Psalms 81

Using the word prayer to comprise all devotional contemplations and ascriptions as well as beseechings, it is the very cleaving of the loving soul to our Saviour, and is the capital means of growth in grace. “Praying will make us leave off sinning, or sinning will make us leave off praying.” Such converse with God, especially over the inspired volume, secures against defection and error, procures pardons, sprinkling of the expiatory blood, and the Spirit of adoption; mortifies secret, lurking, insidious sins, quickens the pulse of zeal and the pace of service; arms for battle, lifts the courage, and sweetens the cross. Thus may the new disciple advance day by day, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of his faith; cleaving unto Jesus, the vital heart, from whom all the circulation of holy thought, feeling, choice, and act derives its impulse. J. W. A.

18. Quicken us. Restore us to life, give us renewed life (Psalm 71: 20). The spiritual application of this Psalm reaches the central and most vital truths of religion, the redemption of God’s people by the Son of man, and their renovation by His Spirit.

19. O Lord. The name of Jehovah recurs at the close of the Psalm, as though the Psalmist felt that his prayer was accepted in virtue of the covenant which that word represents. Cook.

18,19. Thy right hand being once more upon us in mercy and in power, we will no more apostatize from Thee. Give us life from the dead; put new life, even Thine own life, into us, and we will call upon Thy name. The closing refrain adds the word Lord, i.e., Jehovah, to the form as in v. 7, heightening the strength and endearment of the sacred name by this addition—our covenant-keeping God, the changeless and ever-faithful One. C.—Here we have another advance in the title and the incommunicable name of Jehovah, the I AM is introduced. Faith’s day grows brighter as the hours roll on; and her prayers grow more full and mighty. “Cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.” No extremity is too great for the power of God. He is able to save at the last point, and that too by simply turning His smiling face upon His afflicted. Oh, to live forever in the light of Jehovah’s countenance. S

1. SING aloud unto God our strength: Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. 2 Take up the psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, The pleasant harp with the psaltery. 3 Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, At the full moon, on our solemn feast day. 4 For it is a statute for Israel, An ordinance of the God of Jacob. 5 He appointed it in Joseph for a testimony, When he went out over the land of Egypt: Where I heard a language that I knew not.

6. I removed his shoulder from the burden: His hands were freed from the basket. 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 8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wouldest 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 up out of the land of Egypt : Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.11 But my people hearkened not to my voice ; And Israel would none of me.12 So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, That they might walk in their own counsels.

13. Oh that my people would hearken unto me, That Israel would walk in my ways !14 I should soon subdue their enemies, And turn my hand against their adversaries.15 The haters of the LORD should submit them- selves unto him : But their time should endure for ever.16 He should feed them also with the finest of the wheat : And with honey out of the rock should I satisfy thee.

THIS Psalm was apparently intended to be sung at one or more of the great national festivals. There has, however, been much difference of opinion as to the particular festival or festivals for which it was originally composed. The Psalm consists of two parts : In the first, the Psalmist summons his nation to the festival, bidding them keep it with loud music and song and every utterance of joy, because it was ordained of God, and instituted under circumstances worthy of everlasting remembrance (vs. 1-5). In the next he abruptly drops his own words. What those circumstances were, what the meaning of God’s revelation then given, the people had forgotten ; and it is for him, in his character of prophet, as well as poet, to declare. It is for him to show how that voice from the past had its lesson also for the present ; how every festival was God’s witness to Himself ; how it repeated afresh, as it were, in clear and audible accents, the great facts of that history, the moral of which was ever old, and yet ever new. But the Psalmist conveys this instruction with the more imposing solemnity, when, suddenly breaking off his exhortation, he leaves God Himself to speak. It is no more the ambassador ; it is the Sovereign, who appears in the midst of His people, to remind them of past benefits, to claim their obedience on the ground of those benefits, and to promise the utmost bounties of grace, on the condition of obedience for the future (vs. 6-16). There could be no grander conception of the true significance of the religious feasts of the nation than this. They are so many memorials of God’s love and power, so many monuments set up to testify at once of His goodness, and of Israel’s ingratitude and perverseness, so many solemn occasions on which He comes as King and Father to visit them, to rekindle anew their loyalty and their affection, and to scatter among them the treasures of His bounty. To give this interpretation to the festivals, to put in its true light the national joy at their celebration, appears to have been the object of the Psalmist. If so, it is a matter of secondary importance what particular festival or festivals were chiefly before his eye. P.

