Biblion Bible Commentary
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You Crown the Year
Psalms 65:1-13
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. A song. Praise waits for you, God, in Zion. Vows shall be performed to you. · WEB
Atonement, then the stilling of seas and nations, then rain — and the psalm treats all three as one subject.
Praise waits for you, God, in Zion Psalms 65:1.
The verb suggests silence — praise is waiting, held, due to be paid. The psalm moves in three stages, and its achievement is that they are not three subjects.
Sins overwhelmed me, but you atoned for our transgressions Psalms 65:3.
The pronouns shift inside the verse from me to our, which is how a person in a congregation actually experiences this. And the verb rendered atoned is the covering word — the one behind the mercy seat.
Blessed is the one whom you choose and cause to come near, that he may live in your courts Psalms 65:4.
Two verbs, both God's. Chosen, and caused to come near. The psalm gives no role to the worshiper in his own approach, which follows from the verse before it: a man whose sins overwhelmed him does not arrange his own admission.
You who are the hope of all the ends of the earth, of those who are far away on the sea Psalms 65:5.
The scope opens without warning from a temple courtyard to the whole planet, including people at sea — the furthest and least likely worshipers the writer could imagine.
You still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations Psalms 65:7.
The verse that holds the psalm together. Waves and nations are stilled by the same hand in the same sentence, and the same word is used for both kinds of roaring. Whatever God does about the sea, he does about politics.
You visit the earth, and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water Psalms 65:9.
The third movement, and it is agriculture. What follows is one of the most affectionate passages about weather in Scripture: you drench its furrows. You level its ridges. You soften it with showers Psalms 65:10. Three verbs about what rain does to plowed ground, described with the attention of someone who has watched it happen.
You crown the year with your bounty. Your carts overflow with abundance Psalms 65:11.
The year is crowned, which makes the harvest the point the whole circuit has been moving toward. And the carts are God's — the image is of his wagons going through the country dropping produce as they pass, overloaded.
The pastures are covered with flocks. The valleys also are clothed with grain. They shout for joy! They also sing Psalms 65:13.
The psalm ends with the fields singing. Having begun with praise waiting silently in Zion, it finishes with the countryside making the noise instead — and the three movements turn out to be one: the God who forgives sin, quiets nations, and sends rain is not doing three unrelated jobs.
settled What this mark means