowed from the blessing of the high-priest in Num. 6: 24-26. P.

The great thought is longing for the conversion of the world, as a result of peculiar manifestations of Divine goodness to Israel; when God’s face shines fully upon His people all nations will be attracted and won, and the reign of righteousness will be established. This is, therefore, in the most spiritual sense a Messianic Psalm; not indeed, strictly speaking, predictive, but expressing hopes and anticipations completely fulfilled by the manifestation of God in Christ. Cook.

How admirably balanced are the parts of this missionary song! The people of God long to see all the nations participating in their privileges, “visited with God’s salvation, and gladdened with the gladness of His nation.” They long for the general diffusion of the knowledge of God’s way, the spreading abroad of the truth regarding the way of salvation. With a view to that, they cry for a time of quickening from the presence of the Lord, and take encouragement in this prayer from the terms of the divinely-appointed benediction. As if they had said, “Remember that sure Word of Thine. God be gracious unto us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us. Let us be thus blessed, and we shall in our turn become a blessing. All the families of the earth shall through us become acquainted with Thy salvation.” Such is the Church’s expectation. And who shall say it is unreasonable? If the little company of a hundred and twenty disciples who met in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of them persons of humble station and unconspicuous talents, were endued with such power by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, that within three hundred years the paganism of the empire was overthrown, one need not fear to affirm that, in order to the evangelization of the world, nothing more is required than that the churches of Christendom be baptized with a fresh effusion of the same Spirit of power. William Binnie.

1. God be merciful unto us, and bless us. God forgives, then He gives; till He be merciful to pardon our sins through Christ, He cannot bless or look kindly on us sinners. All our enjoyments are but blessings in bullion, till Gospel grace and pardoning mercy stamp and make them current. Gurnall.

Our happiness comes from God’s mercy and takes rise in that: and therefore the first thing prayed for is, God be merciful to us, to us sinners and pardon our sins, to us miserable sinners and help us out of our miseries. God bless us is a comprehensive prayer; it is pity such excellent words should ever be used slightly and carelessly and as a by-word. God cause His face to shine upon us, God by His grace qualify us for His favor, and then give us the tokens of His favor. We need desire no more to make us happy than to have God’s face shine upon us, to have God love us, and let us know that He loves us. To shine with us; so the margin reads it; with us doing our endeavor, and let it crown that endeavor with success. If we by faith walk with God, we may hope that His face will shine with us. H.

2. The phrase, saving health, retained in the Authorized Version from an older one, has nothing corresponding to it in the Hebrew but the single word which always means salvation. A.—It can mean nothing more or other than that here. What the translators of our version meant beyond or different from this does not appear. The prayer is that all the nations may become acquainted with the salvation which God has provided for them. As noticed repeatedly, the religion of Israel was no narrow, exclusive thing. Though the centre of its worship was Jerusalem, its circumference embraced all the nations of the earth. C.

Thy way—that is, Thy will, Thy Word, Thy works. God’s will must be known on earth, that it may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Except we know our Master’s will, how shall we do it? God’s will is revealed in His Word, and His Word is His way wherein we must walk, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. Boys.

Two things he desires might be known among all nations, and not to the nation of the Jews only. God’s way, the rule of duty. “Let them all know, as well as we do, what is good, and what the Lord our God requires of them; let them be blessed and honored with the same righteous statutes and judgments which are so much the praise of our nation and the envy of all its neighbors.” His saving health, or His salvation; the former is wrapped up in His law, this in His Gospel. If God makes known His way to us and we walk in it, He will show us His saving health. They that have themselves experimentally known the pleasantness of God’s ways and the comforts of His salvation, cannot but desire and pray that they may be known to others, even among all nations. All upon earth are bound to walk in God’s way, all need His salvation, and there is in it enough for all; and therefore we should pray that both the one and the other may be made known to all. H.—The blessing of the Most High comes upon the world through the Church. We are blessed for the sake of others as well as ourselves. God deals in a way of mercy with His saints, and then they make that way known far and wide, and the Lord’s name is made famous in the earth. S.

3. Let the peoples praise Thee.** Mark the sweet order of the blessed Spirit: First, mercy; then, knowledge; last of all, praising of God. We cannot see His countenance except He be merciful to us; and we cannot praise Him except His way be known upon earth. His mercy breeds knowledge; His knowledge, praise. John Boys.