We need not exclude any of the Mosaic festivals. The comprehensive thought is, Come and worship Israel’s God with cheerful trust and joyous triumph, in all the ways and times of His appointment. Praise Him exultingly though in the very face of fierce and mighty national foes, for what are they before our own great God ? C.

5. Joseph is here put for Israel, on account of his pre-eminence during the residence in Egypt. He set it, i.e., God instituted or ordained the festival. In his coming, at the time, or in the very act, of his departure. Over the land of Egypt includes the usual expression, from or out of it, but suggests the additional ideas of publicity and triumph. Israel, at the exodus, passed over a considerable tract of the Egyptian territory, and at the same time, as it were, over the heads of the humbled and terrified Egyptians. A.

Language knew not. Delitzsch would explain the expression by reference to Ex. 6 : 2, etc. “It was the language of a known and yet unknown God, which Israel heard from Sinai. God now revealed Himself to Israel in a new character, not only as the Redeemer and Saviour of His people from their Egyptian bondage, but also as their King, giving them a law which bound them together as a people, and was the basis of their national existence.” The latter interpretation, which regards the language here spoken of as the voice of God, and as virtually given in the following verses, is now that most commonly adopted. It is that of Mendelssohn, Ewald, Delitzsch, and Hupfeld.

6. The words of God follow without any indication of a change of speakers. The prophet identifies himself with, and becomes the organ of, the Divine voice. He reminds Israel of that fact in connection with which the festival was instituted. It is as though, amid all the gladness of the feast, and all the music and the pomp of its celebration, other thoughts arose, not to check, but to guide the current of a holy exultation. The sound of trumpet and timbrel and sacred song must be hushed, while Jehovah speaks to tell His forgetful people the lesson of their past history associated with that festival, the warning and the expostulation suggested by their own perverseness. If they would praise Him aright, it must be with hearts mindful of His goodness, and sensible of their own unworthiness and ingratitude. For the spirit in which all festivals should be kept, see on the offering of the first-fruits (Deut. 26 : 1-11). P.

Verse 6 refers to the relief which God gave to the enslaved, hard-tasked people in Egypt. “I removed his shoulder from under the heavy burden; his hands passed out from under the basket,” in which they bore brick and mortar for building. C.—The idea is borrowed from Ex. 6 : 6, 7. The specific reference is no doubt to the carrying of bricks and mortar, and the pot or basket of the next clause is the vessel used for that purpose, the form of which has been found delineated in a burial-vault at Thebes. A.

7. 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. H.—The story of Israel is only our own history in another shape. God has heard us, delivered us, liberated us, and too often our unbelief makes the wretched return of mistrust, murmuring, and rebellion. Great is our sin; great is the mercy of our God; let us reflect upon both and pause awhile. “Selah.” Hurried reading is of little benefit; to sit down awhile and meditate is very profitable. S.

8,9. How gladly, saith their God, would I testify My love to thee, presenting My appeals and claims, if only thou wilt hearken. “Strange god”—any god other than their own, a heathen, false god. It was their crying, damning sin that they would accept the gods and the worship of the heathen nations round about—Phoenicia and Syria. C.

