Deeper Commentary
Psa 81:1
For the Chief Musician. On an instrument of Gath. By
Asaph-
This "Asaph" could be the Asaph of Hezekiah's time (Is. 36:3) who used the
Psalms in the context of the events of the Assyrian invasion. The Asaph
Psalms all have parts in them relevant to that context (Ps. 50, 73-83). Or
the "Asaph" may have been the singers who were relatives of Asaph,
prominent at the restoration (Neh. 7:44; 11:17,22). It could mean that the
psalms were a part of a collection from the Asaphites, and the name
"Asaph" was therefore simply used to identify the temple singers. And
again, parts of the Asaph psalms also have relevance to the restoration.
The fact the Asaph Psalms speak of elohim rather than Yahweh
would support the idea that they were used in the exilic / restoration
period. But Asaph was the "chief" of the Levites to whom David assigned
the ministry of praise before the ark (1 Chron. 16:4,5). It seems he did
compose his own Psalms, which were used by Hezekiah at his time (2 Chron.
29:30). So I would again suggest that all the Asaph Psalms were composed
originally by David "for" [not necessarily "by"] Asaph, but were rewritten
and edited for later occasions.
Sing aloud to God, our strength! Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob!-
The Psalm begins in :1-5 with a call to joyfully celebrate a feast,
probably Passover or Tabernacles. We note the Levites are called to make
music (:2), and the priests to blow the trumpets (:3). But the Psalm then
abruptly changes. God answers this call for joyful celebration with a
rebuke of His people for their sinfulness. This Psalm is therefore a
commentary and exemplification of the frequent prophetic complaint that
God found Israel's keeping of the feasts to be a smoke in His nostrils. It
was mere external religion; and from :5 onwards we have His commentary
upon their desire to keep the feast.
"Sing aloud" is a call for collective worship. The psalm goes on to have God reciting the history of the exodus from His perspective. This is an Asaph psalm, set in the context of the restoration from Babylon. Isaiah's prophecies of that restoration clearly frame it in terms of what God had done in bringing His people back to their land at the time of the exodus. The exiles generally refused the call for a second exodus, and so the call to "leave" Babylon and journey to Zion has been offered to a new Israel. And we too can take encouragement from how our exodus through the Red Sea [=baptism] and journey to the Kingdom is also according to the pattern of Israel's exodus deliverance and wilderness journey.
The joy is because God is "our strength". God's strength is often mentioned in relation to His salvation, as in Ps. 118:14, which also calls for a "song" because of this: "Yah is my strength and song, He has become my salvation". This was the great theme of Moses' song in Ex. 15:2: "Yah is my strength and song. He has become my salvation". See too Is. 12:2. Thus the Gospel of salvation is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). This is therefore likely a call to celebrate Passover, God's salvation, just as we are called to the breaking of bread service.
Psa 81:2
Raise a song, and bring here the tambourine, the pleasant lyre with
the harp-
See on :1. The tambourine may have been to recall the rejoicing of
Miriam and the women of Israel after the Passover deliverance of Israel
through the Red Sea. This may therefore be a call to keep Passover,
although it would be just as appropriate for Tabernacles. The
overriding call is to joy. We should be characterized by joy. We are to
hold the confidence and rejoicing of our hope firm unto the end. For we
have eternal joy ahead, as Isaiah stresses. And we are not to look back,
but forward, to how our eternity will be of joy and not of miserable
regret over this or that in this brief life.
Psa 81:3
Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, at the full moon, on our feast
day-
As noted on :1, this was an invitation for the priests to blow the
trumpet to begin the feast. The mention of "New Moon" may simply mean the
start of the month, so perhaps :1-4 is a generic text for use at any feast
or religious celebration. However the context is clearly of a call
to keep Passover, and there was traditionally thought to be a full moon on
the 14th Nisan.
Psa 81:4
For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob- The passover was a law specifically given to Israel at that time. As noted on :1, we have here a call to keep one of the feasts, and there is pride in their obedience to God's commands about this. But His response from :5 onwards dashes this exuberant spirit, in condemning Israel for being apostate and impenitent. We must take the lesson that apparent external obedience and religious joy and praise- are no guarantee of our real standing with God, nor are they necessarily the same as true spirituality.
Psa 81:5
He appointed it in Joseph for a testimony-
The mention of Joseph appears to put right some of the reasoning in
Ps. 78, which presents "Joseph", especially the tribe of Ephraim his son,
as rejected by God in favour of Judah (see on Ps. 78:67). God's response
to Judah's desire to keep a feast to Him is that actually He had chosen
Joseph / Ephraim as much as them.
When he went out over
the land of Egypt, I heard a language that I didn’t know-
This reference to the Passover Angel going forth over Egypt suggests
that :1-4 was a liturgy to be used in summoning the people to keep the
Passover feast (cp. Is. 37:36). But now begins God's response to their
feast keeping. He begins by stressing His identification with His people
and His grace towards them, for what will follow after this is a deep
criticism of them. God
so identified Himself with Israel that in Egypt, He Himself heard a
language which He understood not (AV). He
could
have understood it, and in a sense He did; but so identified is Yahweh
with His people that He allows Himself to be limited by their perceptions.
