65 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. A Song.
65:1 Praise is due to you,1 O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.
2 O you who hear prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.
3 When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.
4 Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!
5 By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
6 the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
7 who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
8 so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.
9 You visit the earth and water it;2
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.
10 You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
11 You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.
Section Overview
This psalm is a thanksgiving. The specific occasion is the prospect of a fruitful harvest; the perspective of verses 9–13 would seem to be the springtime, when the rains have been abundant, the meadows are full of grass, and the worked fields look to yield plenty of crops. This description suits the timing of, say, Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks). The focus on rain makes sense in the conditions in Palestine, which is arid for half the year; its fruitfulness depends entirely on predictable and plentiful rain in the fall and winter. The wording of the psalm may make it especially suited to the aftermath of a drought, often a sign of divine displeasure (vv. 3, 9–10; cf. Deut. 28:23–24).
The psalm moves in three stanzas. The first contains several terms regarding gathered public worship, such as “Zion,” “praise,” “vows,” “prayer,” “atone,” “bring near,” “courts,” “house,” and “temple” (Ps. 65:1–4). The second reflects on the universality of God’s interest, extending to all natural phenomena and all inhabitants of all lands (vv. 5–8). The third dwells particularly on the land of Israel, as the waters of the spring rains promise great abundance (vv. 9–13).
Section Outline
I. Praise for God in Zion (65:1–4)
II. You Have Shown Us Awesome Deeds (65:5–8)
III. You Have Made the Land Produce Abundantly (65:9–13)
Response
A song like Psalm 65 enables the believing singer to see the created world as the theater of God’s glory. God’s choice of Israel, his provision of a covenant with them, and his blessing of their agriculture has a goal higher than just their immediate survival; it expresses his enduring faithfulness to, and interest in, his entire world and all its inhabitants (human, plant, and animal).
The ancient people of God lived close to the land, in an economy called “subsistence agriculture”: a family worked hard to ensure that it had both food for the year and seed to plant for the next year—to have extra made it possible to extend charity to one’s less fortunate neighbors. This song invites this kind of congregation of God’s people to add to its very proper practical concern with its crops an aesthetic enjoyment of the world as ideally the recipient of God’s unsparing blessing. One effect of this should be a sense of gratitude for the privileges God gives to Israel; another would be a greater earnestness about Israel’s faithfulness, to which the covenant ties the fruitfulness of the land. Further, this benefit is intended eventually to come to all the world. As Stott put it, “Although it is in Sion (v. 1) that God is thus approached, yet all flesh (v. 2) shall come to him.”478
The Sinai covenant with Israel does not directly govern Christians; they belong to an international people of God that is not defined by a border. They profess to be among the “peoples” for whom Israel was called. At the same time, all people everywhere depend on God’s providential care for his world, that they might eat and share their food with others—they depend on it but do not acknowledge it. The apostle Paul points to this providence as God’s “witness” to all peoples (Acts 14:17); Christians ought especially to take this witness to heart and help others to do so. But they ought also to add to this their aesthetic experience of the world God has made.Psalm 65
Psalm 66