No man can be without his god. If he have not the true God to bless and sustain him, he will have some false god to delude and to betray him. The Psalmist knew this, and therefore he joined so closely, forgetting the name of our God and holding up our hands to some strange god. For every man has something in which he hopes, on which he leans, to which he retreats and retires, with which he fills up his thoughts in empty spaces of time; when he is alone, when he lies sleepless on his bed, when he is not pressed with other thoughts; to which he betakes himself in sorrow or trouble, as that from which he shall draw comfort and strength—his fortress, his citadel, his defence; and has not this good right to be called his god? Man was made to lean on the Creator; but if not on Him, then he leans on the creature in one shape or another. The ivy cannot grow alone; it must twine round some support or other; if not the goodly oak, then the ragged thorn; round any dead stick whatever, rather than have no stay or support at all. It is even so with the heart and affections of man; if they do not twine around God, they must twine around some meaner thing. Trench.—Dost thou love riches more than God? It is the mammon of unrighteousness that is thy god. Is it pleasures thou lovest more than God? Then pleasures are thy god. Is it a husband or wife thou lovest more than God? Then it is thy husband or wife that is thy god. Is it thy children, thy liberty, thy health, thy credit, thy sins, thy life, that thou lovest more than the great God? These are thy gods, these are the deities thou worshippest! Bishop Beveridge.

10. Open thy mouth wide, literally, widen it. The supply of food is here put for that of all necessities. The reason here suggested for adhering to Jehovah is, that He not only had delivered them from Egypt, but was abundantly able to provide for them in Canaan and the wilderness. A.

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. 4 : 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. What is our duty? To raise our expectations from God and enlarge our desires toward 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? What is God’s promise? I will fill thy mouth with good things (103 : 5). There is enough in God to fill our treasures (Prov. 8 : 21), to replenish every hungry soul (Jer. 31 : 25), 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. 55 : 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 should 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 have been thought too good, too much, to give them, if they would but have kept close to God. H.

No words can be more plain than these : “Open thy mouth wide ; I will fill it,” but their beauty and pertinence are better seen if we suppose the writer thinks of the little nestlings, late from the egg—eyes still closed, but ears quick to notice any one’s approach, and sure to open wide their mouth for the food their instincts look for from the mother bird. So let God’s children do, for they are almost as powerless to distinguish good from evil as the eyeless nestlings, and have quite as much reason as they to accept all that God drops into their open mouths as being the best things possible in their case. Moreover, let them enlarge their heart and make broad their requests, remembering that when God’s children ask favors of Him, they are never straitened in God, but only in themselves. C.—Surely this teaches us that the greater and more valuable the blessings which we implore from the Divine beneficence, the more sure shall we be to receive them in answer to prayer. Men may cry to God for inferior things, and apply in vain. Even good men may ask for temporal blessings, and not receive them ; because the things we suppose good may not be good, or not good for us, or not good for us at present. But none shall seek God for the best of blessings in vain. If we ask enough, we shall have it. J. Ryland.

You may easily over-expect the creature, but you cannot over-expect God. Widen and dilate the desires and expectations of your souls, and God is able to fill every chink to the vastest capacity. This honors God when we greaten our expectation upon Him ; it is a sanctifying of God in our hearts. T. Case.—If the matter and manner of our prayer be right, we cannot be too confident in our expectations from him. Open thy mouth wide then, O Christian ; stretch out thy desires to the uttermost, grasp heaven and earth in thy boundless wishes, and believe there is enough in God to afford thee full satisfaction. Not only come, but come with boldness to the throne of grace ; it is erected for sinners, even the chief of sinners. Come to it then, and wait at it, till you obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Those who expect most from God are likely to receive the most. The desire of the righteous, let it be ever so extensive, shall be granted. Beddome.

Better to believe too much than too little, when God has commanded us to try Him, to prove Him, to open wide our mouths, to ask, seek, and knock. If it be an error to prescribe how and when God shall give, an equally great error is not to believe that He will give, and not to ask for the great things he has said He would give. Potts.