Or we could read the "I" as the worshipper. He is to identify himself with Israel on Passover night, which was the whole purpose of the Passover feast which this psalm is calling them to celebrate. Or we could read the "I" as God, commenting on how His people began to speak Egyptian and therefore for the first time in His dealings with the Abraham family, they called to Him in another language. LXX reads "he heard a language which he understood not", referring to how Joseph heard a language strange to him.
LXX "He made it to be a testimony in Joseph, when he came forth out of the land of Egypt" would definitely make this Psalm a call to keep the Passover, which was the specific "statute" given to Israel to obey when they left Egypt.
Psa 81:6
I removed his shoulder from the burden, his hands were freed from
the basket-
We too are freed, in one sense, from the drudgery of daily
life under the sun. This reflects the degree to which God was intensely aware of His
peoples' sufferings; and that is just as true today. He saw their
shoulders and hands at work. But the RV speaks of the people as being
delivered from the basket, alluding to the personal deliverance of Moses.
The people were for the most part spiritually weak, taking the idols of
Egypt with them through the Red Sea (Ezekiel), and carrying through the
desert the tabernacle of Remphan as well as that of Yahweh. The idea is
that God saved Israel by grace on account of their identification with
Moses, just as we are baptized into Christ and counted righteous in Him,
as Israel were baptized into Moses (1 Cor. 10:1,2).
Thus there is a parallel drawn in Ps. 103:7: "He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel". "After the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee [Moses] and with Israel" (Ex. 34:27). Is. 63:11 (Heb.) is even more explicit: "He remembered... Moses his people" . Moses seems to have appreciated fully his representative role on that last glorious day of life when he addressed Israel: " The Lord said unto me... I will deliver [Og] into thy hand... so the Lord our God delivered into our hands Og" (Dt. 3:2,3). David recognized this unity between Moses and Israel; David describes both Israel and Moses as God's chosen (Ps. 16:5,23). Moses is described as encamping in the wilderness, when the reference clearly is to all Israel (Ex. 18:5). Moses recalled how “the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have delivered up Sihon and his land before thee [you singular- i.e. Moses]; begin to possess it, that thou [you singular again!] mayest inherit his land”. Yet Moses then comments that therefore God “delivered” Sihon “before us” (Dt. 31,33 RV). The land and victory that Moses personally could have had- for it was God’s wish to destroy Israel and make of him a new nation- he shared with Israel. Ex. 7:16 brings out the unity between them by a play on words: “The LORD God of the Hebrews hath sent me [lit. ‘let me go’] unto thee, saying, Let my people go”. “Let go” translates the same Hebrew word as “sent me”. Just as Moses had been let go by Yahweh, so Israel were to be.
Psa 81:7
You called in trouble, and I delivered you. I answered you in the
secret place of thunder-
Israel's call to God in trouble was made with them still worshipping Egypt's idols. They took them with them through the Red Sea. Yet still God heard their cry, despite having told them to have no other gods (:9); that's the grace of it all. Likewise He tested them at Meribah but they failed that test. Yet still He saved them, by grace. He "delivered" them even though they finally told Moses that they wanted to stay in Egypt: "Isn’t this the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?’" (Ex. 14:12). Possibly the idea is that prayer is the secret place between God and man, we enter into our room and shut the door and pray to our Father in secret; but God openly answered by the thunder that perhaps went with the storm which liberated Israel from Egypt.
LXX "I heard thee in the secret place of the storm". Despite their sinfulness and worship of the idols of Egypt in the desert, God still answered their calls for help in distress. The reference may be to how Israel at the Red Sea called to God in their trouble, and He answered them out of the pillar of cloud (Ex. 14:10,24); apparently that cloud appeared at times as a storm cloud.
I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah-
The weakness of Israel at Meribah is juxtaposed with God's enduring
grace to them in the first half of the verse. The Exodus record
says that Israel tested God there. But here in Ps. 81:7, God tested them.
Our feeling the need to test God is in fact God's testing of us. He is so
far above us and our weak thinking.
Psa 81:8
Hear My people and I will testify to you, Israel, if you would
have listened to Me!-
The theme of God's appeal is that so much potential had been wasted
by them ["if you would have..."], because for all their external obedience
in keeping feasts (see on :1), they were not truly listening to Him. And
so He repeats His appeals made so often in Deuteronomy, to "hear, O
Israel", 'testifying' to them as He also did in Deuteronomy (s.w. Dt.
4:26; 8:19 etc.).
They had called to God, and He had heard (:7). Now God calls to them and asks them to listen. Our prayer life, our calling to God, is intertwined with our responses to His words to us. The context is God having done so much for His people. And now He asks them, in response, to listen to Him. I have suggested on Ps. 80:4 that the following speech from God here in Ps. 81 is His answer to their complaints in Ps. 80. Their question "How long...?" is met by His explanation of how He would have "quickly" responded (:14), had they behaved rightly.
