81

Psalm 81 · Book Three · Asaph

For the choirmaster. According to Gittith. Of Asaph.

The Hebrew title · Berean Standard Bible

For the choirmaster

About this psalm

It begins as a festival song with trumpets, and then God interrupts and speaks for the rest of it. He remembers taking the burden off their shoulder, and testing them at the waters of Meribah. The offer he makes is enormous and mostly unclaimed: Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. The sadness at the end is that they would not — my people would not hearken.

Read it when you have been asking God for too little.

My psalms

One verse at a time · it stops at the Selah

¹Sing aloud unto God our strength:make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.²Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.³Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.⁴For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.⁵This 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.⁶I removed his shoulder from the burden:his hands were delivered from the pots.⁷Thou 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

⁸Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee:O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;⁹There shall no strange god be in thee;neither shalt thou worship any strange god.¹⁰I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt:open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.¹¹But my people would not hearken to my voice;and Israel would none of me.¹²So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust:and they walked in their own counsels.¹³Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!¹⁴I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.¹⁵The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him:but their time should have endured for ever.¹⁶He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat:and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.

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