Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Psalms · About this commentary
Come and See What God Has Done
Psalms 66:1-20
1 For the Chief Musician. A song. A Psalm. Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! · WEB
A congregation invites the world to look at its history, and then one man tells his own story to the same audience.
Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! Psalms 66:1.
The psalm has two halves and the join between them is its most interesting feature. The first is plural, the second singular, and the second is offered as evidence for the first.
Come, and see God's deeds — awesome work on behalf of the children of men. He turned the sea into dry land. They went through the river on foot Psalms 66:5–6.
The invitation is to inspect. The two events named are the Red Sea and the Jordan, the exodus and the entry, and the psalm treats them as public evidence available to anyone who wants to examine the record.
There, we rejoiced in him Psalms 66:6. The pronoun is worth noticing. Nobody singing this was at the Red Sea, and the psalm says we anyway — the same move the Passover instructions require Exodus 12:27.
For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. You brought us into prison. You laid a burden on our backs. You allowed men to ride over our heads Psalms 66:10–12.
The national history is not edited. Prison, forced labor, humiliation — and every one of them is attributed to God in the second person, in the middle of a psalm of praise. The refining image explains the theology: silver is put in the fire to have something removed, and the process is not a sign that the smith has lost interest.
We went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance Psalms 66:12.
Through, both times. The psalm's claim is not that the fire and water were avoided.
Come and hear, all you who fear God. I will declare what he has done for my soul Psalms 66:16.
The turn to the singular, and the verb has changed from see to hear. The nation's deliverance could be inspected; a personal one has to be told, because there is nothing to look at. The psalm puts both kinds of evidence in the same poem and does not rank them.
If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn't have listened Psalms 66:18.
The verb means to look at with favor — to keep something in view and approve of it. The psalm is not saying that a sinner cannot be heard, which would empty the fifty-first psalm of its point. It is saying that a man who is nursing something and has no intention of letting go of it is not really asking for anything.
But most certainly, God has listened Psalms 66:19.
The conclusion is drawn backward, and it is a striking piece of reasoning: he knows the prayer was heard, therefore he knows the sin was not being cherished. The answer is treated as evidence about his own heart, which he could not otherwise inspect.
settled What this mark means