Psa 81:9
There shall be no strange god with you, neither shall you worship
any foreign god-
The people were for the most part spiritually weak, taking the idols
of Egypt with them through the Red Sea (Ezekiel), and carrying through the
desert the tabernacle of Remphan as well as that of Yahweh. And they were
no better at the point of this Psalm. God urges them not to abuse His
grace and to quit idolatry.
Psa 81:10
I am Yahweh your God who brought you up out of the land of
Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it-
God
speaks of Israel as if they were His beloved baby child; for these are the
words of a man seeking to feed his child. But the child refused to respond
(:11). The feeding was with His voice and word (:11). And they turned away
from it This
passage alone makes me want to plead with Israel to return to their so
loving Father. Remember that He carried them as a nursing father
through the wilderness. The wider they opened their mouth, the more God
promises to fill it. There is a theme in these Psalms of God potentially
having so much more to give them if they had the vision for it. This
statement is in the context of the call to worship no other god (:9). God
is saying that as our parent, He can and absolutely will provide all we
need. We don't have to turn to other gods. For Israel were under the
worldview that encouraged worship of other gods because they would
supposedly provide their various needs.
Psa 81:11
But My people didn’t listen to My voice, Israel desired none of Me-
This alludes to the unusual condition of a baby having
disassociation with the parent from babyhood, refusing feeding from them
etc. See on :10. They were as the young child who is estranged from the
loving father even from early childhood. Is. 28:12; 30:9,15 seem to allude
here. It was exactly because Israel "would not" (s.w. "desired none of
Me") that they were not allowed to continue in the land.
Psa 81:12
So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that
they might walk in their own counsels-
On their journey to Canaan, the Israelites worshipped idols. Because of
this, "God turned, and gave them up (over) to worship the host of
heaven... I gave them up to the hardness of their hearts" (Acts 7:42; Ps.
81:12 AVmg.). God reached a stage where He actually encouraged Israel to
worship idols; He confirmed them in their rejection of Him. And throughout
their history, He encouraged them in their idolatry (Ez. 20:39 "As for
you, house of Israel, thus says the Lord Yahweh: Go, serve each one his
idols... if you will not listen to Me"; Am. 4:4 "Go to Bethel, and sin; to
Gilgal, and sin more").
Psa 81:13
Oh that My people would have listened to me, that Israel would
have walked in my ways!-
This is a unique insight into the feelings of God. For these
words are a soliloquy, God is addressing Himself. God's pain is because they had not used the potential He had set up
for them, described on :14. Grief is so often a function of considering
what might have been; thus we grieve harder at the death of a child than
for the peaceful passing of a 99 year old. And God passes through this
same intense grief because of all the failed possibilities.
Psa 81:14
I would quickly have subdued their enemies, and turned My hand
against their adversaries-
God had potentially cleared the land of all the Canaanites, victory
could have been very quick. And indeed thus it began at Joshua's time; but
they failed to drive out the majority of the Canaanites, they failed to
make use of God's hand which was turned against their enemies. See on Ps.
80:4,8,9.
Psa 81:15
The haters of Yahweh would have cringed before Him, and their
punishment would have lasted forever-
The victories won by Joshua were not permanent; the same areas he
conquered and tribes he defeated rose up to dominate Israel later. Because
they failed to make use of the Divine potential. Just as the Lord Jesus
has won the battle and assured us of a place in the Kingdom; but we have
to capitalize upon that.
Asaph lived at the time of the restoration (Ezra 2:41). All his Psalms
draw on the past dealings of God with His people and encourage them on
this basis to make the wilderness journey back to the land, just as they
had done at the Exodus. Ps. 81:15,16 says that if Israel had been
obedient, their neighbouring enemies would soon have submitted to them, and
they would have experienced the blessings potentially in store for them.
Just as God
would have fed Israel with honey from the rock rather than just water
(:16).
Psa 81:16
But He would have also fed them with the finest of the wheat, I
would have satisfied you with honey out of the rock-
If Israel were obedient, they would have been fed with honey as well as Manna- whilst Dt. 32:13 says they did have honey on their journey:
"He caused him to suck honey out of the rock, oil out of the flinty rock".
Or we could read that as God 'causing' them to have that
potential, but they declined it. What they could have had and what they were given in prospect is spoken of as if it was reality due to the nature of how
God's potentials work. Or it could be that God in His grace did give them some honey, even though they didn’t fulfill the requirement- for God is so gracious. The
promised blessings of honey were conditional upon Israel's obedience (Dt.
32:13 cp. Ps. 81:16), although granted in prospect (Dt. 32:13).
It can be argued that Ps. 81 is God's answer to the complaints against Him in the preceding Ps. 80. Just as Is. 65,66 are God's reply to the complaints of Is. 64. This final verse would be response to Ps. 80:5 "You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in large measure". God's response is that He fed them with water from the rock, and planned to give them honey from the rock. It was all a case of their refusing what He planned to give them.
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