The Book of Psalms

Word Study

"Sing aloud," Hebrew harninu (הַרְנִינוּ), shout for joy, sing ringingly. The psalm opens at full volume. This is no murmured devotion but a ringing, carrying sound, the voice lifted as high as it will go in gladness.

"God our strength," Elohim uzzenu (אֱלֹהִים עוּזֵּנוּ). The singing has a reason built into its object: "Sing aloud unto God our strength." They do not praise strength in the abstract but the God who has been strength to them.

"make a joyful noise," hari'u (הָרִיעוּ), raise a shout, the war-cry and festal-cry. The same shout that went up on the battlefield goes up at the feast. Worship here has the volume and the urgency of an army's cry, turned now to gladness before "the God of Jacob."

"timbrel," tof (תֹּף), the hand-drum. "Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel." The summons calls for percussion as well as voice; the drum sets the beat that carries a whole congregation together.

"pleasant harp," kinnor na'im (כִּנּוֹר נָעִים). To the drum is added the sweetness of strings, "the pleasant harp with the psaltery." The psalm summons the full orchestra of Israel's praise, voice, drum, harp, and psaltery alike.

"blow up the trumpet," tik'u shofar (תִּקְעוּ שׁוֹפָר). Last comes the ram's-horn trumpet, the instrument that announces rather than accompanies: "Blow up the trumpet in the new moon." Its blast calls the nation to assemble.

"in the new moon," bachodesh (בַּחֹדֶשׁ). The celebration is not left to impulse but set by the calendar, "in the new moon, in the time appointed." Israel's joy came round at fixed seasons, appointed by God rather than chosen by mood.

"solemn feast day," chag (חָג). The word means a pilgrim festival, a day of loud, ringing celebration kept before the LORD. What is commanded here is gladness, and gladness of a very public kind.

Explanation

Two things sharpen this opening call. First, mark the object of the joy: "Sing aloud unto God our strength... the God of Jacob." The praise is loud and exuberant, but it is not empty noise; it is directed at a specific truth about God, that He is our strength. Israel does not sing to work itself up into strength; it sings because God is its strength already. And "the God of Jacob" is deliberate, Jacob the supplanter, the weak and crooked man whom God carried, so that "the God of Jacob" means the God who makes something of the undeserving. Loud worship rests on solid ground: who God is, and what He has been to the weak. Second, notice the timing, "blow up the trumpet in the new moon... on our solemn feast day." The trumpet blown at the new moon points to the Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:24), which fell on the new moon of the seventh month and opened Israel's most solemn season, leading on to the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. The trumpet did not merely make music; it summoned, calling the scattered people to gather before God, and heralding the season of redemption. So this festal shout is not entertainment but a holy convocation: God's people, called by the trumpet, gathering to rejoice in the God who is their strength. And then, having gathered them by the trumpet, God Himself will speak, for the very next verses turn from the people's praise to God's own voice.

Gospel Focus

"Sing aloud unto God our strength", for the believer, that strength has a name and a face. Christ is our strength: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13), and "the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). We do not gather our own strength and then serve God; we sing to Him who is our strength, and are strengthened in the singing. And the trumpet that summoned Israel to her solemn feast still sounds, for the great convocation is yet to come. As the trumpet gathered the scattered tribes, so "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible" (1 Corinthians 15:52), and "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The Feast of Trumpets opened the season that led to atonement; Christ our atonement has come, and the last trump will gather His people to the marriage supper of the Lamb. So make a joyful noise now: worship is the rehearsal of heaven, and the God our strength whom we praise is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Word Study

"Hear," Hebrew shema (שְׁמַע), hear with heed, obey. "Hear, O my people." The word asks for more than an open ear; in Hebrew, to hear is to heed, so the call to listen is already a call to obey.

"I will testify," a'idah (אָעִידָה), solemnly warn, bear witness against. God speaks as one giving evidence: "Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee." What follows is not casual advice but sworn testimony, with all the weight of a warning behind it.

"hearken," tishma-li (תִּשְׁמַע־לִי). "O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me." The sentence hangs open on an "if," and everything that follows in the psalm depends on how His people answer it.

"strange god," el zar (אֵל זָר), a foreign god. "There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god." The demand is exclusive: no outsider is to be given room in the house that belongs to the LORD.

"I am the LORD thy God," anochi YHWH Eloheykha (אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ). God grounds His claim in redemption, "I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." He asks nothing on the strength of bare authority; He asks it as the God who has already delivered them.

"open thy mouth wide," harchev pikha (הַרְחֶב פִּיךָ). The command that follows is not a burden but an invitation to expect much. The only limit set on the asking is the size of the mouth opened.

"I will fill it," va'amal'ehu (וַאֲמַלְאֵהוּ). The claim closes with a promise as wide as an open mouth: "open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." Whatever room His people make for Him, God undertakes to fill.