The soul is more spiritually affected with its own condition by laying it open before the Lord ; more deeply sensible of sin, and ashamed in his sight, in confessing it before Him ; more dilated and enlarged to receive the mercies sued for ; as the opening wide of the mouth of the soul that it may be filled ; more disposed to observe the Lord in answering ; and to bless Him and trust on Him upon the renewed experiences of His regard to its distresses and desires. Leighton.

When we present our requests for a larger measure of His grace we may safely let forth all the ardor and vehemence of our spirits, since our desires are fixed upon what is the very knot and juncture where the honor of God and the interests of His creatures are indissolubly united. Desires after grace are, in fact, desires after God ; and how is it possible they can be too vehement or intense, when directed to such an object ? His gracious presence is not like the limited goods of this life, fitted to a particular crisis, or adapted to a special exigency in a fluctuating scene of things ; it is alike suited to all times and seasons, the food of souls, the proper good of man under every aspect of Providence, and even the exchange of worlds. My soul, said David, panteth after God, yea, for the living God. My soul followeth hard after Thee ; Thy right hand upholdeth me. R. Hall.

Christ’s mercy, like water in a vase, takes the shape of the vessel that holds it. On the one hand, His grace is infinite, and “is given to every one of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ”—with no limitation but His own unlimited fulness ; on the other hand, the amount which we practically receive from that inexhaustible store is, at each successive moment, determined by the measure and the purity and the intensity of our faith. On His part there is no limit but infinity, on our sides the limit is our capacity, and our capacity is settled by our desires. His word to us ever is, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” A. M.

See here, then, what prayer is and what prayer does, its nature and its power. It is a longing after God, which nothing short of the full enjoyment of God can satisfy. And as for its power, it can do all things. It knows no other bounds than the good of the sinner on the one hand, and the omnipotence of Jehovah on the other. “Open thy mouth wide,” the Lord says, “and I will fill it.” “Ye shall ask what ye will,” says Christ, “and it shall be done.” The pardon of all our sins, free, complete, and eternal; a victory over every lust; the presence of God with us all through this dark world; His glory passing before our eyes, and shining into our hearts; guidance, protection, strength; heavenly consolations while we live, and heaven itself when we die—all are within the reach of prayer; within our reach; nay, held up, as it were, before our face, with this inscription shining on them all, “Ask, and ye shall have.” “Mercies purchased, prepared, waiting for praying man.” C. B.

Give up yourselves, then, in pure and undivided surrender, with the devotion and trust of your whole heart, to your Lord and God, to your Father in heaven, who promises to give you the kingdom and its righteousness, as the food and raiment of your new and inner man. As He gives us also He expects. Empty yourselves and He will fill you. The fundamental promise, I am the Lord thy God! bears with it the fundamental command, None other shalt thou serve! Neither can this be otherwise, whether in respect to God or to man; the majesty of God, which will not tolerate any rival near Him, demands the whole heart as it is due; and again the need and the desire of the human heart can only find satisfaction in the simplicity and purity of dependence upon the highest, perfect, and only good. Stier.

11. “Would none of me” is scarcely modern English. The Hebrew means: Would not obey me; were not willing as toward me. They were simply perverse, rebellious. Historically, this had a fearfully wide application. It was true of the masses that came out of Egypt; it became painfully apparent during the time of the Judges and in the age after the revolt under Jeroboam. C.—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 His people, for they were bought by Him, bound to Him, His by a thousand ties, and yet even they have not hearkened, have not obeyed; Israel, the seed of Jacob My friend, set Me at nought, and would have none of Me. 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. H.

12. “So,” in the sense of consequently, i.e., because of their perverseness, I sent them forth from Me; I thrust them away for the perverseness of their heart. The centuries of long forbearance came to an end at last, and God gave up first the northern kingdom and then at last the southern also to captivity and desolation. They would not have Jehovah for their God, but would have Baal and Moloch; so God gave them up to their own perverseness, and consequently to national ruin. This is the law of His moral kingdom with individual sinners no less than with nations. C.

