Bible Commentaries

Harvest Thanksgiving Song

Like Psalm 65:1-13, this Psalm, inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment ofstringed instruments, a song-Psalm (מזמור שׁיר), also celebrates theblessing upon the cultivation of the ground. As Psalm 65:1-13 contemplated thecorn and fruits as still standing in the fields, so this Psalm contemplates, asit seems, the harvest as already gathered in, in the light of the redemptivehistory. Each plentiful harvest is to Israel a fulfilment of the promise givenin Leviticus 26:4, and a pledge that God is with His people, and that its missionto the whole world (of peoples) shall not remain unaccomplished. Thismission-tone referring to the end of God's work here below isunfortunately lost in the church's closing strain, “God be gracious andmerciful unto us,” but it sounds all the more distinctly and sweetly inLuther's hymn, “Es woll uns Gott genädig sein,” throughout.

There are seven stanzas: twice three two-line stanzas, having one of threelines in the middle, which forms the clasp or spangle of the septiad, acircumstance which is strikingly appropriate to the fact that this Psalm iscalled “the Old Testament Paternoster” in some of the old expositors.

(Note: Vid., Sonntag's Tituli Psalmorum (1687), where it is on this account laid out as the Rogate Psalm.)

The second half after the three-line stanza beings in Psalm 67:6 exactly as the firstclosed in Psalm 67:4. יברכנוּ is repeated three times, in order thatthe whole may bear the impress of the blessing of the priest, which isthreefold.

The Psalm begins (Psalm 67:1) with words of the priest's benediction in Numbers 6:24-26. By אתּנוּ the church desires for itself the unveiledpresence of the light-diffusing loving countenance of its God. Here, afterthe echo of the holiest and most glorious benediction, the music strikes in. With Psalm 67:2 the (Beracha) passes over into a (Tephilla). לדעת isconceived with the most general subject: that one may know, that may beknown Thy way, etc. The more graciously God attests Himself to thechurch, the more widely and successfully does the knowledge of this Godspread itself forth from the church over the whole earth. They then knowHis דּרך, i.e., the progressive realization of His counsel, and Hisישׁוּעה, the salvation at which this counsel aims, the salvationnot of Israel merely, but of all mankind.

Now follows the prospect of the entrance of all peoples into the kingdomof God, who will then praise Him in common with Israel as their God also. His judging (שׁפט) in this instance is not meant as a judicialpunishment, but as a righteous and mild government, just as in thechristological parallels Psalm 72:12., Isaiah 11:3. מישׁר in an ethicalsense for מישׁרים, as in Psalm 45:7; Isaiah 11:4; Malachi 2:6. הנחה as in Psalm 31:4 of gracious guidance (otherwise than in Job 12:23).

The joyous prospect of the conversion of heathen, expressed in the samewords as in Psalm 67:5, here receives as its foundation a joyous event of thepresent time: the earth has just yielded its fruit (cf. Psalm 85:13), the fruitthat had been sown and hoped for. This increase of corn and fruits is ablessing and an earnest of further blessing, by virtue of which (Jeremiah 33:9; Isaiah 60:3; cf. on the contrary Joel 2:17) it shall come to pass that all peoplesunto the uttermost bounds of the earth shall reverence the God of Israel. For it is the way of God, that all the good that He manifests towards Israel shall be for the well-being of mankind.