Explanation

Look closely at how God argues here, and at the astonishing promise He ends with. First, the pattern of verse 10 is the exact pattern of the Ten Commandments. God says, "I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt," and only then, "There shall no strange god be in thee." That is precisely the order of Sinai: "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2-3). God does not demand loyalty first and prove Himself later; He first reminds them what He has already done, redeemed them from slavery, and grounds the command in the grace. Obedience is the response of the redeemed, not the price of redemption. Second, and most wonderful, is the promise attached: "open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." The picture is of a hungry nestling, a baby bird stretching its beak as wide as it can toward the parent, and the promise is that God will fill whatever capacity we bring. The limit on His giving is not His supply but our expectation. He does not say, "open thy mouth a little"; He says "wide." Most of our poverty is that we come to God with our mouths nearly shut, asking little, expecting little, and so receiving little, not because He is stingy but because we will not open wide. The God who filled a nation in the wilderness with bread from heaven says: bring Me your emptiest, widest hunger, and I will fill it. Yet the tragedy comes in the very next verse, "But my people would not hearken to my voice" (v11). Offered a God who would fill them to the brim, they shut their mouths and turned to strange gods that could not feed them at all.

Gospel Focus

"I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt", the One who spoke these words is the One who became flesh for us, for the Rock that followed Israel through the wilderness "was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). The LORD who redeemed them from Egypt is the Lord Jesus who redeems us from sin, and the same order holds: He saves us first, wholly by grace, and then calls us to have no other gods, "we love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). And the promise "open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it" finds its fullness in Christ, the bread of life: "he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst" (John 6:35). He satisfies the widest hunger the soul can bring, for "blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6), and "he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness" (Psalm 107:9). The gospel is not a call to bring God a full mouth of merit but an empty mouth of need, opened wide in faith. So do not come to Christ asking little. Open wide, confess the whole depth of your hunger, and He will fill it, "the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing" (Psalm 34:10).

Word Study

"Oh that," Hebrew lu (לוּ), if only, a word of longing and lament. The psalm ends not in anger but in grief. This is the sound of a wish that cannot now be granted, God Himself sighing over what might have been.

"had hearkened," shomea li (שֹׁמֵעַ לִי). "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me." The whole tragedy turns on the one thing God asked for earlier in the psalm and did not receive: a listening people.

"walked in my ways," bidrakhai yehalleku (בִּדְרָכַי יְהַלֵּכוּ). Hearing was meant to become walking: "and Israel had walked in my ways!" Obedience is pictured as a road taken step by step, not a single decision made once.

"subdued," akhnia (אַכְנִיעַ). Then God lists all the good He would have done, beginning with victory: "I should soon have subdued their enemies." The enemies that mastered Israel would have been brought low, and quickly.

"finest of the wheat," chelev chittah (חֵלֶב חִטָּה), literally the fat of wheat, the richest of the grain. After victory and security comes the richest food: "He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat." Not bare provision but the best of the harvest was on offer.

"honey out of the rock," udevash mitzur (וּמִצּוּר דְּבַשׁ). The last picture is sweetness drawn from the least likely place: "with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee." Even the bare stone would have yielded delight to an obedient people.

Explanation

This is one of the most moving passages in all the Psalter, and its power lies in a single grammatical thread: everything here is in the tragic conditional, the mood of what would have been. "I should soon have subdued their enemies... the haters of the LORD should have submitted... He should have fed them." Verse after verse catalogues blessing, victory over enemies, security that "should have endured for ever," the richest food, and every line of it is what God longed to give but could not, because "my people would not hearken." It is the saddest kind of list: a register of forfeited good. God is not gloating over judgment; He is grieving over gifts refused. The word that opens it, "Oh that," is the sigh of a Father who wanted to give and was not allowed to. And notice the last and strangest gift named: "with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee." Honey does not come from rock; rock is the hardest, driest, most barren thing. Yet God says He would have drawn the sweetest food from the least likely place, echoing the song of Moses, where God "made him to suck honey out of the rock" (Deuteronomy 32:13). This is the signature of God's provision: sweetness out of hardness, satisfaction out of barrenness, the impossible made a table. All of it was on offer; all of it was refused. The psalm leaves the offer standing, and lets the ache of it search the reader: what is God longing to give you that you will not open your mouth to receive?

Gospel Focus

"Oh that my people had hearkened unto me", this is the very grief that broke from the heart of God made flesh. Standing over the city that would not receive Him, Jesus wept the same lament: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets... how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matthew 23:37). The "Oh that" of Psalm 81 and the "how often would I... and ye would not" of the gospel are one and the same longing heart. And the two foods God offered point straight to Christ. "The finest of the wheat" is the true bread, the Lord Jesus, "the corn of wheat" that fell into the ground and died to bring forth much fruit (John 12:24), the bread of life that satisfies for ever. And "honey out of the rock", the sweetest supply from the hardest place, is fulfilled in Christ the smitten Rock, for "that Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4), and from His stricken side flow living water and all the sweetness of the gospel. From the hard place of the cross comes the honey of salvation. So do not let this be a psalm of "what might have been" for your own soul. Hearken to His voice, open your mouth wide, and taste; "O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him" (Psalm 34:8).