Time begins and time ends with praise; and though during its course there may seem to be many an interval of dreary silence, yet God never wants praise. He inhabiteth the praises of eternity, and even here on earth praise waiteth for Him among His people. The whole of the course of God’s saints is full of praise. And is there not ample reason? What though sin seem to have marred the Creator’s glorious work? Is it not a glorious work still? The heavens, with all their wonders of brightness, glorify Him; the earth, with her ten thousand processes of life and organization is full of His power, and wisdom, and love; and man is the noblest proof of all these combined. If God’s ordinary and creation mercies should warm our hearts and find utterance of praise from our lips, how should those hearts glow with fire, and those lips burst forth in songs of joy, when we remember that all our choicest blessings are not His ordinary creation gifts, but special bestowals of undeserved mercy and inconceivable love.

“Let all the peoples praise Thee.” What though to some be denied the gift of praising Him with the lips? There is a more abiding and a worthier praise than this. A thousand secret strains of melody are uttered in His ear by the consistency and devotion of holy lives, more grateful than all the offerings of the voice; and these praises all can sing. “Let all the peoples praise Thee,” not only in the church, nor on the Lord’s Day only, but through all the vicissitudes of daily life. Some in their families; others in the mean and humble dwellings of the poor; others, again, in the busy haunts of commerce and amid the crowding and crushing of the selfish world—these all may praise Him, these and many more. Remember His own solemn words, think of them in the light of Christ’s redemption, and ponder them at the foot of His Cross, “Whoso offereth praise, he honoreth Me; and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.” Alford.

4. Govern.** Lead. The verb is the same as in 23 : 3, God being the great Shepherd of all nations. The object of the verb is repeated by the pronoun ; literally, " the nations upon earth Thou leadest them." P.—Well may they all rejoice and sing with exceeding joy because this great and righteous God rules so perfectly, evermore judging righteously. The word for " govern" is primarily lead, i.e., to take charge of them as a shepherd of his flock, to guide their steps, shape their welfare, control their destinies. C.

5. The nations shall acknowledge Thee, O God, the nations shall acknowledge Thee—all of them. This repetition shows the anticipation here expressed to be the principal though not the primary subject of the Psalm. The position of the universal terms, at the close of this verse and v. 3, is highly emphatic, and precludes, in the most explicit manner, all restriction. A.

Let all the peoples praise Thee. These words are no vain repetition, but are a chorus worthy to be sung again and again. The great theme of the Psalm is the participation of the Gentiles in the worship of Jehovah ; the Psalmist is full of it ; he hardly knows how to contain or express his joy. S.—Not the mailed hand of earthly power, nor the crowned head of worldly glory, nor the brain of human philosophy ; but the heart of those who sing praises to God at midnight holds the secret which can solve the great problem of human life and turn its sorrow into joy. So it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. The anthems of the Church triumphant are but the prolonged echoes of the songs of the Church militant. " Let the peoples praise Thee, O God, let all the peoples praise Thee." H. J. V.

Bring her increase. We have comforts increased, the more we praise God for what we have already received. The more we praise Him, the more our blessings come down ; and the more His blessings come down, the more we praise Him again ; so that we do not so much bless God as bless ourselves. Manton.

6. Our own God.** How unexpressible was the inward pleasure wherewith we may suppose those words to have been uttered. How delightful an appropriation ! as if it were intended to be said, the blessing itself were less significant, it could not have that savor with it if it were not from our own God. Not only allow but urge your spirits thus to look toward God, that you may both delight in Him as being in Himself, the most excellent one, and also as being yours ; for you are not permitted only but obliged to eye, accept, and rejoice in Him as such. Howe.

7. As he regarded the knowledge of God as the only remedy of the world’s misery, so he appears to have taken it for granted that the prosperity of the Church would be marked by the diffusion of that knowledge, and that such diffusion would be attended with the most happy results. “God shall bless us,” he adds, " and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him ;" the leaven of His grace shall work from His Church outward, till the entire mass of humanity be leavened ; His kingdom shall extend on every side till it embraces the world. J. Harris.

God shall bless us. The prayer of the first verse is the song of the last. We have the same phrase twice, and truly the Lord’s blessing is manifold ; He blesses and blesses and blesses again. How many are His beatitudes ! How choice His benedictions ! They are the peculiar heritage of His chosen. God shall bless us is our assured confidence ; He may smite us, or strip us, or even slay us, but He must bless us. " And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." The ends of the earth shall adore their God. Ignorance shall be removed, insolence subdued, injustice banished, idolatry abhorred, and the Lord’s love, light, life, and liberty shall be over all, the Lord Himself being King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen, and Amen. S.