Biblion Bible Commentary
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Open Your Mouth Wide
Psalms 81:1-16
1 For the Chief Musician. On an instrument of Gath. By Asaph. Sing aloud to God, our strength! Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob! · WEB
A festival psalm that turns into God saying what he would have done, if.
Sing aloud to God, our strength! Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob! Raise a song, and bring here the tambourine Psalms 81:1–2.
The psalm opens as a festival call, with instruments named and a trumpet blown at the new moon and the full moon Psalms 81:3. It is the noisiest opening in the third book of the Psalter, and it is a set-up.
I removed his shoulder from the burden. His hands were freed from the basket Psalms 81:6.
God begins to speak, and the first thing recalled is the physical fact of slavery — a shoulder under a load, hands carrying a brick basket. The exodus is remembered as the end of manual labor, which is how the people who did it would have remembered it.
You called in trouble, and I delivered you. I answered you in the secret place of thunder. I tested you at the waters of Meribah Psalms 81:7.
Three clauses covering the whole wilderness: they called, he answered, and then he tested — and Meribah is where they failed Exodus 17:7.
Hear, my people, and I will testify to you, Israel, if you would listen to me! Psalms 81:8.
The conditional at the end is left hanging, and the psalm returns to it twice more.
I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it Psalms 81:10.
The first half is the preamble to the ten commandments word for word Exodus 20:2. What follows it here is not a commandment but an invitation, and the image is a bird feeding its young — open wide enough and it will be filled. The offer is unlimited and its only condition is appetite.
But my people didn't listen to my voice. Israel desired none of me Psalms 81:11.
The answer to the invitation. Not that they asked for the wrong things but that they did not want him, which is the one refusal the offer cannot survive.
So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels Psalms 81:12.
The judgment is that they got what they wanted. Paul describes the same mechanism three times in a single passage — God gave them up to what they had chosen Romans 1:24 — and it is the most frightening form judgment takes in Scripture, because it feels like freedom.
Oh that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! Psalms 81:13.
The wish is God's, and it is not a rhetorical device. What follows is a list of what he would have done: subdued their enemies, fed them with the finest of the wheat, satisfied them with honey out of the rock Psalms 81:16.
The psalm ends on that unspent provision. A festival that began with tambourines closes with God describing a meal nobody came to.
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