I gave them up and they walked in their own counsels. That was to give them up to a spirit of division, to a spirit of discontent, to a spirit of envy and jealousy, to a spirit of ambition, of self-seeking and emulation, and so to a spirit of distraction and confusion, and so to ruin and destruction. Such and no better is the issue when God gives a people up to their own counsels; then they soon become a very chaos, and run themselves into a ruinous heap. As good have no counsel from man, as none but man’s. Caryl.—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 worship and in their conversation. 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. H.

This life is a course of trial, proof, and preparation for a lasting state of good or evil beyond the grave. God having put it in our power to choose for ourselves, leaves it to ourselves to make the choice, at the same time plainly warning us that if we choose the right path and follow it on, He will help us, but if we choose the wrong path and refuse to listen to His voice, He will, however unwillingly, give us up, leave us to go our own way. Anon.—The same will the Spirit do upon our rejecting or resisting of His leading. He may long strive, but He will “not always strive.” If the person led shall once begin to struggle with Him that leads him, and shall refuse to follow His guidance, what is then to be done but to leave him to himself? Continued, rooted, allowed resistance to the Spirit, makes Him so to cast off a person as to lead him no more. Jacombe.

13. 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. 11 : 8, 9.) So here, O that My people had hearkened! Thus Christ lamented the obstinacy of Jerusalem, If thou hadst known! H.—God speaks as if He were comforted when He is but heard, or as if we comforted Him when we hear Him. God beseecheth us, and speaks entreaties to us that His counsels and commands may be heard: “O that My people had hearkened unto Me.” The Lord tells them indeed it would have proved their consolation (v. 14): “I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned My hand against their adversaries.” Yet while He speaks so pathetically He seems to include His own consolation in it as well as theirs. “O that My people had hearkened unto Me;” it would have been good for them, and it would have given high content to myself. Caryl.

The tender affection of God in pleading with men to avoid sin is very impressive; but more impressive still are His exclamations of grief when the final step has been taken, and when, for many, recovery is impossible. Thus when Jesus looked down from Olivet upon the guilty metropolis, and knew that the die was cast, He nevertheless wept and said, “How often would I have gathered your children, as a hen her brood; but ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!” So God here speaks, “O that My people had hearkened unto Me! that Israel had walked in My ways!” The measure of God’s love transcends all known limits; its forms are infinite in their variety!

When every remedial measure has been tried in vain love can only weep. D. D.

14. Turned My hand.** God expresseth the utter overthrow of the enemies of His people by the turning of a hand; if God do but turn His hand they are soon subdued. If He do but touch the might, the pomp, the greatness, the riches and the power of all those in the world that are opposers of His Church, presently they fall to the ground; a touch from the hand of God will end our wars. Caryl.

15. If it was only in being governed by God that the people of Israel could escape bondage, be lifted up and be noble and free, then beyond doubt the same is true of ourselves; we, too, shall be slaves as long as we are free, and shall only be free when we become in heart and soul the servants of God. Bishop Goodwin.

16. When once a people or a person are accepted of God, He spares no cost, nor thinks anything too costly for them. “He would have fed them also with the finest of the wheat; and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.” I would not have fed thee with wheat only, that’s good; but with the finest wheat, that’s the best. Surely God cannot think anything of this world too good for His people, who hath not thought the next world too good for them; certainly God cannot think any of these outward enjoyments too good for His people, who hath not thought His Son too good for His people; that’s the apostle’s argument (Rom. 8 : 32): “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” even the best of outward good things, when He seeth it good for us. Caryl.—When God’s people walk in the light of His countenance and maintain unsullied holiness, the joy and consolation which He yields them are beyond conception. To them the joys of heaven have begun even upon earth. They can sing in the ways of the Lord. The spring of the eternal summer has commenced with them; they are already blest, and they look for brighter things. This shows us by contrast how sad a thing it is for a child of God to bring his soul into a state of famine by following after another god. O Lord, forever bind us to Thyself alone and keep us faithful unto the end! S.