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,
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,
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 (
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 (
II. He puts them in mind of their
obligation to him as the Lord their God and Redeemer (
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 (
IV. He charges them with a high contempt of
his authority as their lawgiver and his grace and favour as their
benefactor,
V. He justifies himself with this in the
spiritual judgments he had brought upon them (
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 (
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 (
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,